Edge of Black (26 page)

Chapter 50

Eagles Nest
White River National Forest, Colorado
Dr. Samantha Owens

“Oh, hell. He’s going to kill me.” Sam shook her cell phone as if that would help her get service again. The farther into Eagles Nest they drove, the worse the mobile service. She’d finally managed to get through to Fletcher, and the minute she dropped the news, she dropped the call, too. They’d been flirting with the rain for a while now, heavy downpours interspersed with rumbles of thunder and some foggy virga hanging low over the mountains, but the storms now seemed to be passing without too much bother. They should have clear weather into the night.

They’d found Crawford’s vehicle, and Sam had to admit, Xander had been right about where Crawford was headed.

“Don’t worry,” Xander assured her as he tied a backpack on her. “Once we get above 7500 feet, we should have a nice clear signal coming across the mountain.”

“And how long’s that going to take?”

“I don’t know. What do you say, Roth? Day? Day and a half?”

She shot daggers at him.

Roth shook his head. “He’s teasing you, Samantha. I’m sure we will find service along the trail. They have better signals out here now for hikers, have cell towers strategically placed so they don’t get too lost. How’s that pack feel? Too heavy?”

“I think I’ll be okay.”

Xander raised an eyebrow at her. “I can take out that nail file you insisted on. That might make all the difference.”

Sam stuck her tongue out at Xander, who, laughing, went back to the car for another load, and put the phone in her pocket. The pack
was
a bit heavy, but she moved it around and figured it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. They had four hours of daylight left, and Xander wanted to get them as high up the trail as he could before they made camp for the night.

Sam thought about what her best friend would have said to all of this a year ago. “You, camping? Ha!” Yes, well, falling in love with an outdoorsman meant she was now more than accustomed to roughing it.

Hiking a vertical to 7500 feet on the trail of a killer? Maybe not so much.

Satisfied they had everything, Xander locked the truck, and they started off, Roth leading, Xander taking the rear. After a few choice comments about the view, and a few well-aimed kicks toward his midsection, they settled into a steady pace.

They’d been hiking for an hour before Sam got a decent enough signal to try Fletcher again. She was more than relieved to take a break. Roth and Xander fidgeted with their things, checking weapons and straps, while Sam dropped her pack, drank some water and made the call back to D.C.

Fletcher answered immediately, annoyance and relief bleeding through the phone. His voice was at a decibel she recognized as his version of DEFCON One.

“Whatever the hell you’re doing, Owens, stop. Cease and desist, immediately. We have teams converging on the area to go after the killer. His name is Ryan Carter, by the way. We have his wife here at the JTTF. I’m sending you a photo. Where are you?”

“Halfway up a mountain, on our way to where we think his camp is. How did you get his wife?”

“You’re doing
what?
”

“Xander knows the area, and his friend Will Crawford knows the killer. He took off after him yesterday, and we are following his trail. How’d you get the killer’s wife?”

“It’s Ledbetter’s daughter, Loa. Not only that, Congressman Leighton is her father. Long story short, she ran off with Carter, got pregnant and changed her mind about living in the woods, ran away, gave the kid up for adoption and started her life over. There was a bombing a couple of hours ago in Boulder, a reproductive clinic. We believe we have Carter and Ledbetter’s daughter in custody—he left her behind.”

“We heard. Xander, how far are we from Boulder?”

“About a hundred miles, maybe one hundred and ten by road. Less than forty as the crow flies.”

“It’s possible he’s ahead of us, and it’s possible we’re going to walk right in on him. Xander, here. Talk to Fletcher. Tell him where we are.”

She handed the phone to Xander, who pulled a face but put the phone on speaker and said, “Hey, Fletch. Think you got him?”

“We do. Where are you?”

“Halfway up to Eagles Nest. We took a vertical trailhead off Colorado State Road 9, about fifteen miles south of Kremmling. Rumor has it there’s a geothermal hot spring in this area, it triangulates to the most logical spot to have a private camp. It’s basically uninhabited, hard to find and harder to hike, so there’s not going to be any foot traffic accidentally stumbling into his camp. We’re following the steps of a friend of mine who I think knows where this guy is—”

“Ryan Carter’s the name.”

“Roger that. My friend took off after Carter, like Sam said. He’s got half a day on us. We’re three hours on foot from the site where we’re assuming he’s hunkered down.”

Fletcher didn’t hesitate. “You turn around and go back down that mountain. We are sending teams in. Just give us your coordinates and we will have them there shortly. Loa Ledbetter gave us a pretty detailed map of the area, we know exactly where we’re headed.”

“At this point, Fletch, you’re going to have to fly them in to make it in time. And that’s just going to spook him. Coming in on foot from below will take too long. My friend will have eliminated the problem by then. I’m assuming you want him alive?”

“We do.”

“Then we’re your best shot. I arranged for backup, the police chief in Dillon, Reed McReynolds, is probably already on our tail. And we’re losing daylight.”

Fletcher went ballistic. “Goddamn it, Xander, you are not a cop. Park your ass and wait for the cavalry. That’s an order, soldier.”

Sam watched Xander’s face shut down. It got blank as an empty sheet of paper. Uh-oh.

“Can’t hear you, Fletch. You’re breaking up.”

“Whitfield, so help me God, you get one hair on her head hurt—”

Fletcher’s voice was drowned by static, and then there was silence.

“Whoops,” Xander said, grinning. “Looks like we dropped the call. Maybe you should switch carriers when we get home, Sam. This one really sucks.”

He handed her the phone and she didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him. A small ding indicated she’d received a text. It was the photo of Ryan Carter. She passed it to Xander and Roth so they could see who they were hunting.

Xander stared at the photo for a moment, then handed her the phone. “Okay. Break’s over. Time to go.” He and Roth shouldered their packs.

“Xander. You heard Fletch. We really should stay here, or go back down.”

Xander fingered his M-4. He looked incredibly formidable, and she wouldn’t want to have him tracking her up the side of a mountain. He was not fooling around.

“Darren Fletcher is not my commanding officer, Samantha. We are his best chance of capturing this Ryan Carter character alive. Crawford didn’t set out to have a fireside chat. If he gets to him first, we’re screwed. The fact that Carter’s coming in from Boulder is probably the only reason he’s still breathing, if he actually still is. So let’s quit jawing about it, and let me go make sure a friend of mine doesn’t go to jail for life for homicide. Okay?”

Sam took a deep breath and sat back down.

“What—”

She cut him off with a sigh. “Just give me two seconds. I’m putting a Band-Aid on my heel, just in case.”

She got out the bandage and unlaced her boot. When Xander and his father bowed their heads over their map, she took their moment of distraction to send Fletcher a text.

Didn’t work. We’re going in. Hurry up.

Two hours later, the hike became a study in pain. It was getting dark, the moonrise only just beginning, shining flat and silver through the trees. Not only was Sam scared and tired and hungry and worried, the pack had grown much too heavy on her shoulders and the imaginary blister she’d patched up when they’d last stopped had become a reality. There was no service on the cell now, and the forest had grown dense and dark around them. Little scurries in the bushes made her jump, and the lonely howl of a coyote twenty minutes earlier had completely freaked her out.

Xander and Roth seemed completely unfazed by their surroundings. Sam was a bit embarrassed, chalked it up to the fact that they were alone in the woods with a killer.

The irony of the fact that her boyfriend could be called by the same moniker wasn’t lost on her.

She glanced at him over her shoulder. He looked dark and dangerous, his beard growing in, the weapon cradled in his arms like a baby. He was carrying a modified M-4 assault rifle, and she knew he was more than accustomed to using it. It was simply an extension of his body, an extremely lethal metal hand. Part of her grieved for him in that moment, knowing what he’d been forced to do in the name of securing freedom, how he became so intimately familiar with the weapon, probably knowing it better than he knew the curves of her body.

She wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of him, that was for sure. He was so very different from her late husband, mild-mannered Simon Loughley: scientist, romantic, appeaser. They shared an incredible intellect, but that’s where the similarities stopped.

Life with Xander was never going to be boring, of that she was absolutely certain.

Just when she thought she was going to have to ask them to stop for a break so she could catch her breath, Roth whistled once, freezing in his tracks, his right hand up in a fist.

She recognized that move from the movies. It meant stop.

She did, grateful for the break, but her concern rose when Roth ducked down to his knees and gestured for them to do the same.

She listened carefully, trying to ascertain what had drawn his attention. All she could hear was the low hooting of an owl. A parade of goose bumps ran up and down her arms. Death was coming. She could feel his cool embrace on the wind that started rustling through the trees. The temperature dropped, and she realized the breeze had increased.

Xander slithered away, practically on his stomach, and Roth leaned back and squeezed her shoulder, whispered so quietly she had to strain to hear him.

“I smell a fire. We thought he would be farther up the mountain, but looks like he, or someone, is here, about a quarter of a mile to the west. Xander’s going to investigate.”

They stood carefully, quietly, and she followed Roth off the path into the woods, where they stood against a tree. Xander was back in a few minutes, speaking low so he wouldn’t be heard over the wind.

“I think this is it. There’s a cabin, and a barn. The fire’s down to embers, though, and I can’t see anyone there. It looks deserted. Could be Crawford was waiting for him. Maybe he banked the fire and took off when he wasn’t here.”

“Or it’s Carter, and he heard us coming and scatted.”

“Would he have lit a fire to eat or something?” Sam asked.

“Possibly. Or get rid of evidence. But if you don’t put a fire out properly, it can take hours to settle down and that’s damn dangerous in these woods. I think we should walk past and swing back around, come down from the high ground. He may have come back and gathered things and set off again in a hurry, worried he was being followed.”

“Or Will got to him,” Sam said.

“Or that. Let’s do some recon before we make any decisions, okay?”

They regrouped and started again, stealthier this time, off the trail, careful not to make too much noise. Sam thought they were a damn sight noisier than the rabbits or grouse or turkeys or whatever they kept passing on the trail, but for a tired, scared mad bomber, who possibly had some percussive damage to his eardrums from his latest blast, maybe they wouldn’t be noticeable.

Sam could smell water. There must be a lake nearby. Sure enough, fifteen slow paces later, the edge of the forest began to slope, and below them shimmered a moonlit mountain lake. Sam had never seen anything so stunning. She couldn’t help but stop and stare. Wildflowers paraded down into the valley below, marked like gray frost by the moon’s path, and the water lapped gently at the edges of the soil, which looked nearly black.

They stayed still, watching. An elk, a stag by the size of him, ventured to the water’s edge, drinking long and deep, secure in the knowledge that he was safe from predators for the moment. Then the wind shifted, and his head jerked up in surprise, and he crashed away into the brush, sounding like a small army moving through.

They took advantage of his thrashing to move again, traced their steps back and up the hill, and Roth found a sinuous deer path, which they started up. There was a small clearing ahead, Sam could see where the branches lessened, and knew that would be the right place for them to stop and regroup before entering the camp again.

They stepped from the trees and froze.

Ryan Carter was squatting next to a man Sam had to assume was Will Crawford, who was on his back, blood bubbling from his mouth and nose. He wasn’t dead, but damn close to it.

Carter reminded Sam of a child who’d just pulled the wings off a fly and was watching, mildly curious to see what would happen next, not understanding or caring about the pain the fly was experiencing.

He didn’t seem to hear them, or mind their presence if he did. Crawford, on the other hand, seemed to sense movement and tried to turn his head to see what was happening.

Xander swung his M-4 toward them and used a tone Sam had never heard before, his voice ringing with authority. She couldn’t imagine anyone hesitating for a moment to obey him.

“Carter. Step away. Step away and get on your knees, facing me.”

Carter didn’t move. Crawford whined, a high-pitched sound laced with pain, and it was all Sam could do not to rush for him, to help.

Xander tried again, louder and more forceful, and this time, Carter turned his head, slowly, to face them. Sam was surprised by how normal, how plain he was. He didn’t have the face of evil that she’d seen before. He just looked like a man, a regular guy, neither handsome nor ugly, just plain. His face didn’t change, or even acknowledge that he was looking at the business end of a weapon.

Before she could blink, he took off, leaping to his feet and rushing away through the trees. With a muttered oath Xander followed, and Sam heard the shouts and shots as he tried to catch him.