Mindhunters 4 - Deadly Intent (45 page)

“We’ll follow you out in a minute,” Travis assured him.

With one more glance at the sky, the man lifted a hand and roared off.

“How long do you think it’d take us to get close enough to that structure to be able to tell what color it is?”

Kell’s head swiveled to face Macy. “What?”

“That video this morning. All those mistakes she was making?” The thread of excitement in her words spurred an answering emotion in him. “They were clues. Forest. Cabin. White. Ellie was describing the shelter. I’m sure of it. We know she was in the vicinity. The dog followed her scent all day.” Tugging urgently at Kell’s sleeve, she said, “I can’t leave before we first check out the structure inside those trees.”

He took little convincing. But he was prepared to argue down the agent, who struck him as a rule follower of the worst order. Kell visually measured the distance to the sled in case he had to make a dash for it to capture the keys, which in effect would present the man with a fait accompli. “What do you think, Dan?”

“Twenty minutes.” The man was already striding toward the snowmobile. “We’ll check it out and still likely make it back before the weather hits.”

As if to prove him a liar, light snow began falling. But all three of them were already heading for the sled.

The ride to where the trees became denser was thankfully short. They abandoned the sled and once again put on their snowshoes before plunging into the wooded area.

“How’d you figure those reading errors were a message?” The admiration in Travis’s tone dissipated the earlier kindness Kell had felt toward the man for agreeing to spend a bit more time up here.

Macy gave them what Kell was certain was an abbreviated version of events. “Ellie’s gutsy.” There was an odd note of pride in the word. “After all she’s been through, this little girl hasn’t fallen apart. She’d never have been able to think clearly enough to plan something like this otherwise.”

“Well, it was a good catch on your end.”

Kell quickened his pace. This outing was going to seem longer than it should if he had to listen to Travis fumble through another attempt at gaining Macy’s interest. Every time she came on scene, his whole demeanor changed.

Because the man pressed her, Macy explained in a little more depth how the patterns had caught her eye when examining the girl’s errors.

“You must be great with pattern analysis. That’s what you did with those notes, too, right?”

“Macy’s good with analysis.” Something was riding him that he didn’t want to examine too closely. Which was never a wise time to speak, but that didn’t stop him. “Sometimes she’s too good. Examines things too closely when she ought to just let them be, see where they go. Sometimes people can overanalyze things, don’t you agree, Travis?”

He stumbled then, nearly landing flat on his face. He shot Macy a look, certain he hadn’t imagined her hand on his back.

“I’ve always preferred to know exactly where I’m stepping,” she said blandly. “While it might be gratifying to follow whatever whim catches our fancy, I’m most comfortable making a conscious decision about my actions. That way, I’m less likely to regret them later.”

Scowling beneath his mask, Kell shoved his hands into his pockets. Regret? Is that what she was afraid of? Because he could accept that she wanted to set aside what was between them until after the girl was found. Hell, he agreed with that. But past experience had taught him that the longer they put off talking about what was going on between them, the more time she’d give herself to regret giving in to it.

Damned if he was going to allow her to neatly set him aside once again as a regret.

“You know,” Travis was saying, “It sounds like you’re a planner, like me. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Maybe we need to be quiet,” Kell interjected irritably. “Sound travels out here.” He was aware of the looks Macy and Dan sent him but was past caring. Damned if he was up for standing silently by while the other man broke out his rusty moves again. He’d never been accused of being overly endowed with patience.

Which made it doubly hard to wait for Macy to get over whatever the hell was holding her back with him.

They walked about a half mile. Even surrounded by the thick strand of trees, it was easy to see that the wind was picking up. Little arctic funnels of snow encompassed them as they moved through the forest. It was difficult to tell how much of it was falling from the sky and how much from the already heavily laden branches overhead.

One minute they were surrounded by trees, and the next he could see a break in them. “Is that a clearing ahead?” he murmured, slowing to free the strap of the binoculars from inside his parka.

“I don’t see anything.”

He brought the glasses up and surveyed the area up ahead carefully. “The trees thin in another sixty or seventy yards. I can see the outline of a rooftop.”

“We’re close then. Good.” Travis hunched forward a bit as another blast of wind encompassed them. “We’re going to be lucky to get off this mountain before the storm kicks in. It might not be as easy as you think.”

They trudged farther, more carefully now. As the area between trees widened, they needed to be concerned about maintaining cover as they approached. His earlier excitement at Macy’s news had dampened, both by the worsening weather and from reality. Chances were Feldman was right, and the dog would follow the girl’s scent for dozens of miles farther before leading them to her. Even more likely, whoever was cozily ensconced in the structure beyond the trees was likely to be another bearded outdoorsman like Owen Redmond. Hopefully whoever it was would be more cooperative than the hunter had been.

But when he stopped to lift the binoculars to his eyes again, those thoughts scattered like the snowflakes in the air around them. He stared hard and long. Long enough to have Macy reaching for the glasses.

“What is it?”

Kell ignored the agent’s hissed words and wordlessly handed the binoculars to Macy. She seemed to have trouble sighting with them for a moment. He knew the exact instant when she’d seen what he had. Her body stilled.

“It’s white. The cabin . . . or shelter, is white.”

“Yeah.” The fierce satisfaction mingled with adrenaline to flash and spark in his veins. “It sure as hell is.”

“You know what I think?” The man pressed the tip of his knife beneath Ellie’s chin. She could feel its sharpness. If she moved, even to speak, it’d break the skin.

“I think you’ve been feeding me a load of shit, that’s what I think. Last night and again today.”

A long moment stretched. She had to force herself not to look away from his eyes, although the emptiness she saw there sent cold chills all the way through her. “I’ve already figured a way to get the feeling back.” His smile was like a steely fist closing around her heart. “Unfortunately for you, it starts with peeling the skin right off you.”

“But you can’t be sure.” The words had the knife pricking her harder, and there was an immediate answering pain. The slow trickle down the side of her throat would be blood.

His face closed. “I’m as sure as I can be.”

“Listening to me is like insurance, right? Except it doesn’t cost you anything.” Oh God, it
hurt
to talk. If he didn’t move that knife, she wasn’t sure she could force more words out of her throat.

To her relief, he eased the pressure on the knife a tiny bit. “Don’t kid yourself. Listening to you has a price. On my patience.”

Summoning her flagging courage, she shrugged. “But what if killing me doesn’t make the numbness in you go away? You should listen to me so you’ll know what to do next.” She waited a long moment. “Unless you don’t care about never feeling again.”

When he moved away suddenly, it was all she could do not to go limp with relief. “I don’t think going out and buying myself a dumb-ass horse is going to do the trick. Problem is, you’re just a stupid little girl. You don’t know anything about what people like me have gone through.”

“
You
don’t know anything about what
I’ve
gone through,” she said hotly. And Lucky wasn’t a dumb-ass horse. This guy was the dumb ass. Just thinking the words made her feel a teensy bit better. “It’s not about a horse. It’s the pretending that’s important.” She could have told him that she was only eleven in years. In other ways she felt as old as the Rockies. As old as the forces that had carved them.

“Pretending.” His voice was contemptuous, but she could tell she’d gotten his attention again. “I’m not a lame kid. I don’t get off on make-believe.”

“No, you go through the motions.” At least that’s what her therapist had accused her of. Going through the motions of living. “But it doesn’t get you anywhere because it’s like you’re a robot. No feeling. Everything’s automatic.” There had been many times since this man had taken her that she wished she could go back to feeling that way again. “But when I started to pretend, I’d think about what I used to care about. It was hard to remember.” Really hard because she hadn’t been that kid anymore. She never would be. “I’d watch movies that had kids in them and I’d try to pretend to be like them. To act like them. And then one day, you realize that you’ve stopped pretending. Not all at once. Maybe about just one thing at first.”

She stopped, her mind going back to that time. She’d only asked for a horse because of watching those movies with her mom. The girl in the movie acted sort of stupid. Ellie didn’t want to be like her. She didn’t care about the kind of things the actress had. But she’d become an actress just like the girl in the movie, and pretended some of the same things were important.

Which meant she’d had to pretend to be excited when her mom and dad had bought Lucky. And to care about how quickly a stable could be built. She’d pretended to be interested when her parents had decided to fill it with a few more horses so they could ride together.

It was easy to pretend with her parents. But Lucky had known. He’d always seemed to know about the yawning empty place inside her. And he’d known how to fill it up. A little at a time.

“Maybe a dog would help. You could walk it. Teach it tricks.”

That brought a smile to the man’s face, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that made her feel better. “I had a dog once. The first gun I stole, I used him for target practice.”

Her stomach hollowed out, and she thought she’d throw up. Funny, how the thought of him treating a pet like that seemed just as bad as what he wanted to do to her. What he
would
do to her soon.

Would anybody understand what she’d tried to tell them in that video? Would it make a difference? Maybe not. She didn’t know exactly where she was. Or even how far he’d taken her from home. Were they even in Colorado anymore? Maybe they’d just think that she was scared. Stupid and scared.

Maybe no one had seen it. Because no one had come.

And they probably wouldn’t.

“So . . . what else you got?”

She swallowed and forced herself to keep her mind on the man. He was asking questions. Maybe he was interested in her ideas.

And maybe his interest would buy her a little more time.

“We’re back in the vehicles, yeah.” Kell wasn’t about to claim he’d thawed out. It’d take quite a bit longer for that. But there was finally warm air chugging out of the vents. And as excited as he was about their find, it’d been a couple hours since he’d felt his toes.

He pressed the cell closer to his ear. Travis was on the phone in the backseat with Whitman and the other conversation made it difficult to hear Raiker’s low brusque tones.

“Were you able to gather any more intelligence?”

He’d had to hike well out of the surrounding trees in order to get cell reception to call in their findings the first time. “Even if it weren’t for the weather, you probably couldn’t get a look at this place from the sky. It’s small, no more than fifteen by twenty. Eight feet tall. One window that faces the back. And it’s white, so it blends in with the terrain.”

“Were you able to positively ID the girl?”

His enthusiasm dimmed a bit. “I could only get partial glimpses of a female inside. I saw long blond hair. There’s a blanket around her. But she sits so still I have to believe she’s bound.”