Obsession Falls (41 page)
Jimmy said it was a game. Okay. Then she was a pawn. A pawn with a mind and a heart of her own. If he thought she could be moved around this chessboard and she wouldn’t strike back, he would soon be surprised.
As she finished the strawberries, at the bottom of the small recyclable paper container she found parchment-thin paper sealed in a small plastic bag. She unfolded the paper and read:
Darling Summer,
Before dark, you have to make it down the mountain and to the right spot to be rescued. Those are the rules. Cruel, I know, but I didn’t make them up. Kennedy McManus did.
Believe me, my dearest, I have faith in you. You know what you should not know. You live when you should be dead. You recognize the real me when no one else does. My darling, I have faith in you. This day requires strength, determination, knowledge and luck, and you have all four. You can do this. Confirm my faith, and I will see you soon.
I am your faithful servant, Venom (or Jimmy, or Michael, as you prefer. I am the man you wish me to be.)
Was she supposed to be thrilled? Flattered? Encouraged? She was none of those things. She was angry.
She knew the prevailing winds came from the west. The wind was blowing in her face. So she stood and moved toward the tree line, into the teeth of the storm.
Summer trekked downhill. She stepped again, and again, and again, through the snow falling at inches an hour, across paths empty of hikers, through a foot of fresh powder, eighteen inches, two feet, more. The hours rolled along. She paused long enough to choke down the second meal. She had stumbled down this mountain for what felt like forever and she had yet to see anything to indicate she was going the right way. Whatever way that was.
A spot between her shoulder blades itched. She felt as if a sniper held her in his sights. If she didn’t get down this mountain by dark, somehow, Michael Gracie was going to kill her. She kept herself motivated by imagining the ways he could do it: the bullet from a rifle, a trip wire, or maybe the dinner she would eat next was laced with enough poison to take her out of this world.
Maybe if she was lost long enough, she would gladly eat it.
Then she stepped in a hole and fell face-first. She put her arms down, yanked her face up and wiped at it, and she wiped away some tears, too.
She stood up. She had to keep going.
The light was so flat and gray, she couldn’t even guess at the time. When had she started? How long had she been walking?
But … She blinked through the snowstorm. She stood on a flat spot, a long flat spot that wound around the curve of the mountain. And the hole she stood in wasn’t a hole, but a rut, matched by another rut about six feet out …
She stood on a road! She had stumbled across a road! And someone had driven this road recently! He, or she, had to have come from somewhere, had to be going somewhere. Which way was civilization? Which way should she turn?
She saw no reason to change course. She turned into the wind and walked. Whatever vehicle had come through here was big; the tire tracks were wide, and even with snow filling them up, walking was easier in the ruts.
She had to survive this. She didn’t want to die an irony, the woman who had lived through solitary months in the Sawtooths and died on a one-day excursion in the Washington mountains, the dupe of two adult men playing a deadly game. When she got her hands on Kennedy McManus, she was going to wring his neck, among other things. Because she did not appreciate …
Wait.
What was that? In the road ahead of her. What was that?
A tent. A tiny, one-man, fluorescent orange tent set up right on the road.
She rushed toward it … Okay, she plowed through the snow as rapidly as she could.
There were footprints around it, a man’s footprints by the size of them. She batted the snow off the sloped sides, brushed the snow off her snowsuit, unzipped the door and crawled in. Inside there was a thermos, a small insulated bag, a devise of some kind … and a note.
A note. Like the one Jimmy had left her. For the first time, she realized this could be a trap. She snatched up the note; the font was Helvetica, plain and unadorned. She glanced at the signature, and clutched the paper to her chest.
It was Kennedy’s signature.
Signatures could be forged.
Then she read:
Summer, if you’re reading this, you found the tent with the GPS. Activate it immediately and we will come to get you.
It was Kennedy, all right. Compared to Jimmy’s flowery style, there could be no doubt.
She snatched up the GPS, followed the instructions, and activated it. And poured herself a cup of hot coffee.
If Kennedy got back here soon enough, she might live through this day.
Then she only had to worry about tomorrow.
In the distance, Summer heard the dull sound of a motor.
No, it was the wind in the trees.
She heard it again, louder this time.
An avalanche? Oh, that would be humorous in a good-bye-cruel-world way.
At last, she was sure. That sound was a motor. She fastened her hood and crawled out of the tent.
A silver Hummer rounded the corner toward her.
She waved her arms and jumped up and down. She hoped it was Kennedy inside. She prayed it wasn’t Jimmy. But honestly, she didn’t care who it was. That Hummer had a heater in it.
The vehicle slowed down.
A man jumped out even before it stopped.
Black hair. Vibrant blue eyes surrounded by freakishly long black lashes. Long stride. Square jaw. Yep. That was Kennedy.
The driver got out, too. She recognized the short, wide man in an orange gimme cap as John Rudda. Nice guy. He lived outside of town, had lost his wife in that serial killer thing a couple of years ago, and more to the point, he was a long-haul trucker. She guessed that was why he was driving—snow and a Californian like Kennedy did not mix.
John headed toward the tent.
Kennedy headed toward her.
Both men stopped short when she started peeling off her clothes and discarding them. “It’s a long story,” she said. “Did you bring anything for me to change into?”
Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. She could almost see his clever brain chugging away, putting the facts together. Then he turned back to the vehicle and opened the back door for her. “Dry clothes inside.”
John muttered something about city folks, and continued toward the tent.
As she brushed past Kennedy, he grabbed her. In one quick, tight motion, he hugged her.
She suffered the embrace—she was glad to be rescued, and pissed that she had to be rescued—then she climbed in the Hummer. The lovely, clean, luxurious, warm Hummer.
Oh, God, it was so warm. Essential, since she was going to get naked. “In or out,” she said. “Just shut the door.”
Kennedy climbed in after her and went to work pulling her new clothes and a blanket out of the backpack where he had stashed them.
He did not try to hug her again.
“We’ll dump the clothes out here,” he said.
John opened the tailgate in time to hear. “Can’t do that,” he said in a disapproving voice. “This is Washington. We don’t litter in our mountains.” He flung in the tent and shut the tailgate.
Kennedy waited until John got in. “According to the rules of the game, we only had until dark to find her or she would die. Therefore Summer is afraid there is an incendiary device in her clothes, set to go off when the sun sets.”
“Wait. You mean you think this guy who is playing this game with you put a bomb in her knickers?” John started the Hummer.
In unison, Kennedy and Summer said, “Yes.”
John looked at the clock—it was three thirty. Sunset was coming on fast. “As soon as you can, hand that stuff up, and I’ll toss it out. When we get the first good spell of weather in the spring, I’ll come back and see if I can find the clothes. I wouldn’t bet on it. But I’ll try.”
“I’ll pay you,” Kennedy said.
“Fair enough,” John agreed.
Kennedy held the blanket to block her from John’s view as she stripped down to nothing, then he tossed the clothes into the front seat.
John slowed, opened his door, and threw them into a snowdrift.
Summer shivered in the frigid breeze, grabbed the panties from Kennedy’s outstretched hand, and shimmied into them.
A quick glance up showed Kennedy’s gaze fixed on her breasts.
In exasperation, she asked, “Really? Would you have even bothered to rescue me without a shot at my boobs?”
His gaze jerked up to her face. “I didn’t know I was going to get a shot at your boobs.”
From the front seat, John said, “I helped rescue you. I could handle a shot of your boobs.”
She bobbed her head up over the edge of the blanket. “Not this time, John.”
When she seated herself again, she glanced at the frowning Kennedy. She wanted to tell him to get a sense of humor, but he touched her chin with one finger and turned her head away from him. “What?” She touched her hair, her ear, her neck, her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
He let her go, and when she looked again, he looked positively grim. “Later.”
John gradually accelerated to about twenty miles an hour. The Hummer held the road without slipping. The guy really could drive.
But within a few minutes, he slowed, stopped, got out, and slammed the door.
She grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around herself, slid down on the hump in the middle of the floor and huddled in front of the heat vent. “What are we doing?” she asked.
Kennedy pulled off his ski pants and parka, leaving him clad in a long-sleeved plaid wool shirt and jeans. He looked good in them. Natural. Like the guy on the Brawny paper towel package. “Because we didn’t know where you would descend the mountain, we brought multiple tents and GPS trackers, and placed them every mile along the road. They have to be picked up.”
Summer hadn’t even considered the machinations they’d gone through. “How did you even know where to start?”
“We’re playing the game.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“All right, I will.” Kennedy was serious. “I first made the assumption that we would play the game here, in Washington. I also made the assumption that James wouldn’t want the game to end too quickly, and would place you somewhere I could retrieve you. In the game, the highest peak plays a part as one of the first challenges. In Washington, the tallest mountain in the Olympic Mountains is Mount Olympus. But in the game, that wasn’t the name of the challenge peak. So I researched other peaks. I found that the west peak of Mount Anderson is the hydrographic apex of the Olympic Mountains.”
“Of course. I knew that. I was saying that only yesterday.” She watched him digest that, decide she was kidding, and smile mechanically. She
thought
he had a sense of humor, yet he also had that intense focus on the subject at hand. Right now, she should be glad of that focus. It had saved her bacon.
He continued, “From West Peak, rivers flow outward to the Pacific Ocean, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Hood Canal. That mountain also has the wrong name, but it has the right characteristics. So I chose West Peak. I was right.”
“You gambled,” she said.
“I chose wisely,” he answered.
John opened the tailgate and shuffled stuff around.
“How many setups are there?” she asked.
Kennedy fished his tablet out of his jacket and consulted it. “We left this morning before dawn, and we’ve placed fourteen.”
Summer’s vision of a quick rescue faded. “How long until we get back to town?”
John climbed back in the front. “In this weather, with the number of setups we have to grab on the way back, we’re going to be driving all night.”
Kennedy said, “But we’re not going to Virtue Falls. We’re going to the Hartmans’—you and I have things we must discuss.”
“We can discuss everything right here,” she said.
Kennedy flicked a glance at the back of John’s head.
John looked as if he was leaning back for a better eavesdrop.
She asked, “John, you got headphones in this thing?”
“Sure do.” He reached forward, grabbed them, and held them up. “You want me to put them on?”
“That would give us some much-needed privacy,” she said.
He put them on and said loudly, “I’ll crank it up!”
She nodded at Kennedy. “There. I’m not waiting all night to hear why I’m sitting naked in a Hummer after being drugged and kidnapped and almost killed. So explain this to me. And this!” She waved at herself, then out at the snowy mountainside. “What am I doing out here? How did I get stuck in the middle between you and Michael? Jimmy? Whatever his name is.
Who is he?
”
“He is James Brachler, an underclassman I knew at MIT. At the time, a friend.” Kennedy handed Summer a bra.
She let the blanket drop, slid her hands through the straps and pulled the elastic around. “How did you figure that out?”
“As soon as I realized we were playing the game, I knew.” Kennedy reached around her and fastened the hook.
“I can dress myself.”
“I need to touch you.”
She did not care what he needed. She snatched a long-sleeve navy blue T-shirt and pulled it over her head. “I gathered it was a game.”
“No.
The
game.
Empire of Fire
.” Kennedy held her long underwear in front of his heat vent to warm them. “As soon as I looked him up on the Internet, I had a positive ID, for Jimmy Brachler did not exist. He was a man I knew personally, and all record of him had vanished from the face of the earth. So I called my sister and had her find his yearbook photo, and when I received the scan, I ran it through the software. The match was positive.”