Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Exit Strategy\Payback\Covert Justice (55 page)

“I guess we're hard to kill,” he said.

Katarina snorted.

“Didn't you think it would look a little suspicious, killing off all three of us in one weekend?”

Katarina groaned. “Don't blame the stroke on us. We had nothing to do with that. We never wanted the whole family out of commission. We need this place to keep operating. After that weekend, we had to slow things down. Didn't want to draw too much attention to how hazardous it had become to be a Harrison.”

She leaned closer. “Let me see what you've done.” She didn't touch anything, but she examined it all. She obviously knew how it was supposed to look, and she was checking to be sure he hadn't messed anything up.

Blake knew this line would never run tomorrow, but he wouldn't take any chances. If Katarina Kovac killed him tonight, fine. But he'd never allow anthrax to be pumped into those bottles.

He'd been waiting for the right opportunity, and when it came, he took it.

Bless Markos.

Katarina, looking around with a flashlight, wouldn't have been able to see the bypass Markos had installed. It made sense. He could leave the anthrax in place, and then toggle the switch to contaminate certain products while leaving others clean. The beauty of it was he'd slid the toggle behind a beam. Blake had missed it when he'd been looking at it earlier today, but he had no doubt about how it worked.

The sense of peace that had descended in the car now flooded over him. No matter what, he would be able to face the next few hours with the certainty that the anthrax would never harm anyone.

“One more thing, Blake,” Katarina said. “I need you to pull that protective sleeve off the bottle for me.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, please.”

“Are you planning to kill me with this stuff?” That would not be a fun way to go.

“Of course not,” she said.

He removed the fabric from the bottle and could see why she'd wanted it gone. The bottle was stainless steel and blended in to the equipment. No one would ever notice it.

“Do me a favor and put both hands on it and shake it. I want to be sure it's secure. Don't want you to have left it up there where it will crash to the floor once the system powers up, now, do we?”

Blake grabbed the bottle and gave it a shake. “It's not going anywhere, Katarina.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Out we go.”

She backed out, always keeping the gun pointed at him. He'd have loved to get it away from her, but there wasn't enough room under the equipment for any big swings.

When he stepped out from the blower, he stumbled. Weird. His hands tingled and his vision blurred.

Katarina gave him a tight smile. “Come on.” She pointed to the door. Why were there two doors where there was only supposed to be one? He blinked. Tripped over thin air and went down to one knee.

“Oh, dear,” Katarina said. “I may have been a bit aggressive on the dose. You can't pass out yet—you're too heavy to carry. Let's get you to the car.”

She slid the gun into her backpack and steered him out to the parking lot. He couldn't stop her. His arms weren't cooperating. She propped him up against the car and opened the back door. The last thing he remembered seeing was the torn fabric near the dome light. The car door slammed. The engine started.

Then nothing.

NINETEEN

“B
lake! Blake!” The voice sounded far away. “Come on, wake up. Fight. I need you to wake up.” The voice sounded closer. Was someone touching him?

Yes. Hands. On his face. His arm.

“Blake?”

He knew that voice. He tried to respond. “Hei—”

“Thank You, God. Thank You.” A weight pressed against his chest. Her head? His arms were slow to obey, but they found their way to the curls spilling all over his shirt. He blinked several times, but everything remained pitch-black. Was he blind?

“I...I can't...I can't see you,” he said.

Her hands caressed his face. “It's okay,” she said. “I can't see you, either. There's a light socket in the middle of the room but no bulb. I found switches, but they don't turn anything on or off. I caught a flash of light when Katarina brought you in, but as soon as she closed the door, nothing.”

The events of the past few hours were pinging around in his mind. “Maggie?”

“Asleep,” Heidi said. “She's amazing. So brave. She's done everything I asked her to do, although I have a sneaking suspicion Katarina laced her food with a sleeping pill because she fell asleep fast and has stayed that way.”

“What happened?”

Heidi told him everything, from her conversation with Maggie to the moment she'd lost consciousness. “I was out for at least two hours. Maggie said she rolled me in here in a wheelbarrow and dumped me on the floor.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, well she didn't even bother to dump you,” she said. A metallic sound reverberated through the space. “She wheeled you in and left before I had an opportunity to do anything to get us out of here.”

Frustration etched her words. “I've made a thorough search,” she said. “The walls are paneling. I managed to pull a piece away, but there's cement block behind it. No windows. As best as I can tell, the ceiling is Sheetrock with one light socket.”

“Sounds like you've been busy.” He tried to sit up. “I don't understand why we're here.”

Heidi didn't answer.

“Do you know?”

“I have a guess.”

“Let's hear it.”

“You first,” she said. “Tell me what happened after we were taken.”

Blake filled her in, choosing his words with care in case Katarina was listening. He didn't mention the switch. He'd rather have Heidi believe he'd set off an anthrax scare than have Katarina run back to the plant and flip the switch.

Heidi slid her hand into his. “Then that confirms it,” she said.

He already knew, but he couldn't stop himself from asking. “Confirms what?”

“She plans to kill us.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

They sat in silence for a while. Blake's mind continued to clear and he flexed his arms and legs. Maggie lay beside him and he planted light kisses on her face, thankful she was alive and oddly relieved that she was sleeping through the ordeal.

“Might help work the drug out of your system if you walk around,” Heidi said. “Run your hands along the walls. And be sure to dodge the wheelbarrow.”

He measured off the room with his steps. He'd guess it was twelve by twelve feet. The ceiling was low. Maybe eight feet. If he jumped, he could touch it.

He found Heidi and Maggie again and sat beside them. “Do you have a plan?”

“I've got several. They're all terrible.” She laughed and he appreciated her attempt at humor.

“Will they come looking for you?” he asked, whispering in her ear.

“Yes,” she said. “If my original plan had worked, they would have tracked us by now.”

“How?”

“Maggie's bow.”

“Her what?”

“You gave me permission to track her,” she said. “Months ago.”

“I know, but I didn't know you'd put a tracker in her hair bow.”

“We put one in every single hair accessory she has,” Heidi said. “Well, I didn't. One of the agents did.”

“So where's the cavalry?”

“The bow she's wearing is new. Her grandmother bought it for her this morning.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And since you haven't heard from Max, that means no one was looking for me yet when Katarina contacted you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“If Max couldn't reach me, you would be the next person he would call.”

Blake reached for his phone but his pocket was empty.

“Don't bother. I already checked. She must have taken your phone after you passed out.”

“When will Max get worried?”

Heidi cleared her throat. “Probably not for a while. Not tonight anyway.”

“What's special about tonight?”

Heidi didn't answer right away. “Max has been trying to give us some time alone. He told me he was going to make himself scarce,” she said in a low voice. Blake knew that if he could see her face, it would glow with embarrassment.

“I have a standing check-in at 10:00 p.m. No matter where I am or what I'm doing. I send three text messages. One to him, one to Uncle Frank, one to Sara. If everything is okay, I send them a group text with nothing more than good-night. If everything is not okay but I still have my phone, I tell them I love them. If I don't text at all, I get phone calls. If I don't answer, Max will track my phone. Which he will discover is either in the creek where Katarina made me drop it, or offline if it didn't survive the water.”

“Then what?”

“They'll try to track us. They'll go to the house first, then the plant. They'll find your car, but then it gets tricky. I don't want to give you false hope. I don't know where we are. Maggie doesn't know where we are. All I know is we aren't far from the plant. Fifteen to thirty minutes at the most, and Maggie said the road was bumpy and windy, so I'm guessing we are in a cabin off an old logging road.”

“There's only about a hundred of those around.”

“When they find your car, they'll know something is wrong, and—” she dropped her voice to a whisper “—I think we can be confident that plant operations will be suspended until we are found.”

“But you aren't confident they will find us in time.”

“No. I'm sorry, but I'm not.”

Katarina's voice reached them through the thick walls. She was yelling at someone. Blake strained to hear her. Heidi stood and repositioned the wheelbarrow in front of them like a shield.

The yelling grew louder and then ended.

“I'd like to hear your horrible plans, if it's all the same to you,” he whispered to Heidi.

“I've got a tiny knife she didn't discover when she searched me,” she said. “You're tall enough to stand on the wheelbarrow and try to cut through the ceiling where the light fixture is. As far as I can tell, it's the only weak spot in this place. If we could get a big enough hole in the ceiling, I could get up there and catch her by surprise.”

“You're right. That's a horrible plan.”

“It's the best I've got. Do you have a better one?”

He loved how she asked. No rancor or animosity. No challenge. She actually thought he might have a better idea.

He wished he did.

“I've got nothing, but then, my brain is still scrambled. What did she do to me?”

“Probably the same thing she did to me. It's a paralytic absorbed through the skin. It's powerful but not long-lasting. Keep moving around. It will help. Water would be a good idea and she brought some in here, but after Maggie fell asleep, I was afraid to touch it or any of the food.”

The door rattled and Blake stepped in front of Heidi and Maggie. “I'm afraid this is where I leave you,” Katarina said. “I need you to know, this isn't how I wanted things to end.”

A door slammed.

The silence that followed was broken when Heidi pounded on the door. The knob rattled as she tried to yank it from the door. “Let me help,” he said. Together, they pulled and twisted. They kicked at the door, rammed their shoulders into it. It wouldn't budge.

Heidi used her knife on the screws. It took forever in the dark, but eventually, she got the knob loose enough that they were able to pull it from the door. Blake looked through the opening. A faint light flickered in through a window he could see about fifteen feet away, but it didn't illuminate the room they were in at all.

“She must have braced the door somehow,” he said.

“I think you're right.”

He turned to her, pulling her close, running his hands through her hair, then kissing her face. “I love you,” he said. “I know it's a little late to be mentioning it, but it's true. I love you and I want to be with you forever. I'll sell my share of the business and move to DC if that's what you want. I know you're probably thinking it's easy for me to say that since we are about to die, but I mean it. I've been thinking about it for a while. I don't ever want to be apart from you.”

Heidi's hand covered his lips. “I love you, too,” she said and pressed her lips to his. “When we get out of this, we can talk about it more. There's an FBI resident agency in Asheville. I've heard they're hiring...”

He kissed her again. “You think we can figure this out?”

“I know we can,” she said. “First, we have to figure out how to get out of here.”

“Then hand me your knife and point me toward this light fixture.”

Blake pulled the wheelbarrow over and stood on it. Heidi's hand wrapped around his and she placed the rubber handle of the knife in his palm.

Blake found the housing for the light and began cutting away at the Sheetrock. Once he got a decent opening, he returned the knife to Heidi and pulled at the Sheetrock with his hands. Dust flew in his eyes.

“Hang on,” Heidi said as a piece fell to the floor. “Let me slide Maggie over.”

With Maggie out of the way, he continued to rip at the Sheetrock, using the knife when necessary.

His arms shook with exertion, but he had managed to open up a space a few feet wide. The problem was he couldn't tell if there was any open space above or if there was another floor.

“Put me on your shoulders and let me see what I can feel,” Heidi said. She scrambled up and they both had to duck to keep her from hitting her head on the ceiling. Once back under the hole, her body shifted as she inspected the opening.

“It's...almost...big enough,” she said, straining with each word. “I can't see anything, but it feels cooler. My guess is that I'd be in the rafters. If I can get up here, maybe I'll be able to see some stars or something that will give us a little light.”

She climbed back down and he went to work on the hole with new vigor. He'd been at it two or three minutes when Heidi's hand on his leg made him pause.

“What is it?”

“Do you smell that?”

He sniffed the air. Maybe? He sniffed again.

Heidi's grip on his leg tightened. “Smoke. I smell smoke,” she said. Fear permeated her words. He sniffed again.

Yes. Smoke.

He peaked through the doorknob. The room was awash with flame. Katarina Kovac was going to burn them alive.