Manhunt in the Wild West (9 page)

She sighed, realizing that her conscience could apparently override her inner wimp and almost wishing it couldn’t. “What next?” she asked.

He looked at her for a moment, his eyes intent, and something moved in their depths, making her wonder what he saw when he looked at her. A nice girl? A small life? Or something more?

But he said only, “Let’s get you home before we push our luck too far.”

He walked her through the woods to her back door, proving once again that her police protection was more for show than anything else.

Once she had the kitchen door open, she paused. “Do you want to come in?”

It was a foolish offer, a sign of just how confused she was inside, how much she’d blurred the lines between date and danger, adventure and stupidity. Fiction and reality.

He shook his head, his eyes holding hers. “I shouldn’t.”

Not
I can’t,
but
I shouldn’t.

“You’re probably right,” she agreed, but she didn’t move out of the doorway.

He stepped up onto the landing. With her standing a tread higher on the threshold, the move put them eye-to-eye.

Electricity buzzed in the air. Chemistry. Maybe it was a pointless, futureless, mad attraction, but in that moment the logic didn’t seem to matter.

Only the heat mattered.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said, but didn’t.

“I know,” she said, and even though it made absolutely no sense, what she really meant was,
Come inside.

He leaned in and touched his lips to hers, a fleeting touch, there and gone so quickly that she might’ve imagined it, except there was no imagining the arcing shock of sensation, and the ripe, full flavor of him.

She moved to deepen the kiss.

He stepped away, shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Backing away from her, he turned and crossed her backyard, then slipped into the forest. And was gone.

A
S HE RETRIEVED
his vehicle and set off for the deep-woods hideout where al-Jihad and the others were hiding, Fax tried to tell himself that it’d been the right choice to reveal himself to Chelsea and recruit her help. She was a necessary asset at a time when he was cut off from his normal channels.

Despite that logic and the fact that he’d done everything he could think of to ensure her safety within the dangerous circumstances surrounding her, he couldn’t outrun the growing certainty that he was playing it wrong, taking advantage of someone who deserved better, who shouldn’t be part of his world.

Then again, that was part of the horror of terrorism: it brought evil into everyday life.

Unfortunately, that sometimes meant that the good guys had to bring the war into the picket-fenced backyards of America and apple pie. Fax understood the need. He’d dealt with the emotions—what few he had left—long ago, consoling himself with the knowledge that for every innocent life lost during one of his ops, several hundred other people would live on oblivious, never knowing how close they’d come to death.

Usually he neither liked nor disliked the necessity; he simply accepted it. Now, though, he was caught up in it, worried about it, thinking more about the danger to Chelsea than the menace of al-Jihad and the terrorist leader’s plan, which he could sense taking shape around him but couldn’t define.

He knew he had three days—
make that two and a half now,
he thought, glancing at the in-dash display, which showed that it was well past 2:00 a.m. But although he knew approximately when, he had no idea of where or how, no idea what sort of attack was being planned. Without those details, the time line was next to useless.

Complicating things even further was Jane’s continued silence. He felt a pang of grief for the woman who’d given him purpose—and absolution—after Abby’s death.

He knew Jane wouldn’t thank him for the grief, though, so he focused on what she would’ve considered far more important—the information disruption caused by her disappearance and how to circumvent that limitation.

Stop stalling and come up with a plan, Fairfax,
she would’ve said.

With her out of the loop, he didn’t have the luxury of knowing a response could be up and running with the snap of a finger. Worse, he strongly suspected she’d been betrayed from within the core of the few people she trusted. She was too smart to be taken out by anything short of betrayal.

If al-Jihad’s compatriots were strong enough to do that, Fax knew they were easily strong enough to make him quietly disappear if he showed up on their radar screens. Especially given that they had someone inside the FBI, as evidenced by the fudged autopsy records. All of which meant he couldn’t risk contacting anyone in the federal food chain, for fear of revealing himself to one of the conspirators.

“In other words, I’m on my own,” he said as he bounced his way up the narrow lane to where they’d been hiding the cars, and from there hiking up to the cabin. “As usual.”

Only it wasn’t business as usual, not really, because he had Chelsea on his conscience and in his head.

“You’d better focus,” he warned himself as he climbed out of the car and popped the trunk to retrieve the bulging knapsack that had ostensibly been his reason for the midnight errand.

He had to get the woman out of his head, had to get himself into the game.

But as he hiked the half mile farther into the forest to the cabin, he couldn’t stop thinking of Chelsea, of the way her short, chestnut-streaked hair brushed the edges of her jaw, and how her brown eyes sparked when she smiled at him, when she argued with him.

Most of all, he couldn’t stop remembering the taste of her skin and mouth, the feel of her curving, feminine body pressed against him.

By the time he reached the encampment, where the plain, square cabin was covered in camo netting and pine branches, and ringed with deadly security sensors, he was more than tempted to turn the hell around and go back for her. But that was attraction talking, not logic, so he kept going, pushing through the cabin door, his senses on alert for any telltale changes, any hint that the situation he was walking into wasn’t the one he’d left hours earlier.

Al-Jihad and Muhammad sat at the long table in the center of the main room, which was heaped with encrypted schematics and computer printouts, and home to four laptops run by a lean, dark-haired stranger.

Fax stopped just inside the doorway and scowled. “Who the hell is that? And where’s the lemming?”

Al-Jihad glanced from Fax to the stranger and back, his expression inscrutable. “Lee is off on an errand. And this is one of my consultants.” Which didn’t explain a damn thing.

Fax wanted to ask more, but he also wanted to get close enough to look at those schematics, to see if he could ID the target. Problem was, he didn’t know how far he could push without risking his cover. Al-Jihad and Muhammad seemed to accept his professed hatred of the establishment, and seemed to buy that he wasn’t just an anarchist, he was so in love with violence that he was willing to target innocent civilians, as long as it made the government look bad. The terrorist leader and his second in command had given Fax small assignments and seemed willing to let him into their discussions, but only to a point.

He had to wonder, though, whether they were playing him just as thoroughly as he’d been playing them. What was he to them? he wondered. An asset, a tool to be used as a later distraction…or something else? Something more sinister?

Unfortunately, in the absence of other information, his best bet was to keep playing along, watching his back and gathering what information he could.

Senses humming, mind clicking over the options, he took a couple of steps toward the table. “Anything I can help with?”

Al-Jihad looked up at him, and something sparked in the depths of his dead black eyes. “Another time, perhaps.”

Fax shrugged. “No biggie. I’ll go unpack.”

He kept his senses revved as he unloaded six-packs of beer and soda from his knapsack to the fridge. He caught a few words of the conversation, enough to realize they weren’t speaking English.

When he stuck his head back through the kitchen door, the conversation cut off abruptly and the men turned to look at him.

“What do you want?” the stranger asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.

“Just checking if either of you wanted something to eat,” Fax said with a hint of wary deference in his voice, playing the part of a scared lackey who knew damn well his life was subject to the whims of the terrorist leader.

“No,” al-Jihad spat. “Go check the perimeter.”

“Will do.” Fax made a production of pulling his jacket back on as protection against the sharp wind outside and headed for the door.

On the way past, though, he managed to get a look at the papers on the table. He didn’t recognize the schematics, but beneath them was a flyer of some sort, and he caught a single word.

Parade.

Chelsea slept poorly and woke with a creepy feeling lodged between her shoulder blades. Then again, was there any wonder she felt unsettled? She’d broken into her own office and let a fugitive search Sara’s office and scour their computer system.

Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still doing the wrong thing,
her conscience nagged as she showered and dried off, and then did her best to cover up the dark, worried circles beneath her eyes.

Her conscience was right. Unfortunately, she had no clue what the right thing to do would be. This was all so far out of her normal mode of operation, she didn’t even know where to start.

The nerves stayed high as she got dressed, choosing sturdy jeans and lace-up boots because they made her feel a little armored-up, and a rust-brown turtleneck sweater that made her eyes look more caramel than brown. Feeling pretty was another layer of armor.

The thought of needing her defenses on high alert put a twist in her stomach. Then the doorbell rang, and the twist became a knot.

“Oh!” She took a couple of steps toward the door, then stopped at the sight of a big, shadowy figure through the curtained window.

She couldn’t see many details through the gauze, but immediately knew that it wasn’t Fax. For one, the man was ringing at the front door rather than picking the lock on the back. For another, he was bigger than Fax, both taller and broader.

Starting to panic now, she backed up a step, trying to decide between calling for help and trying to escape on her own.

He rang the doorbell again, and knocked. Then called, “Chelsea? It’s Seth Varitek.”

Seth!
Her breath whistled out on a gust of relief and she was halfway across the room when she stalled. Wait a minute. Seth was FBI. Someone in the FBI had falsified the report of an autopsy he’d overseen. What if he were involved?

No, she told herself. Impossible. He was Cassie’s husband, part of the gang. He was a decorated expert and had worked some of the highest-profile cases in the country. There was no way he could possibly be involved with al-Jihad.

Still, she stayed in place, frozen with indecision, afraid to trust her own gut anymore.

“Chelsea?” Seth’s voice had gone worried, edged with professional calm. “You’ve got a ten-count to answer before I come through this door.”

Finally she moved, not because of the threat, but because he was Seth. A friend. She trusted him. She wasn’t cold like Fax. She couldn’t just turn her heart on and off.

“Hey!” She opened the door a crack and invited him inside, staying behind the panel, keeping her body shielded in case someone shot at her from the street, like her surveillance team had taught her to do.

The big man’s expression cleared some when he saw her, but his eyes stayed pensive and he didn’t move to come inside. “What took you so long?”

Seth was a big, dark bear of a man with brush-cut black hair and strong, almost forbidding features. He was wearing jeans and a blue sweatshirt beneath a Rockies logo jacket, suggesting he was off duty, but his holstered weapon and the badge clipped to his belt said otherwise.

“What—” Chelsea’s voice faltered, but she forced the words. “What’s going on?”

He gave her a long, measured look, as if to say
you tell me,
but answered simply, “Tucker asked me to pick you up. Romo Sampson wants to talk to you.”

“Oh.” She closed her eyes on an internal groan.

The hotshot IAD investigator was rumored to have no conscience when it came to hounding—and taking down—other cops. He also, Chelsea suspected, had a grudge against the ME’s department, going back to right about the time Sara had dated and dumped him.

This wasn’t going to be good.

“I could’ve driven myself,” she said faintly, focusing on the immediate problem rather than looking ahead. “I’m not much of a flight risk.”

She meant the latter as a weak joke, but even as she said it she realized it wasn’t exactly true. The night before, she hadn’t just strayed over the line between legal and illegal, she’d blown it up and set fire to the remains. There was no reason they shouldn’t consider her a risk.

Heck, if Fax appeared in her kitchen doorway right then and crooked a finger, she’d be sorely tempted to take off and not look back. She’d follow him into the woods…and that was where the fantasy dissolved.

She couldn’t go with him to the fugitives’ camp, and he had to maintain his presence there.

“It’s no big deal,” Seth said easily.

It took her a couple of seconds to figure out that he was talking about giving her a ride, not her relationship with a man he didn’t even know she was in continued contact with. Not that there was a relationship. There was merely a wish that the situation could have been different. Then again, under other circumstances, she and Fax never would’ve crossed paths.

Chelsea told herself that probably would’ve been for the best, which made her sad.

“You ready to go?” the big FBI agent asked. Only it wasn’t really a question.

“Of course.” She grabbed her coat and followed him out.

Her stomach churned with nerves as she locked the door and walked with Seth to his truck. He hadn’t said it, but she knew there was another reason Tucker had asked Cassie’s husband to pick her up and drive her to IAD: he’d wanted her to have someone outside Bear Claw law enforcement to talk to, if she felt like she needed it.

Problem was, Seth might be outside the Bear Claw PD, but he wasn’t beyond al-Jihad’s reach.

As she climbed into the truck and waited for Seth to start the engine, Chelsea wrestled with herself.

She and Fax needed help, whether or not he wanted to admit it. And though it was probably the wimp talking, Chelsea readily admitted to herself that she would feel better if they could bring Seth and a handpicked few of her friends on board. It would give their investigation a sense of legitimacy, and it’d mean she wouldn’t have to lie to her friends, which she hated doing.

Problem was, after last night she knew Fax would never, ever agree to bring in other people, especially not someone from the Bear Claw PD or FBI. And she didn’t know him well, but she could guess that if she told them the truth and Fax found out, she’d never see him again. More importantly, she wasn’t a hundred percent certain it’d be safe to involve the others.

She trusted her friends, but the evidence said she couldn’t trust everyone around them. So as Seth backed out of her driveway and the surveillance vehicle fell in behind them, she tried to figure how to get the information she needed without asking questions that would reveal too much.

“Can I ask you something?” she said finally, knowing she’d have to keep it vague.

The look Seth sent in her direction warned that he wasn’t fooled for a second. “Sure. Anything.”

“Say someone was working undercover—and I mean deep undercover,” she began, hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake. “What sort of fail-safes would there be if he lost contact with his handler?”

“What agency?”

“Any one,” she said, dodging.

They drove in silence for nearly a mile before Seth muttered a curse under his breath. “What’s his contact’s name?”

It wasn’t a promise of help or secrecy, but within their circle of friendship, that was exactly what it amounted to.

“Jane Doe,” Chelsea said softly, hoping she hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of her life.

T
HE HIDDEN CABIN
hummed with activity as the plans for the terrorist attack started coming together.

At least Fax got the sense that the scheme was getting nailed down. He didn’t know for certain because al-Jihad and Muhammad were keeping him as far out of the loop as possible, using him for information gathering and supply runs, and telling him almost nothing.

Not that Fax could blame them from a strategic point of view—it only made sense to give the new guy the crap jobs. But that meant he was stuck in limbo, part of the plan, yet not. It wasn’t enough, damn it. He needed the names of the people on the inside who were involved.

Then and only then would he know who he could trust and who he couldn’t.

Additional manpower and supplies arrived midmorning seemingly out of nowhere, which only added to Fax’s frustration.

He couldn’t figure out how al-Jihad was contacting his confederates, which meant he was missing a major piece of the puzzle. And if the terrorists were keeping their communication method secret from him, there was a good bet they were keeping other things hidden.

Unfortunately, he didn’t dare snoop. Muhammad and al-Jihad were on high alert, as were the five other silent men who moved into and out of the cabin, casting furtive looks in Fax’s direction, but not answering any of his greetings. The last member of their group—twitchy, weasely Lee Mawadi—had been growing increasingly twitchy by the hour. Worse, he’d taken to watching Fax, following him around as though the higher-ups had assigned him as a babysitter.

Fax didn’t like the thought any more than he liked the man.

Were they keeping tabs on him just to be safe or did they suspect something?
Scratch that,
Fax thought to himself as he bent over his latest task of sawing foot-long pieces of pipe that he could only assume would be turned into bombs over the next two days.
Guys like these are always suspicious—that’s what keeps them alive and free. Question is, what’s made them extra suspicious now?

He didn’t think the authorities were anywhere close to their hiding spot—that would’ve brought a different kind of tension. No, this felt more like they were holding out for an answer or a piece of information that would make or break the next step in their game.

But what information? Where was it coming from? And how the hell were they getting it?

Fax wanted to shake the answers out of somebody, but he didn’t dare. He could only focus on his task, too aware of the lemming sitting across from him, winding wire for a detonator coil while he divided his attention between the chatter of a daytime talk show on the small TV in the corner, and the drone of voices coming from the back of the four-room cabin.

Fax knew where each of the men were and how they were armed. He had a plan in mind if things went suddenly south—he knew what weapons he’d try for and where his escape routes were. But those were academic exercises for the most part, because experience had taught him that when things went bad, they usually spun right past contingencies and into the realm of action-reaction real fast.

So he stayed ready for action, knowing it might be the difference between life and death—not just his own life, but those of hundreds, probably thousands of innocents who’d be planning to be part of whatever parade the terrorists targeted.

He couldn’t warn the authorities yet, he knew. Not until and unless there was no possible option for apprehending al-Jihad and the others mid-crime. He did, however, fully intend to make sure Chelsea was nowhere near the planned attack.

He couldn’t save everyone. But he’d damn well save her.

“Fairfax.”

It wasn’t until he heard Muhammad call his name from the doorway of the back room that Fax realized the air in the little cabin had changed, going from one of waiting to one of decision.

Fine tension shivered across his skin, but he played it cool, setting aside the length of pipe he’d been working on. “Yeah?”

“In here.” Muhammad disappeared back into the room.

Fax found himself trading a look with Lee. If it’d been anyone other than the lemming, he might’ve asked whether the other man knew what was going on. But it wasn’t, so he didn’t. He just headed into the back room.

He was two steps in when a heavy blow came out of nowhere and struck him across the back of the head.

Fax shouted and spun, grabbing for the weapon. Al-Jihad himself wielded the short club, his dead eyes alight with killing rage as he hissed, “Traitor!” and came at Fax again.

The second blow caught him in the temple and sent him to his hands and knees, where he braced himself, retching and reeling, not able to run or fight or do anything but howl with the knowledge that his cover was somehow blown, that…

A third blow caught him below the ear and he collapsed into darkness.

He surfaced what seemed like a long time later, pulled to semiconsciousness by the sound of someone saying Chelsea’s name.

He stirred and groaned when he heard her name again, and crazily wondered if she was there. But he quickly realized that it wasn’t Chelsea herself. It was someone asking him about her. And that was a big problem.

Cracking open his eyes, he squinted into the too-bright light at his interrogator, and recognized Muhammad.

Rage flared when he realized the terrorists knew that he and Chelsea were connected. He was suffused with an overwhelming urge to rip into Muhammad for daring to even say her name. Moments later, though, he blearily realized that he wasn’t ripping into anything any time soon. He was securely bound to a chair set in the middle of the cabin’s back room. His head lolled, his consciousness was furred with drugs, and he could barely hear the questions Muhammad was firing at him.