WAY OF THE SHADOWS (18 page)
He hadn’t checked in with Alexander Quinn in almost eight months. He couldn’t trust that Adam Brand, the FBI agent who’d recognized him, would keep quiet. There were limits to even Quinn’s influence, and enemies more powerful and ruthless than the government who’d once listed him as one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives.
But Sinclair hadn’t left the mountains, either. He supposed, in a way, they were as close to a place to call home as he’d found in years of running from his past. He’d always lived in hilly places, from the rolling streets of San Francisco to the volcanic peaks of Sanselmo, the home of his heart. Even on the tiny Caribbean island of Mariposa, where he’d spent a couple of years before the call from Quinn, he’d gravitated to the mountain that filled the center of the island.
The Smoky Mountains were an alpine rainforest rather than a tropical one. But they’d felt like a place of refuge ever since he’d arrived.
Until now.
* * *
T
HOUGH
SHE
’
D
GROWN
UP
in the mountains, it had been a while since Ava had spent much time in the middle of unfettered nature. She’d been living in cities for several years now, where hiking meant leaving the Ford Focus at home instead of driving it downhill to the grocery store when she had a few things to pick up.
But she’d stayed fit, thanks to the demands of her job, and she found some of her old childhood skills coming back to her as she picked her way through the thickening forest.
The land sloped gently upward, making her calves burn as she hiked, but she shrugged the twinges away, concentrating instead on trying to follow the trail through the gloom. Rain had started to fall by the time she reached a fork in the forest trail, turning her hair to damp, frizzled curls beneath the hood of her jacket.
She should have been shocked that Landry hadn’t asked more questions about why she was heading into the woods, but based on her hours in his unadulterated presence, she wasn’t surprised at all. He was phoning it in these days, for whatever reason. She doubted he’d last at the agency much longer with that attitude. But she didn’t have the time or the inclination to dig deeper into what drove him to such epic levels of ennui.
She had an abduction to solve, and based on what she’d learned from her supervisory agent just a few minutes earlier, chasing a ghost into the woods just might be the best use of her time.
“Don’t know if it means anything,” SAC Chang had told her when he’d called, “but her name pinged in our records because of her familial connection to a terrorist.”
At that point, she’d known who the terrorist would be. Hadn’t she?
She certainly hadn’t been surprised to hear him add, “Her maiden name is Solano.”
Sinclair Solano’s sister had gone missing the same day Ava had looked up into the crowd at the crime scene and seen the ghost of her brother. And since she didn’t believe in ghosts, there was only one explanation.
Sinclair Solano was alive after all.
“Come on, Sin,” she muttered, blinking away a film of rain blurring her vision even as it darkened the day. “Where the hell did you go?”
The man she’d met years earlier, before his descent into murder and mayhem, had been a real charmer. Handsome, beautifully tanned, in love with beauty and music and passionate about the world of people around him, he’d been as exotic to her as a Mariposan native, even though he was an American, born and raised in San Francisco. His parents were college professors, he’d told her. His sister was a brainiac who’d skipped grades and was already on the verge of graduating from college at the age of twenty.
He’d liked her accent, argued passionately with some of her politics without making her feel evil or stupid and when he’d kissed her, she would have sworn she heard music.
How he’d gone from that man to the scourge of Sanselmo was a mystery that had nagged her for a long time, until word of his death had reached the news shortly after the terrorist bomb blast he’d set, one intended to take out the new president and his family, went terribly wrong for him and some of his comrades instead.
She was glad, she’d told herself. Poetic justice and all that.
But there was a part of her that had always felt cheated. That curious part of her, the one that had driven her into her current job, that wanted to know why.
Why had he blown her off that last day in Mariposa, knowing her flight would leave the next morning? Why had he grown so cold and distant after talking to his father on the phone?
Why had he left Mariposa for Sanselmo, armed himself on the side of brutal, ruthless rebels and channeled his passion for justice into a murderous assault on a nascent democratic republic?
After word of his death, she’d resigned herself to never knowing the answers to those nagging questions.
Now maybe she’d get a chance to ask them after all.
The rain fell harder around her, seeping under the collar of her jacket. Her trousers were soaked through and beginning to chafe. Worst of all, she had no damned idea where she was anymore. And if the ghost she was chasing had left any sort of trail from here forward, she saw no sign of it.
Trudging to a stop, she just stood still a moment, listening to the woods, taking in the ambient sounds—the susurration of rainfall, the distant hum of engines from the highway north of her position, the slightly ragged whoosh of her own breathing.
Another sound seeped into her consciousness. Footsteps. Careful. Furtive.
Turning a slow circle, she let her gaze go unfocused. Let the wall of green become a blur against which movement might become more evident. She slowed her breathing deliberately, remembering lessons from the shooting classes she’d taken in pursuit of her career, determined to be the best at any task she took on. Her own weapon, a Glock G30S, sat heavily in the small of her back. She reached behind her slowly and eased it from the holster.
She wasn’t dressed for stealth on purpose, but her brown jacket, olive-green blouse and dark trousers didn’t make her an easy target. She had ordinary brown hair, not a bright shock of red curls that might draw attention her way. Plain olive-toned skin, unlikely to stand out in the gloom. She was in many ways a nondescript woman, which had served her well on the job.
But right now, she felt utterly exposed as the crackle of underbrush filtered through the patter of rainfall.
Someone was watching her. She felt it.
Edging back in the direction she came, she tried not to panic. Coming out here alone had been reckless, especially when she probably could have convinced Landry to come along with her if she’d made the effort.
She hadn’t wanted to tell him what she’d seen. That was the truth of the matter. She hadn’t wanted to see his skepticism or, worse, his ridicule. Didn’t want to hear that she was imagining things.
She knew what she’d seen. She’d looked at Sinclair’s photograph for years, even after his death, wondering how the sweet-natured, passionate man she’d met in the Caribbean could have become a terrorist.
The wind picked up, swirling leaves from the trees to slap her rain-stung cheeks. Blinking away a film of moisture, she quickened her steps.
A dark mass rose out of the gloom to her right, slamming into her with a jarring blow before she could react. She staggered against the impact, trying to keep her feet, but shoes slipped on the rain-slick leaves carpeting the forest floor and she hit the ground. Her pistol went flying in the underbrush, out of reach. Breath whooshed from her lungs, and her vision darkened to a narrow tunnel of blurry light.
Rough hands grabbed at her as she gasped for air. Twisting, she tried to see her captor, certain she would see Sinclair Solano’s face staring back at her. But the dark-eyed man who held her in his painful grasp was someone she’d never seen before.
He shoved his pistol into the soft flesh beneath her chin, the front sight digging painfully into her skin.
“¡Silencio!”
Her pulse rattling in her throat, she had no choice but to comply.
Copyright © 2014 by Paula Graves
ISBN-13: 9781460339077
Way of the Shadows
Copyright © 2014 by Cindy Roussos
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.