Authors: Jeanne Adams

Deadly Little Lies (31 page)

BOOK: Deadly Little Lies

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“We will be friends still, as we have always been. And lovers if you so choose.” He added the second bit, but felt her shift in his arms. “Carrie-mou, I will not take it amiss if you do not want that.”

“It's not that I don't want it,” she began, then stopped. She was about to speak again when he saw the lights.

“Shhh.” He silenced her. “Look.”

Passing on the road, a set of headlights flashed, then disappeared going downhill from their position.

“Dav?”

“Yes, I know. But we don't know who it is. We must sleep, and find help tomorrow.”

“But,” she started to protest, then stopped. “You're right.”

“Yes. Soâ” He softened that adamant rejoinder with a laugh. “Will you sing me a lullaby, my friend?”

He felt her snicker, as much as he heard it and smiled.

“No. It would attract wolves or coyotes. It's that much like howling.”

“Ah, well then, we will just have to do without.”

“Hmmmm,” she murmured, relaxing.

Within minutes they were both asleep.

In the early dawn hours, Ana, Gates and the team bounced up the rock-strewn road, heading for the coordinates they'd been given. Ana leaned forward in the passenger seat, as if to urge the car to move faster.

“I can't go any faster,” Gates murmured, wishing he could.

“I know.”

In the rearview, he saw Callahan and Holden, having taken their now-accustomed spots in the backseats, exchange glances. Evidently they felt the same way.

Hurryhurryhurry!
Even knowing it was unsafe, Gates increased his speed. They'd sent the two front men on the noisier motorcycles back toward civilization. With luck, they would get to the yacht in Punta Gorda and report in. When they found Dav, everything would be ready for their departure the minute Ana and Gates got there with Dav and Carrie.

Provided they found them alive.

“Coming up on coordinates,” Holden said, managing to read his GPS. “Ahead one mile and on the right.”

Ana cued in her mic. “Look sharp, everybody.”

They slowed to let two of the men drop off at the half-mile point, taking the “scenic route” as Franklin described it, through the brush. The dogs were with him, in the hopes that they would alert the team to sentries or outposts before they got to the clearing.

“Holy shit!” Ana gasped as she saw the road before them. The deep potholes were raw and new, and evidence of explosives lay in the sprays of dirt that browned the ridges on either side of the road.

“On foot,” Gates ordered, and the team piled out, armed and ready. “Stay off the road. Watch for any sign of disturbed soil. Look before you step, people.”

Using the throat mic, Ana informed the others about the mined road, then asked, “Team two, any sign of sentries?”

“Negative. I've got signs of a sniper nest though. Tree spikes on some kind of hardwood. Only thing around here you could use.”

“Dogs, Franklin?”

“On alert, but not flagging.”

No signs of life yet.

Creeping on the upper verge of the road, several feet above where the mines had been laid, they came to the end of the lead-in road and the trees and scrub opened onto a scene of carnage.

Bodies lay strewn about, obviously days old from the bloating and animal activity. Two newer bodies lay where they'd been dragged, mere feet from an open, iron grate.

“Franklin, send the dogs out, locate on Dav.”

“Roger that.”

With Callahan and Holden covering them from the cement block hut, which they'd cleared, Gates and Ana made their cautious way between the bodies to the hole.

“Niko is a bastard,” Gates snarled. “He knew Dav hated being underground.”

Surprised, Ana looked at him, before scanning the woods and trees. “Why?”

“His dad used to lock him in this kind of dungeon. A cell-like room in the lower basement. He hates dark, underground places.”

“I'm guessing we're in the right place again, then,” Ana said. “He's not here, and there's no second vehicle, though I saw tracks in the displaced dirt. That means someone left alive and driving. Either someone moved them, or there was a survivor and they blew the road, then drove out over it.”

“I saw that too. Let's drop back to cover, wait for the dogs.”

They'd barely reached the hut when the dogs burst through the covering scrub. The Plott hound, a scent tracker, bayed once, then dropped his nose down, ignoring the blood, flies and other noxiousness to follow a trail to the hole.

Next to him, he felt Ana tense, only to feel a second sigh of relief as the hound woofed and began tracking toward them, weaving through the corpses, and stopping for a long moment in the middle of the clearing. He kept coming their way, and stopped in front of them.

Looking down, Gates saw tire tracks marking the silty soil. “They reversed here, drove to the road.”

“Dav and Carrie, or Dav and a captor?”

“No way to tell.”

“Boss?” Callahan said, pointing. “Those two are newer kills.” Her voice was even and steady, but her skin had a slightly greenish cast to it. He looked at the two body armorâclad dead guys, immediately noticing the difference in equipment, and the difference in how much of the flesh the predators had stripped off the bones.

“Second team, report in.” They waited as Ferguson and the others relayed positions relative to center of camp.

“Personnel mine wrappings next to one of the newer guys,” Holden added, pointing. “These guys came in secondary.”

“Shooters?”

“Not snipers.” Franklin came huffing up. He hardly glanced at the bodies. “No rifles. And they're not nearly as dead as the other guys. Probably, what?” He turned to Parker. “Dead about two days, maybe? The others have been dead longer. Maybe four days.”

“Ugh.”

“Yeah, well. Better them than Dav, or us,” Gates said. “Franklin, can you have one of the dogs track for Carrie? We need to know if she's with him.”

“Will do.” He whipped out a sealed bag containing a piece of clothing they'd been given for Carrie's scent, and set the dog to work. Meanwhile, he set the first dog crossing, checking for other places where Dav's scent might be.

The dog tracking Carrie followed the same paths as the first dog, but went into the building and out again several times, before sitting down in the road. When Franklin set that hound coursing for another scent, the dog bayed and set off downhill, away from them.

Franklin called him back. His face looked pained. “At some point, Ms. McCray was off in those woods, but came back here.”

“How do you know?” Ana demanded.

“He picked up the freshest scent first, here at the building, over there by that hole. The trail down the hill's older, but it's there, so when I sent him out again, he went for that, thinking I wanted a track-back.”

“Does that mean...” She trailed off, obviously thinking of the dire possibilities of Carrie being separated from Dav, even for a while.

“No way to know. No blood though, or the dog would have alerted on that.”

“You said the freshest scent was here, though?” Gates said, pointing at the ground where they stood, by the hut. They were all crouched in its shadow, with Callahan and Reed keeping watch. Reed hadn't left the tree line, keeping the clearing under cover, but not showing himself.

“Don't know that yet,” Franklin began, when his first dog bayed and sat, right by the same spot the first dog had sounded on in the rutted road.

“That's freshest.” Franklin pointed, and hurried to his dog before Gates could caution him to keep his head down.

“Idiot,” Ana muttered. “What's he thinking going out there without evasive?” Franklin had run straight, no zigzagging or evasive maneuvers at all.

“Getting to the dog, that's what matters to him,” Gates said, gritting his teeth at the thought that Franklin was so exposed.

He cued his own mic and ordered everyone to fall back to the main road. They'd have to see if they could figure out which direction the vehicle had gone. Since someone was driving it, and the dog had alerted on both Carrie and Dav, he had hopes that they were still alive.

It would take a miracle, but sometimes that was all you had to go on.

Carrie and Dav woke when the sun had risen well into the sky. The air in the Jeep was stuffy and hot, in spite of the overhanging cover and the slightly lowered windows.

“God, I want a shower so badly,” Carrie muttered, brushing at her clothes. Dav saw the dried blood staining them and felt fear clench in his belly.

“Carrie, you are covered in blood. Are you hurt? Are you injured? I did not ask,” he said, whipping himself in his mind for the oversight.

“No, no, it isn't my blood,” she quickly reassured him. “I had to drag that man,” she began, gulped, and tried to go on. “The one that fell over the grate. I had to... had to...” She gulped again. Then, forcibly shoving herself upright, she flung open the door and stumbled out to retch in the long grass at the back of the covered area.

As he neared her, he heard her muttering, “Oh, God, the blood. Oh, God.”

He brought the canteen and a towel he'd seen in the backseat. Wetting it, he handed it to her to wipe her face and mouth. He put an arm around her shoulders, and awkwardly used the uninjured fingers of his broken hand to tuck her tangled hair behind her ear.

“Here you are, Carrie-mou. Use this now and wipe your face,” he urged. “It is cleaner than my handkerchief could ever be, no matter the origin.”

He was rewarded by a weak chuckle. “That handkerchief needs to be burned, along with everything else,” she muttered.

“True, but if we survive this, I may keep it, for sentimental reasons.”

Her only reply was a grunted, “Ugh.”

“Oh, God, I'm going to throw up again,” she wailed, and did so.

By the time she'd gotten her rebellious stomach under control, the humidity was beginning to build and the heat as well. “And now, we must go,” Dav said, wishing he could help her more.

“I know. Maybe some crackers or something, to settle my stomach.”

“We have those. The finest jungle crackers, just for you,” he joked, rummaging in the supplies she'd gathered to find an oval sleeve of Town House crackers. “Are you well enough to drive?”

“I think so. There's no other choice. We have to get out of here, so I'm well enough.”

“Good, because the fever is making me feel hot and cold,” he confessed. “And there is dizziness with it. Driving is probably best left to you, for now.”

He took more aspirin, drank more water, but stopped before draining the canteen. They didn't have a map, or a source for supplies. It needed to last.

They crept forward in the car, inching toward the main road. Before they turned into it, Dav got unsteadily out, and peered up and down before he allowed her to come close to the mouth of the overgrown drive.

He was about to get back in when he heard it.

“Quick,” he ordered her, slamming into the car and grabbing for the seat belt. “Move it. I hear cars coming from up the road. In the daylight, they will see where we stopped and turned in. We can't be trapped here.”

He barely clicked the metal buckle into place before she peeled out onto the bumpy surface and headed south.

Dav gritted his teeth against his wavering vision and hung on to consciousness with every ounce of will he had.

It was about survival now, and that meant speed.

“Go faster if you can,” he said, and hung on.

Chapter 20

“Hurry,” Ana urged as they made their way back to the road. “They're ahead of us again, but maybe not by much.”

“A day,” Franklin said, coming up even with her, his dogs trailing at his heels. “Maybe less.”

“That's good news,” Gates said, throwing a warning glance at his wife. Both he and she knew what could happen in a day, but there was no need to demoralize any of the team, not when they were this close. They each had experience with the heartbreak of arriving moments too late to help or save a friend or colleague.

Still on watch, they arrived at the road, quickly followed by their outliers, Reed and Callahan. When those two arrived, Franklin loaded his restless dogs and climbed into the SUV to reassure them.

They carefully turned the big vehicles back the way they had come, beginning the trek down the steep, rock-strewn road.

They'd barely started when a form stepped into the middle of the road, a weapon pointed right at them. Gates skidded to a halt, the heavy SUV shuddering as he stood on the brakes.

The man was a sniper, dressed to blend in with the surrounding hillsides, his rifle painted the same dusty greenish brown hues as the grasses and brush. But there, standing in the brightly lit road, he didn't blend. Rather, he stood in sharp contrast with the sunlit morning.

He held up a hand in the universal sign for them to stop.

“You, driver,” he called. “Gates Bromley. Step out.”

Ana put a hand on his arm, but he murmured, “No, it's okay. If he wanted us dead, we'd be dead. And he knows who I am.”

“True. Be careful,” she said as if she couldn't help saying the words. She eased her Kahr K9 from its holster, slipped off the safety and readied herself to fire.

“Roger that,” he replied, without glancing at the weapon. He slipped down from seat to running board and to the ground before raising his hands. Arms still raised, he moved in front of the vehicle, but deliberately stayed to the left.

With the heat of the large engine at his back, Gates positioned himself so that Ana, Callahan or Holden could get a shot at the sniper. He didn't hold out much hope that the man would give them the opportunity, but he positioned himself properly anyway.

“Your friends are alive,” the man stated. “The man, Davros, is hurt. I do not know how badly.”

“Who are you and how do you know that?” Gates snapped back, masking his surge of hope with flat calm.

A smile curved the other man's lips. “My partner led you here because the man and his woman are alive.”

The phrasing reminded him of Dav. A sure sign the speaker wasn't born in America.

“Your partner. Yes.” He paused a moment, then added, “Thank you for that.” They would never have gotten this far without the woman's help.

The other man offered a brisk nod of acknowledgment. “Go south. I've been down the road, but lost them. There are many players here. Davros's brother is not far behind him. And the third player has arrived in the country. I do not know what reception your man will get, but you must find him first, yes?”

“Yes,” Gates answered. The man smiled again, and flicked his wrist, sending something spiraling into the brush. He knew better, but Gates's involuntary response was to look.

In that flash of a moment, the man was gone.

“Damn it,” Gates cursed, flying back around the driver's side door to jump behind the wheel. He should have seen that coming.

Then again, he wouldn't have pursued; his focus was Dav, not some crazy sniper informant with twisted ideas of loyalty.

“What did he say? I couldn't hear him,” Ana demanded, impatience written in every line of her body. Her weapon at the ready, she quickly resnapped her safety belt but not the safety on the weapon, as he threw it in gear and headed out.

“In a minute. Tell the second team to stay close and push the limit.”

The bone-rattling ride wasn't conducive to handling firearms, so Ana ordered everything safetied and stowed, and with obvious reluctance, she holstered her own weapon.

“Spill it,” she ordered, grabbing the “oh-shit” handle well above her head to keep herself steady on the bone-shaking descent.

“He's the woman's partner. He's been the source of the info.”

“Why didn't he just save Dav?” she snarled. “What's with all this fucking cat and mouse?”

“He said he lost the pursuit down the mountain. He also said Niko's between Dav and us. And the third player's in-country. The uncle.”

“What uncle?” This was from Callahan, bouncing around like a rag doll in the backseat. Her shorter stature made it hard for her to brace herself and hang on, but she wasn't complaining.

“That's the search we did. The genealogy thing.” Gates spat the words. “Shit!” he said, then flicked Ana a glance as a deep rut nearly wrenched the wheel from his hands. “You tell it.”

“Whoever our little helper is, she dug out the data that Dav has an uncle. A bastard uncle, raised in the United States.”

“How old would this guy be?” Callahan squeaked, looking mortified that she had gone airborne for a moment.

“Late seventies, probably, maybe eighty. The site says he's older than Dav's father, and I don't remember how old he was when he died, but it's been twenty years,” Ana explained.

“Did the boss know this guy?” Holden managed as he too flopped to and fro with the sharp corrections Gates was making as he pushed the limits of both road and vehicle.

“Don't think so,” Gates added. “Never mentioned it. And he would have.”

The SUV slewed sideways, and Gates corrected. “He could be anywhere, waiting for them.”

“I know.”

Ana struggled to reach her phone, and he took a hand off the wheel just long enough to steady her.

“Thanks.”

She pulled up the number and called Geddey. “Hey, it's Ana. Don't talk, listen,” she said when he answered. “We're in pursuit. We've been told both Dav and Carrie are alive. The dead brother arisen, Niko, is between us and Dav. The third player I e-mailed you about is in-country too, but we have no way to know where he is or what he's planning.”

“Got it.”

“Make sure the yacht staff is ready and the Agency's alerted. If we can get out of here, we'll need to make tracks, fast. They'll have to cover us with the locals.”

“Done.”

Ana heard the fast scratch of a pen on paper.

“As soon as we hit international waters, figure out how fast you can get a chopper or seaplane to us and have that ready to rock. Word is, Dav's hurt. We don't know how badly, or if Carrie's hurt too, but we can't take any chances. We get 'em both to medical attention as soon as possible.”

“On it,” he snapped. More scratching of the pen.

“We'll keep you posted as soon as we know something.”

“He's alive, though?”

“Yes. So far as we know.”

There was a significant pause, then: “Want the sit-rep here or do you need to go?”

“Hit it,” Ana replied, bracing herself for the jolt she could see coming from a pothole. “Shit!” She scooted back onto the seat. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Sit-rep is Queller and Damon were on the way to the hospital and there was an accident. Queller's dead.”

“Aw, hell.” Her brain caught up with the words. “Wait. Accident? Really?”

“Don't think so.”

Shitshitshit. It kept going from bad to worse. “Damon?”

“Critical.”

“Declan?”

“Improving.”

“Thompson and Georgiade?”

“Under watch.”

“Good. Good work.” She didn't know what else to say, so she wrapped up with, “I'll call.”

“Do that.”

The lightning fast exchange had taken less than two minutes. Ana clicked off and used the hand holding the phone to brace herself for a particularly sharp turn.

“What's up?”

“Either Queller or Damon was our mole. Someone tried to take 'em out.”

“Fuck,” was Callahan's soft response. Holden didn't speak. He hadn't known either man for long.

“Yeah, I agree,” Ana managed, thinking of the eager, soft-spoken Damon.

Queller was harder to pinpoint, personality wise, and that clued her in. “It's got to be Queller,” she said. The uncle was tying up loose ends, and doing it fast.

That didn't bode well for Dav and Carrie.

Carrie drove like a maniac down the rutted road. Her lips set in a tight line, she navigated every turn with the latent skill of a veteran race car driver. Her lament that she'd not driven in years proved that the skill, when combined with the threat of imminent death, could be recovered in an instant.

“You have missed your calling, Carrie-mou,” Dav said, feeling weaker and more feverish by the moment. He coughed and she looked over. “Keep your eyes on the road,” he said, more sharply than he'd intended.

“My calling?”

“NASCAR, or the Indy 500, would be glad to have you.” He coughed again and couldn't suppress the groan at the pain in his head and hand.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice sharp and high with tension.

“No, but I am alive and so are you,” he replied with force. “I will be thankful for that for now.”

“It's the hand, isn't it?” She dared to look again, despite his order. “It's infected.”

“I think so, yes. It was very badly broken and the conditions wereâ” He hesitated, struggling to think of the proper American term.

“Barbaric?”

He laughed. “Yes, that will do. I was going to say, less than...” Bump, rut, bump, pain, pain, pain sang through him like a pattern.

“Less than?”

“Sanitary.” He finally managed the word, over the roar of the road. “It has not been tended to in several days. I did not stop to wash the wound, thinking only to get back to the cell, and out, with you.” He grunted in pain as they swerved suddenly.

“Sorry, sorry,” she muttered. “Damn road. Doesn't anyone in whereeverthehellweare believe in paving?”

“Belize, the nice man in camouflage said,” he offered, and realized that the laugh bubbling inside him was vastly inappropriate to the setting. “And I'm guessing that no, they do not pave things here.”

As he said it, she gasped. “Oh, my God, paved road!”

“Efaristo, Cristos.”
Thank God. He knew he'd lapsed into Greek, but the words were wavering a bit in his mind, along with the need to burst into laughter.

The smoother ride was like a miracle. He sat up, feeling the grating of his ribs. He was fairly sure that he had cracked at least one rib, perhaps several in his many falls in the tunnels. The long, albeit shallow, wounds on his back stung with his sweat and he knew he was bleeding on the scant remains of his shirt and into the leather of the seat.

It didn't matter though, if Carrie got out alive. He would like to live too, he decided blearily, but she mattered more.

“Which way?” she asked, peering ahead into the distance. He could see now that the road joined another in a T formation. They would have to choose a direction.

“We will flip a drachma,” he managed, coughing again, feeling the pain in his ribs, chest and back. “Ahhh, that hurts.”

“Oh, God, Dav, look,” she moaned, as four men stepped into the road, weapons drawn. She slowed. “I'll put it in reverse, we'll go back.” She started to do so and he heard the despair in her indrawn breath. Painfully, he turned to see. Racing up behind them was another Jeep, much like their own. It skidded to a spinning stop, blocking their retreat.

They were boxed in.

“Drive forward,” one of the men yelled. “Don't try anything or we'll shoot her.”

Dav knew what that meant, even in his delirious state. “Carrie. Stop.”

“Oh, my God, Dav, what do we do?”

“We do what they want.” He forced the words out, but his tongue felt thick and tangled. “For now, we are free, and we are alive. If we can stay that way, we will. I am so very sorry, Carrie-mou.”

“Shut up,” she fired back. “Just shut up. This is not your fault. And by God, where there's life there's fucking hope, okay? We're not dead yet.”

“That's my Carrie-mou,” he said, at once both stung and proud of her spirit.

BOOK: Deadly Little Lies

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