Kentucky Confidential (10 page)

“Not sure,” Ray answered, frowning. “The generator’s back this way.” He waved for Connor to follow him with the flashlight as he turned and entered the tree maze.

Connor followed, not liking the sudden darkness. As a retired marine, he was used to making the dark work for him, but he wasn’t equipped to handle the loss of easy visibility, especially when he was separated from Risa. The light outage was probably a coincidence.

But he didn’t like coincidences. Especially not now.

“What the hell?” Ray said again, sounding even more confounded than before.

“What?” Connor asked.

Ray held out his hand. “Can I borrow that?”

Reluctantly, Connor handed over the flashlight. Ray played the light across a small open area in the middle of the tree lot. Connor could see what looked like a generator wheel kit, but there was no generator contained within the frame.

“Well, hell,” Ray said, sounding annoyed. “Who the hell took my damn generator?”

Connor’s heart skipping a beat, he grabbed the flashlight back from Ray and started to play the beam of light across the trees ahead of him. “Risa?” he called.

But Risa didn’t answer.

Chapter Ten

Risa’s pulse hammered loudly in her ears as she tried to orient herself in the darkness. There was a furtive sounding rustle nearby, as if someone were moving through the densely packed trees in an attempt at stealth.

Or was she just imagining things? There was any number of reasons the lights of the tree lot could have gone out, starting with a generator failure.

“Risa!” Connor’s voice carried across the tree lot.

And the furtive rustling stopped.

Someone was definitely out there. And if she responded to Connor’s call, that someone would know exactly where she was.

She eased backward, wincing when she bumped into one of the trees, setting its limbs rattling softly against one another. She heard the sound of movement again, coming her way.

“Risa?” Connor’s voice was closer now, and she realized she was seeing flashes of light moving toward her through the trees. A flashlight?

She remained quiet, letting Connor do all the moving. He was getting closer, although he was a few rows of trees away from where she was crouched.

Suddenly, the sound of movement in the trees nearby picked up, moving away from the light.

She risked edging closer to where Connor was weaving his way through the trees, calling his name when, finally, she could see him only a few feet away. “Connor!”

He pushed through the trees, sending a couple of them toppling, stands and all, to reach her. “Why didn’t you answer?” he asked breathlessly, wrapping one strong arm around her waist and pulling her to him.

“There’s someone out there,” she whispered. “I think they might have been following me.”

His only answer was to take her hand and lead her back to the roadside, where the SUV was still parked, a big black shadow in the unrelenting gloom. In a rustle of tree limbs, Ray emerged as well, stepping into the small circle of light cast by Connor’s flashlight beam.

“I found the generator,” he told Connor. “Someone had dragged it a few dozen yards away and emptied out all the gas.”

Connor slanted a look at Risa. “Must have been some kids, pulling a stupid prank.”

Ray’s lips curved in a grimace of a smile. “Or some of my competitors, out to screw up my night’s worth of sales.”

Connor rubbed Risa’s back, his touch warm and comforting. “You have a lot of trouble with your competitors?”

“Christmas is a cutthroat business.”

“What are you going to do now?” Risa asked, trying to settle her jangling nerves. It was possible Ray was right, that one of his competitors had tried to sabotage his business.

Possible. But not likely.

Ray pulled out his phone. “I’ll call my wife to bring me some more gas. Get the lights up and running again, and then the kids and me can clean up that mess where those jerks poured out the gas.” He nodded at their truck. “Go on, I’ll be fine. Maybe y’all can come back out tomorrow when it’s light and buy your decorations. I’ll give you half price on ’em for your trouble.”

Risa looked up at Connor, not sure she wanted to leave Ray alone, under the circumstances. He read her expression and gave a slight nod before he turned to Ray. “Actually, if it’s no problem, we’ll wait here with you. I’d like to go ahead and get the decorations tonight.”

“If you’re sure?”

“Positive,” Risa agreed.

Ray flashed them a quick grin. “Mighty friendly of you.” He pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket and walked a few yards away to make his call.

“I don’t think it was his competition,” Connor murmured, his lips so close to her ear she felt his breath stir her hair.

“I don’t, either.”

“Whoever it was, I don’t think he went far. He’s probably out there somewhere, waiting for a chance to follow us wherever we go next.”

“Which can’t be back to the safe house,” Risa murmured. “At least, not tonight. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Who do we think it is?”

“I think the more pressing question is, how did they find us?”

Down the road, headlights appeared in the gloom. Seconds later, Risa heard the rumble of a vehicle engine. Instinctively, she edged closer to Connor, who tucked her under his arm and turned so that his body was between her and the advancing vehicle.

“It’s Carla.” Ray moved past them toward the roadside as the vehicle, an older-model Chevrolet truck, slowed to a stop.

A short, plump woman with faded red hair and a round, pretty face stepped out of the driver’s seat and glanced at Risa and Connor before she turned to look at her husband, who had retrieved a plastic gas container from the bed of the pickup. “What happened?” she asked as she handed him the flashlight she held in her right hand.

“Must’ve been a kid pulling a prank,” Ray told her. “Thanks for gettin’ here so quick, hon.”

Carla slanted another curious look at Risa and Connor.

Ray nodded in their direction. “Sorry, didn’t get your names.”

“Mac and Marisa,” Connor said before Risa could speak. “Nice to meet you. We were about to look at some decorations out back when the lights went out.”

“Well, I can help you out with that,” Carla said with a smile as Ray turned on the flashlight and headed into the maze of trees. “I brought a couple more boxes of ornaments and garlands the girls put together—the local girls’ clubs in town make money for their activities by doing arts and crafts. Both of our girls are involved, so we sell ’em here at the tree lot every Christmas. Want to take a look and see if there’s anything you like?” She reached into the back of the truck, hauled out a large cardboard box and set it on the ground by the truck.

Risa glanced at Connor, wondering if they dared stay there any longer. It wasn’t like she could be sure they’d get a chance to use that tree they’d just bought, not if they were about to go on the run. Plus, money was about to become a real problem for them.

“We’ll take a look,” Connor said, meeting her gaze with steel in his blue eyes. He pointed the beam of his flashlight toward the box.

Carla opened the box to reveal several small ornaments, individually sealed in clear plastic zip-top bags. Some had been carved from wood and painted, the quality surprisingly sophisticated. Others were made of needlework or handwoven, in homey colors that reminded Risa of some of the craft work she’d seen in the small villages of Kaziristan when she’d been living there undercover.

“They’re beautiful,” she said.

“Thank you. I’ll be sure to pass along the compliments to the girls. Anything you like? They’re fifty cents an ornament, and the beaded and woven garland strands are two dollars apiece.”

Risa selected three wood-beaded garlands, two frosty blue and the other a weathered gold. She also selected a couple dozen ornaments in complementary colors. Connor pulled fifteen dollars from his wallet and handed it over just as the generator roared to life somewhere in the middle of the tree lot. The string of bulbs flickered on, lighting up the darkness.

“Thank you for everything,” Connor told Ray when he emerged from the thicket. “Hope you have a merry Christmas!”

“Enjoy your tree and decorations!” Ray gave a wave as they packed their decorations in the back of the truck with the tree. Risa waved back as they drove away from the brightness of the tree lot.

Ahead, the winding road seemed to disappear into inky blackness beyond the beams of the truck’s headlights. Risa quelled a shiver and turned to look at Connor. “How the hell did someone find us?”

* * *

I
N
C
UMBERLAND
, C
ONNOR
found what he was looking for—a public establishment still open at 8:00 p.m., with enough cars in the parking lot that an open ambush would be hard to accomplish. In this case, it was a pizza restaurant with a parking lot almost full on this cold Friday night.

“You’re hungry?” Risa asked, her tone dry, as Connor pulled into the parking lot and angled the truck into a place near the back.

“It’s dinnertime,” he murmured as he cut the engine.

“Seriously, what are we doing here?”

“Getting dinner,” he answered, lifting one finger to his lips.

Risa’s eyes narrowed, but she understood the unspoken order.

Connor reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a small rectangular box. Inside was an RF detector, designed to pick up signals from wireless transmitters, such as listening devices. He switched it on and waited for it to scan for a signal. It detected a GPS signal—Quinn put GPS trackers on all of the company’s fleet vehicles—but nothing else.

“No bugs,” he told her. “You can speak freely.”

“What’s that picking up?” she asked, pointing to the flashing green light.

“GPS—this is a company vehicle, so they’ll be tracking it.”

“What if someone at Campbell Cove Security is the one who’s following us? Maybe they needed to make covert contact.”

Connor shook his head. “Someone would have found a way to let me know he or she was there. No reason to disable the generator and make such a production.”

“So nobody’s bugging the car, or us. How did they find us? We need to figure that out, because they may be following us right now.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I know we weren’t directly followed this time—as dark as it was on the road driving here, nobody could’ve followed without my knowing it.”

“Does that make any sense?” Risa tugged her coat more tightly around her, looking spooked. “They risked following me around that tree lot with you and Ray there, but they don’t even try to follow us when we leave the place?”

She was right. It didn’t make any sense. Unless—

“Damn it,” he growled, snapping open the driver’s door. He grabbed the flashlight from the console compartment and started examining the underside of the Tahoe.

Risa came around the truck to stand beside him. “You said the RF detector picked up the GPS signal. What if—”

“Exactly.” He spotted the tracker that Campbell Cove Security placed on all the fleet vehicles, as expected.

But a few inches farther down the underside of the chassis, he found another small tracker, almost invisible against the mud-spattered undercarriage. He checked to make sure it wasn’t connected to anything that could damage the car if he removed it, then plucked it from the undercarriage.

“If we could put it on another vehicle...” Risa looked up at him, her eyes dark and unreadable.

“We’d be putting the driver of that vehicle in danger.”

She nodded. “I guess we can just throw it away.”

He looked around the parking lot, trying to come up with an option besides leaving it sitting, static, in the parking lot of the pizza restaurant. It wasn’t a terrible option, he supposed, but for their purposes, it would help if the tracker could be on the move for a while, maybe drawing the people following them on a wild goose chase.

“The river,” Risa said.

He looked at her. “The river?”

“We crossed a river on the way here,” Risa said. “We could throw it in the river.”

“The electronics would short out. It wouldn’t give us any lead time.”

She grinned at him, and for a second, he felt transported back to the early days of their relationship, when just being together was enough to make them both feel giddy and light. “Luckily for us, we just bought a whole lot of plastic-wrapped ornaments from the crafty girls of eastern Kentucky.”

“Brilliant,” he said, opening the back of the Tahoe to retrieve one of the bags. “Which way is the river?

* * *

“S
OMETHING
ISN
’
T
RIGHT
.” Risa stared out the windshield at the darkness, unease rising in her chest. They’d dumped the GPS tracker in the Poor Fork tributary fifteen minutes ago and gotten rid of the Campbell Cove Security tracker as well. Now they were driving west toward Harlan, but she didn’t feel any safer. “How did they connect the Tahoe to me? I don’t have any relationship to Campbell Cove Security. And this is a fleet vehicle.”

“You have a relationship to me,” Connor said grimly. “And I was using my real name and my real credit cards in Cincinnati.”

“But that only works if...”

“If they made you.” Connor glanced at her. In the light from the dashboard, his face was a road map of shadows, but she could see enough of his expression to know it was grim.

“That has to be it. They made me. And they connected me to you.”

“So they’re tracking me, not you.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “We don’t use your credit cards anymore. Throw away your phone if it can be connected to you.”

“I have a burner phone that should be safe.”

“Stick with that. How much cash do you have?”

“About a thousand in a lockbox under your seat. Another five hundred back at the safe house.”

“We can’t go back there.”

“No,” he agreed. “Do you have any cash?”

“Three hundred in a hidden pocket in my backpack.”

“Also back at the safe house?”

“Actually, no. I stashed my backpack under the backseat before we left. After the close call in Cincinnati, I didn’t think it was a good idea to let my laptop get too far out of my sight.”

“We can’t use your phone to connect to the web.”

“No, but maybe we can spare a couple hundred dollars to buy a new burner we can use instead,” she said, her sense of equilibrium beginning to return. “Also, I don’t think we can risk getting in touch with Campbell Cove Security. At least not for a few days, until we can figure out if they’ve linked you directly to the company. It’s possible they put the tracker on the Tahoe after we left Cincinnati, maybe at that gas station where we stopped outside Lexington.”

“Quinn will start looking for us if we don’t check in. And if he sends someone to the safe house to check on us and finds us missing—”

“I know,” she interrupted, “but it’s a risk we have to take. At least until we get some distance from where our last tracking coordinates show up. Let’s just look for a low-rent motel that’ll take cash and ask no questions. Get a good night’s sleep and then we can worry about what comes tomorrow.”

Connor was silent for a long moment, long enough that she was beginning to fear he was going to argue. But finally, he nodded. “Okay. You’re right. We’re cold, we’re exhausted, and I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Maybe we can find a late-night drive-through on the way.”