Dancing on the Wind (52 page)

“Ask Agent Fallon.”

Fallon had to compel himself to limp even closer and lean over the casket. He didn’t

have his cane and his leg was screaming in protest, but he drew his hands out of his

pockets and reached out to tilt the corpse’s face to one side. Rigor mortis and the

embalming fluid made it difficult to do, but he forced the head toward the back of the

casket and—fingers shaking—pushed aside the long brown hair that covered the dead

woman’s ears.

For one unnerving moment he thought he’d been wrong. He couldn’t bear to look

at the face. He willed his eyes not to wander. It took the pads of his fingers to find the

evidence he’d been seeking and as soon as he touched the fine line of slightly puckered

flesh, his shoulders slumped with relief.

“Sutures,” he said, and moved back. “They will be all around the perimeter of her

face, hidden by her hair, and skillfully concealed under her jawline and chin.”

The Supervisor came to stand where Fallon had been and bent over to inspect the

same line of sutures. His forehead was creased as he ran his fingers along the pathway

of delicate sutures.

“Merciful Alel,” he said. He looked over at Fallon. “Who is this woman and how

the hell did we not notice the bruising and swelling?”

“We didn’t see it because we were seeing what they wanted us to see—the

mutilation caused by the bullet.” He shifted his position to ease the discomfort in his

leg. “If we had noticed, I’m sure Dr. P. would have explained the discoloration and the

swelling as part of the wound.”

“The mortician would have assumed the vic had recently had a face-lift,” one of the

forensic men spoke up, “and in a way she did.” He was staring into the coffin.

“Get DNA and fingerprint samples,” the Supervisor said. “Maybe we can at least

identify her and give her a burial with her name.”

“She came onto the Island with the attack team,” Fallon suggested. “She isn’t one of

ours. I doubt she knew what they had in store for her.”

“But why rape her?” the forensics man asked. “This woman was gangbanged prior

to death.”

“That was for Fallon’s benefit,” the Supervisor said. He glanced at his operative.

“Just one more thing to heap hurt on him.”

Fallon nodded. He was in agony, but this time it was purely physical. He knew—he

knew
—Keenan was alive but in no danger he could detect. Now all he had to do was

find and rescue her from the insane clutches of her deranged mother and Matty Groves.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“From all accounts, it was a very lovely ceremony, Kiki. The Exchange did an

excellent job in saying goodbye.”

If Keenan could have gotten to him, she would have broken Matty Groves’ neck

then and there. As it was, she glared up at him as he leaned on the teakwood railing

two floors up and looked down at her. He’d dropped the newspaper down to her.

No one knew where she was, and if Fallon and the Supervisor bought into the obit

she’d just finished reading, they had no idea she was still alive. Fallon must be in hell at

that very moment.

Wadding the newspaper page into a tight ball, she pitched it savagely across the

room.

“Go fuck yourself, Groves!” she shouted.

Furious, she spun on her heel and stomped off with a hiss of rage. With every step

she took, she cursed Matty Groves, Mizhak Roland and her mother to the deepest,

slimiest pits beneath Hell.

“I wanted you. I betrayed my best friend just so I could have you,” Matty had told

her. “I called your mother months ago and set into motion this whole scenario. She

knew about the faith healing thing, where you were going to be, what we needed to do

to get Fallon out of your life. She arranged the lab for me here. We left nothing to

chance. Accept it, Keenan. You’re mine now, and you’ll never see him again.”

“Fallon nearly died because of you!” she’d flung at him.

“No,” Matty said, shaking his head. “I had no part in that. If I had known they were

planning on killing him, I would have stopped them.”

“Calm down, Keenan,” she warned herself, feeling her blood pressure soaring sky-

high.

Never allowed beyond the confines of the luxurious plantation home where guards

were positioned at every exit and the windows were protected by lacy iron grillwork,

and the phones and all other communication devices kept under lock and key, she was

nothing more than a glorified captive.

“I hate you!” she said to her mother’s portrait as she passed by it with an urge to

take a fire poker and smash to ribbons the lovely, smiling image. “I hate all of you!”

She snagged her fingers under the thin iron choker that had been welded around

her neck, she cursed again. With no way to transmit her thoughts to Coim, the

Supervisor or—the thought of him literally made her ache—Fallon, she was stymied at

every turn.

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Dancing on the Wind

Stomping up the steps to her second-floor suite, she went into the room and

slammed the door as hard as she could. From above her on the third floor, she heard

Matty laughing and dug her fingernails into her palms.

“Yeah, Groves, keep right on laughing,” she said. “You’ll be laughing when I stick a

blade through your lying ribs!”

Flinging herself facedown on the plush white satin coverlet, she beat her fists

uselessly against the smooth surface—kicking her legs like the spoiled brat her mother

accused her of being. The frustration was almost more than she could mentally bear and

she flipped over to her back, flinging an arm over her eyes.

“Fallon, you have to find me. You have to, lineman! I don’t know how much more

of this I can take.”

She’d cried every day since she’d woken to this genteel incarceration. When she’d

discovered there had been no survivors on the Island, she had gone into a rage, trying

her best to maul Royce Cookson—the man responsible for the deaths—but he and two

of his men had easily subdued her. The same narcotic they’d pumped into her on the

Island when they’d caught her had been administered again.

Thinking back to the two men who had come walking toward her as she left the

pier, she realized she should have known from the expressions on their faces that they

were up to no good. There had been steely determination glowing back at her and tight

lips that normally would have sent up a red flag. If she hadn’t been agonizing over

Fallon, hurt by what he’d said, devastated over his leaving, she would have noticed the

resolve in the men’s behavior and taken off running. As it was, she’d walked right into

their hands, passing by them only a split second before she felt something sharp

puncture her neck as one of the men pivoted around. She’d barely had time to put a

hand to the wound before her world began to shut down.

Thankfully, she had not been a witness to the deaths of the people on the Island. At

least she did not have that to invade her nightmares each night. Imagination was bad

enough and the grief was nearly overwhelming since she knew it was because of her

that so many good, innocent people had died.

And what of the woman who was buried in Iowa? Who was she? How had she

come to take Keenan’s place? That Matty had altered the woman’s appearance, Keenan

had absolutely no doubt. And it had to have been done in a way that would make

Fallon believe her dead. He wouldn’t even be looking for her, Matty had said. Fallon

had bought the entire thing.

The pieces of the puzzle fell into place so easily it made her want to puke.

“Fallon, please! Please come find me!” she pleaded, tugging uselessly at the collar

that very effectively blocked any transmission she ever hoped to send to the man she

loved.

If it was the last thing she did, she would make the four people who had brought

this sorry state of events into play pay dearly for what they had wrought.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Matty went out to the deck and stood staring at the beautiful tropical day.

“Sure beats the hell out of Iowa,” he said aloud, but oddly enough, he missed the

rolling hillsides of the Midwestern state, the country life.

Leaning his elbows on the railing, he looked down at the sand and realized he even

missed the black soil where corn and soybeans and hay grew in abundance.

“You gave up a lot for her, Matthew,” he said softly. “More than you realized.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, missing more than the rolling hills or the fertile soil or

the red-tail hawks soaring through the ever-present wind. Misha had been his friend—

his only friend. His conscience hurt like a sore tooth at which he kept poking his

tongue. Thoughts of Fallon kept him awake at night.

Then there was Keenan, the woman for whom he’d sold his very soul now hated

the very sight of him.

“She’ll come around,” Phyllis Papadopoulos—who was there working as his

assistant—had said but Matty knew that would never happen.

The money to do the research he’d secretly planned and knew the Exchange would

never sanction, the opportunities that could open up for him, the possibility of a Nobel

prize—none of that mattered. Without the woman he loved so desperately applauding

his triumphs, the friend he respected encouraging him, any successes he might achieve

would turn to ashes in his mouth.

And there were the deaths on the Island that plagued him every waking hour.

Though he’d had no hand in those deaths, they weighed heavily on his soul.

Guilt was eating away at Matty Groves.

* * * * *

“All right, we know St. Brisa is actually Santa Brigitte and we know where it is,” the

Supervisor said. “Just how the hell do you think we will be able to infiltrate it? By all

accounts of your Brazilian counterparts, that island is invincible.”

“It isn’t invincible,” Fallon said. He was rubbing his right thigh rhythmically. “It

has mountains.”

“So what? You haven’t been cleared to return to work just yet and even when you

are, you can’t parachute into the mountains without her security picking up on your

whereabouts and shooting you down. Or did you conveniently forget they also have

artillery guns along with the cannons?” the Supervisor demanded. “The fucking

woman is paranoid with her security!”

“All I need is those mountains,” Fallon said with a merciless grin. “The mountains

and one big gray shuttle bus.”

“Shuttle bus?” the Supervisor questioned as though his operative had finally gone

round the bend. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“A big, hairy, gray shuttle bus,” Fallon amended.

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Dancing on the Wind

“
An Fear Liath Mor
,” the Supervisor said with a sharp intake of air.

“It…” Fallon shook his head. “
He
should be back any day now. I intend to already

be in the Ozarks waiting for him.”

“He can travel only among mountain regions,” the Supervisor said. “From one

range to another in the blink of an eye.” He slapped his forehead with the base of his

palm. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“And he can take me with him,” Fallon said. “Once I’m in the mountains on Santa

Brigitte. I can make my way down to the plantation house we were told about, find

Keenan, take her back up to Coim then have him get her the hell out of there while I go

back and take out Groves, Roland and the dragon queen.”

The Supervisor had already signed warrants for all three, had made it clear to

Fallon that those warrants could be executed with extreme prejudice.

“They are responsible for the deaths of my people. They will pay with their own

lives,” the Supervisor had declared.

“You may need a fourth warrant,” Fallon had suggested. “Someone planned that

attack. I’m ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent sure it wasn’t Roland or Groves.

Whoever it was, I want even more than I want Roland.”

“I’ll have one drawn up and leave the name blank for now. That can always be

filled in when we discover who he is.”

It was decided the Supervisor would go down to the Ozarks with Fallon, taking

along a team of his own men as well as a field medic should one be necessary. It was a

precaution Fallon hoped would not be needed but he saw the wisdom in it.

So it was that two days after a woman named Danika Marie Allen—a former

Marine MP turned soldier of fortune—was laid to rest beneath a stone that carried her

own name instead of Keenan McCullough’s, two unmarked black mini vans left the

Exchange installation and took I-80 west, bearing south toward the Ozark Mountains

just as the sun began to set on another rainy Iowa day.

* * * * *

An Fear Liath Mor
stretched his massive shaggy arms wide and drew in a huge chest

full of crisp, sweet, Scottish air. He had arrived on the slopes of Ben Macdhui in time to

scare away a group of climbers who had run away bellowing, leaving behind their

camping gear filled with tins and packages of food.

“Life is good,” the creature said with a hearty laugh as he squatted down to tear

open a box of chocolate chip cookies.

Cramming the sweets into his mouth, he chomped enthusiastically, watching the

scampering of small creatures through the undergrowth and lifting his face to watch a