Acceptable Risks (24 page)

Gabby had to open and close her eyes in stages, they burned so badly, and sunlight and grit made it worse. The latter coated her glasses when it wasn’t infiltrating her eyelashes, and the former refracted weirdly off the dust. The virus that had taken hold of her would have been merely annoying on a normal day, but now it turned every little discomfort into a major obstacle.

They’d been walking for hours. Twice they heard a car and slipped into the woods, but one had been an old farming truck driven by a grizzled gray-haired lady, and one a motorcycle with a guy in a wife-beater and no helmet. There was no sign of Isaac, which struck her as odd. Matthew refused to comment on it.

He refused to comment on much of anything, actually. At first she assumed he was planning, but after a while she realized there wasn’t anything
to
plan, not when the only things around them were trees and hot sun and cracked asphalt. Then she decided he was conserving his strength and she should, too. Which meant neither one of them had talked in an immeasurable amount of time.

They reached the boulder that was her next landmark, and she noticed, in the ten seconds she had her eyes open, that it had a nice curve in the top that would be a good place to rest. She considered asking if they could stop, but worried that if they did, she’d never get going again. Plus, her throat had stuck to itself, and she didn’t think she could talk.

Matthew suddenly put his hand on her elbow. “Hold on.”

Gabby stopped moving and squinted at him. He had a listening posture, so she listened, too. She couldn’t hear anything different from the last however-many miles. She would have asked what he’d heard, but he couldn’t hear it if she was talking. And then there was that throat thing.

She wondered if she was starting to become delirious.

“Wait here.” Matthew led her to the boulder and lowered her into the little seat, making her smile. “I’ll just be a few minutes. If a car comes—”

She nodded and waved at the ditch behind the boulder. She could just roll down into it and no one would see her. Matthew hesitated, then disappeared between two trees. Gabby closed her eyes and tried not to sway hard enough to topple over. Maybe Matthew hadn’t heard anything. Maybe he just had to go to the bathroom. She didn’t. After relieving herself this morning, she hadn’t had to go again. With the harsh sun, she’d been sweating like crazy. Of course, they were both dehydrated.

There was no noise to warn her of his return. No leaf rustling or shoe scraping on pavement, no breathing noises or saying her name. Matthew just appeared at her side, took her hand, and led her into the blessed coolness of the woods. She was able to keep her eyes open then, which was good because finding her footing was a challenge.

He must think I’m such a putz
. She tripped three times and wanted to cry, except she didn’t have the tears. He held her up, gently guiding her around a fallen log and some random animal droppings.

Then she heard it.
Oh, my God
. The words didn’t come, her mouth moving silently, but the cheerful splash and gurgle of water over stones filled her with new energy. Her feet lifted higher, her steps became faster, and a few moments later, they were on the banks of a clear, tiny brook. Gabby fell to her knees and dropped her hands down into it, plunging up to her elbows in the icy stream. Her whole body sighed. She cupped her hands and brought them to her mouth, making rude sucking sounds as she drank, but ohhhh, it tasted amazing, cold and soothing on her throat. She thrust her hands back into the water.

“Go slow,” Matthew cautioned, but she didn’t need the reminder. She was a doctor, a fact she might have forgotten in her misery but that revived along with the rest of her. She drank slowly but deeply, letting her body adjust between handfuls. She splashed it on her face, shoved wet hands through her hair, then pulled off her shoes and stuck her feet into the brook. She sighed and dropped her head back.

“Thank you.”

He shook his head and picked up one of her shoes, a dress flat chosen for the thick, padded insole and rubber bottom. The edges of the leather were scuffed and dusty, but they were holding up.

“How are your feet?” Matthew asked, frowning at the shoe.

“Fine.” Her voice still croaked. She bent and drank another scoopful of water. “Those are good shoes.”

“They are not. And I didn’t even notice.”

“What could you do? You’re not carrying walking shoes in a variety of sizes in your back pocket.” She sounded smoother, clearer, the more she talked, but there was still a husky quality to her voice she actually liked. In other circumstances it would be seductive. Circumstances where she wasn’t a complete mess. “They’re better than pumps, anyway.”

“True.”

“How about we stay here for a while?” she asked, trying not to sound desperate.

“A short rest.”

She couldn’t take his tension any longer. The short answers, the lack of eye contact…if there was something worth worrying about, she wanted to know. “What’s wrong with you? What’s going through your head? We’re free. We’re out of that cabin, and they aren’t—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Okay.” She believed in jinxes, though it surprised her that he did, too. “But what?”

She didn’t think he was going to explain. He set her shoe down and examined the other, then swung her legs around to look at her feet.

“I don’t have any blisters.”

“That’s good.” He smoothed the water away from her instep. “I have a feeling we’re in hunting country, which might mean we won’t reach civilization for days.”

“Come on, this is Virginia, not Montana.” His fingers were making her feet tingle. She pulled them away and put her shoes back on before her feet started to swell. “Even hunters need beer. We’ll come across something.”

“What if we don’t?”

“Matthew.” She dropped her foot and leaned to put her hand on his face. “We’ll be fine. We’ll find a phone or a person driving—we can flag down the next old farm lady we see.”

“No one has driven by in hours.”

“Then we won’t flag someone down. But the road has to go somewhere.”

The muscle of his jaw flickered, and his eyes looked hard. “You’re sick.”

Ah, now she understood. His silence, his abruptness, stemmed from guilt. He was worried about her and couldn’t immediately fix everything. If nothing else, Matthew Madrassa was a fixer.

“I’ve just got a virus.” She grabbed his chin and shook it in frustration. “Matthew, I’m a
doctor
. I know my symptoms. I’m not dying, for cripes sake.”

He didn’t look convinced, and that more than anything gave her the energy to stand up. “Let’s go. We won’t find a phone sitting here in the woods.” She didn’t wait, but led him back to the road, pleased when they emerged two feet from her boulder. The sun was high now, and her stomach rumbled. She decided to take it as a good sign and set out down the road again.

“It can’t be too much further to a store or something, or even a house. That woman in the truck came from this way. And the kid on the motorcycle wasn’t an off-roader. So I’m sure it’s just a matter of a mile or two.”

Matthew didn’t say anything. She stopped chattering, annoyed with herself and exasperated with him. She felt lighter, though, more hopeful, and as they approached a curve in the road, she was certain this was it, what they were looking for.

But she’d only been partly right. Around the bend was a reason to stop walking, but it wasn’t what she’d been expecting.

It was the end of the road.

Chapter Twenty-One

Once Ella decided to cooperate, things moved fast. She used her laptop and professional access to search property records, looking for some place Isaac owned that could hold Matthew and Gabby.

“I thought everything was localized.” Lark watched over Ella’s shoulder as she worked, but no screen stayed up long enough for her to catch anything.

“It mostly is, but there are larger databases. Realtors sometimes contact property owners who haven’t put their properties on the market but might still be interested in selling. Since we do relocation services, help people transition to other parts of the country, this makes it easier.”

“Where does the data come from?”

“Official public records. The owner of the database incorporates the data and charges a subscription fee to those of us who want to use it. Now go away and let me finish this.”

Lark joined Jason on the tiny balcony, leaving the door open to watch Ella. He had his laptop propped on the balcony wall and was typing as furiously as Ella was. Lark shoved her hands into her back pockets and tried not to feel superfluous.

“What did you find?” she asked in a low voice.

Jason gave her a cursory glance. “A syringe in her purse. Prefilled, used. No evidence of medication she would need it for, or even illegal drugs.”

“Probably what she used on Dad, then.” Lark pulled her hands out of her pockets and folded her arms, trying not to think of her father helpless. “What else?”

He held up a cell phone he’d connected to the laptop. “She called Kemmerling, among other people, but I can’t get a fix on all the numbers. Some are in Florida, so probably not related. But there were two calls to land lines in DC. No listings.”

“And since they’re land lines you can’t GPS ‘em.”

“Right.”

“Dammit.” She dropped her arms and made a move to pace, but stopped short and eyed the narrow ledge. If she moved, she might knock Jason’s laptop to the ground. That would be bad. “What are we going to do with her? We can’t just let her go.”

“But we can’t involve the police yet, either.” Jason straightened. “We’ll put her under surveillance. I have a team set up. They’ll be outside before we leave.”

“Who? How can we trust them?” Isaac had gotten to too many people already. They had no idea who else was compromised.

Jason closed the laptop. “I don’t know if we can, but they’re the people I’ve worked with the longest, the ones who’ve had my back dozens of times. For what it’s worth, I’d never have picked Nils, even without the ties to Kemmerling.”

That would have to be good enough. There was still the possibility Ella would lead them to her father, if nothing panned out here. Lark folded her arms tightly around her body and huddled in the corner of the balcony. It didn’t keep her from feeling she was about to fly apart at any second.

“I got something!” Ella called from inside. Lark hurried in, Jason close behind her. Ella scribbled something on a piece of paper.

“Is this it?”

She handed the paper to Jason. “I think so. I can’t know if Matthew’s there, of course, but—” She stopped when she caught Lark’s glare. “Okay, okay. I found nothing under Isaac’s name but his apartment in DC and the lease for the security offices. But you’re lucky I know Seamus. I know something about their families.”

“I didn’t think Isaac had any other family.”

Ella looked down her nose at them, even from where she sat at the little table. “Perhaps I know my business partner better than you know your enemy.”

“Fine. Just tell us!” Lark couldn’t stand the delay any more. She snatched the paper from Jason’s hand. “How do you know this is what we’re looking for?”

“Seamus told me his father and Isaac’s used to go hunting together all the time. They owned some land with a hunting cabin on it, a good-sized one. Seamus went with them a few times as a teenager, and said how remote it was. But there was a fire at a nearby house that killed some friends of theirs, and neither brother wanted to go up anymore. So they sold the land. Isaac was furious. He thought they should have kept it for him and Seamus, though Seamus didn’t care. The older men, Thomas and Aaron, both died of heart attacks in their early fifties.” She nodded at the paper. “That property was sold to a corporation three years ago. The name of the corporation is ISTA. I for Isaac, S for Seamus, T for Thomas, and A for Aaron.”

“Pretty tenuous,” Jason observed.

Ella gave an elegant shrug. “It’s the best I can do. I can keep looking while you go check it out.”

“Why don’t you go down and plug it into the navigation system,” Jason told Lark. “It should accept the coordinates. I’ll have Ella print off a map and be down in a minute.” He waited until Lark had left the room and gave her time to get to the elevator. Ella watched him the whole time.

“I don’t have a printer,” she said.

“I know.” He didn’t need a map. He just didn’t want Lark to have to hear painful truths, and maybe Ella would admit them more easily without her niece in the room. “Is the will the reason you hooked up with Isaac to do this?”

Any pleasantness in Ella’s expression disappeared, replaced by the ruthlessness and lack of sentimentality that had driven her success. Jason knew she’d answer him. She had no more loyalty to Kemmerling than she had to Matt. She’d always pick her own best interests over anything else, and talking to him now meant he’d leave her alone.

“I didn’t ‘hook up’ with Isaac. He came to me.”

“With what?”

“He found out about my connection to Matthew and suspected our relationship wasn’t a positive one. He told me his plan and I wasn’t unhappy at the idea that Matthew would suffer.” She stood, her eyes glittering, and pointed a sharp nail at his chest. “My brother-in-law treated me like crap the entire time he was married to my sister. He poisoned her against me and made sure I got nothing.”

“If Lark’s right, and he never touched that money, it’s still there. Why didn’t you just approach him and ask for it when your company was in trouble?”

Her face turned dark red. “We are not in trouble.”

“Sure. I bet you didn’t want him to know, because your success is all you’ve ever cared about, right? You wouldn’t want him to think he was right about you.”

“What do you know about it?” she spat.

“Nothing. But it doesn’t take much to understand someone like you.”

She snarled, and any beauty or dignity she possessed was gone. “You’re just like him. A chauvinistic, self-righteous bastard. I hope Isaac manages to take you both down. In fact, he can kill you for all I care.” She reared back and slammed the heels of her hands toward his chest. On a spike of adrenaline, he caught her wrists before she connected with his sternum, but felt a twinge at the movement. Mental, or real?

Two breaths, and the adrenaline ebbed. Everything was fine.

“What are Isaac’s plans, Ella?”

She struggled, but he easily held her away from him, blocking her knee when she tried to get him in the only place she thought he was vulnerable. Eventually, she yelled in frustration and went limp in his grip.

“I hope he gets you both arrested for treason,” she panted. “And that’s all I’ll say.”

Jason knew he’d get no more out of her and let her go. She lunged at him again. He turned his back, a less vulnerable part of his body. She screamed in rage, but he left the room and headed for the elevator.

It always came down to the same things. Greed and revenge. More than half the threats he’d faced while working for Hummingbird had stemmed from one or the other. This situation was more complex than most, but at its core, it was no different—people failing to take responsibility for whatever results they obtained, blaming others and covering their own inadequacies by seeking to punish, to gain something they had no right to.

He paused in the lobby, amused for a moment at his philosophizing. He sobered when he saw Lark standing next to the Range Rover. Her dark hair blew back in the breeze, and the angle of the sun made her complexion glow. She was beautiful. But at the same time agitated, rocking back and forth next to the passenger door, alternately staring at the hotel’s main door and out onto the street.

He hurried over, realizing his keys were in his pocket and she hadn’t been able to get into the truck. “I’m sorry, Lark, I didn’t think—”

She whirled on him. “Do you know who just drove by?”

“Nnoooo.” He hit the button to check the surveillance system, and when it flashed green unlocked the doors. “Who?”

“Nils.”

He froze half in, half out of the car. “What?”

“I know!” She yanked open the door and jumped in, immediately leaning toward the navigation system, which wasn’t on because Jason hadn’t started the truck yet. He slid into his seat and shoved the key into the ignition.

“You’re sure it was him?”

“Of course I’m sure. I held him at pitchfork-point.” She hit keys on the GPS, then checked the slip of paper. “How did he get out of the stall?”

Jason waited for the system to prep the route. “He’s not completely stupid. He probably found a way to reach the bolt, maybe got his hands on a stick or pulled a bar out of rotted wood. The farm is just up the road from town. He didn’t have far to hike.”

“And what was he doing here? He didn’t pull in, so he wasn’t coming for Ella.” She shook her head and answered before Jason could. “Never mind—it’s a main road, blah blah blah. Coincidences do happen, even if no one believes in them.”

“Well said.” Jason watched her jab at his GPS unit and considered taking over. She probably wouldn’t respond well. He reined in his impatience.

“So now Isaac is going to know what we’re doing.” She hit a wrong button and the unit beeped at her. She made a move to hit the thing, stopped herself, and slammed her hand on the dash instead, letting out a string of curses. Jason let her vent, then gathered her against his chest and held her. He expected her to fall into tears, apologize, and be okay. But even though she let him hold her, even though she wrapped her fingers so tightly around his arm he started to get hard, she didn’t lose it. Didn’t let go. He didn’t know if he should admire her control or worry about how much pain she was harboring.

After less than a minute, she pulled away, took a deep breath, and finished keying the info into the system. It flashed and beeped, then told him to go north on the road in front of them.

“We can’t worry about Nils now,” Jason said. “Let’s just work on finding Matt and Gabby. This is the closest we’ve been since he disappeared.”

“I know.” She pulled her seatbelt on and sat back hard against the seat. “You’re right. Let’s get moving.”

Jason hoped he was right, that it was a legitimate lead, and that Ella wasn’t sending them on a wild goose chase, or worse.

And he hoped the thought didn’t occur to Lark, either.

* * *

The road didn’t peter out, or narrow in underbrush and forest. It just ended, with piles of dirt forming an uneven semicircle around the sharp line of the macadam. Behind the dirt, construction debris lay tumbled among fallen trees and broken brush, and beyond that, thicker forest than what had bordered the road so far.

Gabby had had enough. She was tired of the obstacles, the heat, the pointlessness of everything that had happened the last two days. Adrenaline rushed through her, and she marched up one of the dirt hills. Matthew called her name, but she ignored him. She needed height. Needed to see what was ahead, what was behind, and what they’d missed.

The hill wasn’t high enough. It just gave her a better view of the crap on the ground surrounding them. She marched down the other side just as Matthew reached her.

“Gabby, stop.” He tried to get in front of her, to catch her arms, but she shrugged him off and kept going. “What are you doing?”