Mountain Investigation (12 page)

“The baby was partly shielded by her parents’ bodies,” he said, his voice raw. “I got her out and pulled rank to get her on the first ambulance out of there, triage be damned. They tried…I know they tried. I was sitting outside the PICU when she passed twenty-two hours later. I’ve been trying to wipe al-Jihad and his network off the face of the planet ever since, and I don’t intend to stop until I do it, or die trying.”

He said the latter so matter-of-factly that she believed, with absolute certainty, that he would willingly lose his own life if he could be sure of taking the terrorists with him.

What would it be like, she wondered, to be the focus of an emotion that intense, coming from a man capable of such feeling?

“I’m sorry,” he said, “that was probably way more than you wanted or needed to know.” He turned away, heading for the door. “I’ll tell the others to come in and get food. Stay put for an hour and don’t give them any grief, okay? I need to walk.”

She told herself to let him go, that it would be better for both of them if she did. Instead, she said, “Wait.”

He paused, glancing back. “Yeah?”

“I’m coming with you. You don’t know these woods they way I do.”

His eyes went unreadable. “Thanks for the concern, but I found my way up here just fine the other day. Trust me, I won’t get lost.”

“No, but you won’t find what you’re looking for, either.”

“Which is what?”

“Peace,” she said simply. “A place where you can sit and think, or clear your mind and just let yourself forget for a little while.” She almost held out a hand to him, but thought better of it and walked past him to grab a jacket and shove her feet into a pair of hiking boots.

“You’re not leaving the cabin,” he said, but it was a weak protest.

“Bring the others if you want, or bring some of them and leave the rest here to guard our backs,” she said, suddenly realizing that she needed to make the visit for her own purposes as well. “I really think we should go. I think…I’m sure that if I can just clear my head, I’ll be able to remember what Lee said. I can’t do that here after all. Maybe I’ll be able to do it where we’re going.”

“Where is that?” he asked, and she knew she had him.

Now she did hold out a hand to him. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Protocol said they should stay in the cabin, but as far as Gray was concerned, protocol—or rather Johnson’s stubborn adherence to protocol regardless of the situation—had hampered the investigation too much for too long.

Besides, Johnson was off chasing other leads. The SAC hadn’t said as much, but Gray knew his boss held little hope of Mariah being able to help at this point. That was why Johnson had agreed so readily to the op up at the ridgeline cabin, and why he’d assigned a handful of relatively junior agents to the protective detail. Which was just fine as far as Gray was concerned, because it gave him greater leeway than he would’ve had otherwise—including the leverage to fall in with Mariah’s plan of hiking out into the woods to meditate. If they were lucky, it’d smooth out the edges they were both feeling, allowing her to relax and access her memories of being incarcerated.

He was rationalizing—he knew it. Logic dictated that they should stay put in the cabin, that Mariah
should try working with the self-hypnosis protocols the profiler, Thorne, had given her. Instead, they were going for a damn walk, not just because Mariah thought it would help her remember, but because he’d dumped his story on her, and in the aftermath she’d recognized that if he didn’t get out of the cabin, didn’t burn off some of the restless, edgy energy that always gathered when he thought about the day of the bombing, the consequences could be dire.

He’d thought he had the memories and the rage under control. Apparently, he’d been dead wrong.

Mariah led the way along the narrow, wooded trail, which was on a slight upgrade that headed up the mountain. Gray hiked immediately behind and off to the right of her, keeping a sharp eye on the scene ahead of them, ready to shield her if necessary. Behind him ranged three of the junior agents, one of whom had clearly let his gym time lag. Gray could hear the guy puffing with the effort of the climb, and felt zero sympathy.

They were all on high alert, though there had been no sign of anyone else in the woods. They’d barely seen any wildlife, either, just trees and more trees, with glimpses of the leaden gray sky becoming more frequent as they climbed higher and the forest thinned slightly.

Gray’s blood hummed with tension and exertion, clearing his mind and sharpening his senses.

The dull snap of the damp leaves and twigs beneath their boots was a rhythmic counterpoint to the rasp of their breaths, occasionally highlighted by the cry of a gliding hawk or eagle. The air moved through the treetops in a steady flow, forming a whisper of background
noise that took the edges off the churned-up feelings inside him. The air smelled of pine and rain, with an overtone of rot from the fallen trees that littered the forest floor, slowly returning to the soil they’d sprung from. And though Gray knew it was his imagination, or wishful thinking that everything could’ve been different between them, as he walked, he swore he could taste Mariah on his lips. They’d only kissed once, but her feel and flavor were locked into his sensory memory.

Ahead of him, she walked with loose, swinging strides. She didn’t look around, keeping her attention fixed on the root-strewn trail, but somehow he knew she was completely aware of her surroundings, fully tuned in to the forest.

After a half hour or so, she turned off the path and picked her way up a steep incline, using gnarled pine roots as footholds. When Gray followed, he saw that the roots she’d used were worn smooth. And when she paused on a narrow ledge and waited for him to catch up, he found that she’d led him to a small cave that had been invisible from below, shielded by overgrown scrub and a trick of light and angles.

“The others should wait here,” she said. “It’s tight quarters in the cave. It’ll be too crowded and distracting with five of us in there.”

Gray couldn’t argue, especially after the three junior agents had reached the ledge, forcing him to crowd her practically into the cave mouth. But he frowned. “There’s no way your ex could know about this place?”

She shook her head. “I moved here after he was
locked up, and this cave isn’t on any of the maps that I’m aware of. It’s not part of any of the old mine systems, and we’re way off the beaten tourist path.”

“You found it,” he pointed out.

She glanced at him and hesitated a moment, as if weighing her answer. Then she said, “I told you how my parents were always moving around? Well, my grandfather didn’t—he lived in Montana, in a set of woods not unlike these. I spent as much time there as my folks would let me, and whenever I visited, Grandpa took me out hiking. In part, I think he was trying to wear me out so I’d stop talking—I loved to talk to him, because it felt like he really listened.” She paused and flicked a glance beyond Gray to the other agents. Lifting a shoulder in a self-conscious half shrug, she finished, “Anyway, he was a woodsman from way back, sometimes hunting wildlife, though mostly shooting with his camera by the time I came along. He taught me how to read the woods, and how to find my way home.”

Gray wanted to tell her to clue him in on that last part, because it had been a long time since he’d been someplace that felt like home. That had been a large part of his snappishness that morning—the realization that coming into her cabin and finding her in the kitchen, surrounded by the smells of morning and warmth, had felt far too natural, bringing a wistful ache.

They were different in more ways than he could count. So why did it sometimes seem as if they clicked on levels he hadn’t even known would get to him?

“It’s not safe,” one of the junior agents said from
behind him. It took Gray a moment to figure out that the other man was talking about the cave.

“We’ll be fine,” Gray said, before he realized that he’d made the decision. He glanced back at the others. “Stay here and keep watch. I doubt the radios will work in the cave, so if we get in trouble, we’ll fire a couple of warning shots. If we’re not back in three hours, come in after us.” He fixed the third, lagging agent with a look. “And while you’re waiting, maybe you can talk to these guys about joining a damn gym.” When he turned back to Mariah, he caught the hint of a grin. “What?”

“For a second there, you sounded like your boss.”

Gray shuddered. “Please.” Gesturing to the cave, he said, “Lead on.”

She pulled a midsized flashlight out of her back pocket. Snapping it on, she directed the yellow cone of light into the cave. “Follow me.”

With a final warning look at the junior agents, whom he suspected had also been tasked with keeping tabs on him for Johnson’s benefit, Gray ducked through the scrub guarding the cave mouth and moved inside.

The temperature immediately dropped a good ten degrees and the air dampened, sending a shiver down the back of his neck. The cave walls were raw and uneven, arching up and over him by a foot or so. The floor was a craggy mix of stone and dirt, the latter of which had been flattened in places by a woman’s footprints, suggesting that Mariah came here often.

In a dozen long strides, he caught up with her as she forged ahead down the narrow arcade formed by the
cave. “No offense, but this isn’t exactly my idea of a meditation spot.” He pitched his voice low, but the sound bounced off the rock walls, making it seem as though he’d shouted.

“Patience, Grasshopper. And silence is a virtue.”

It surprised him to realize that he, a man who most often kept his own counsel, wanted to talk, the words coming from the fine hum of energy that ran through him. He didn’t think it was nerves, exactly, but he didn’t know what else to call it. Awareness, maybe, or the gut-deep sense that something important was about to happen.

He’d felt the same way once or twice on assignment, when his instincts had warned him that things were going south. He hadn’t had any premonition the day of the bombing, though, or the day he’d ignored another agent’s message and had nearly gotten a stadium full of innocents killed. Was it any wonder he didn’t trust his own instincts? They sure as hell hadn’t proven themselves when it counted.

“Through here,” Mariah said, poking her head into what looked like a crack in the wall of the main cave. “Watch your head.”

A hint of claustrophobia kicked in. “I don’t know—”

“It opens up a short way in,” she called back, her voice echoing strangely from within the small niche.

“I don’t like feeling trapped.”

“Who does? It’s worth it, I promise. Trust me.”

He wondered if she understood how rarely he trusted anything but rock-solid evidence. He didn’t even trust himself half the time. Yet still, he ducked and followed, crab-walking toward the faint yellow glow of her flash
light, hoping to hell she’d considered the fact that he was considerably larger than she was.

The tight fit brought a second, stronger surge of claustrophobia, but he kept going, ignoring the way the rock touched him on all sides and snagged at his clothing. Moments later, he realized that he wasn’t following the flashlight at all. He was headed toward daylight. Beyond, he could hear the sound of running water and the trill of a songbird.

The cave opening became clear, partly blocked by Mariah’s body, which was silhouetted against the light. When he reached her, she took his hand, the gesture somehow managing not to bump up against the boundaries they’d set, seeming friendly rather than sexual, as if saying they were in this together. “Come on,” she urged. “Take a look.”

She drew him through the opening, onto another stone ledge like the one they’d come from. Only this one didn’t overlook a forest path, he saw when he straightened to his full height. It overlooked a mountain paradise.

The small bowl of grass-covered earth was bounded on all sides by high rock walls, though dark niches here and there suggested that their particular cave wasn’t the only way in or out. In almost the exact center of the bowl, a pool of water formed a nearly perfect circle, fed by a tall, cascading waterfall that accounted for the roaring noise. At the opposite side, a narrow outflow disappeared between a pair of rock slabs that leaned into each other, forming a small triangular gap at their bases.

The ledge where Mariah and Gray stood was twenty, maybe thirty feet up from the grassy floor, giving them a breathtaking vantage point without distancing them from the splendor of the view.

“What do you think?” Mariah asked softly, not looking at him.

“You promised me peace,” he replied, his voice not echoing now that they were back outside. “I’d say you delivered.” He could practically feel the tension melt away from him, thought he felt the same from her through their joined hands.

“Come on.” She tugged him along the ledge, to where a treacherous-looking path wound down to the grassy floor.

He followed without protest, not feeling trapped anymore, but feeling humbled and somehow insignificant. Human. Very unlike the person he’d become over the past few years, who was more special agent than man, and who walked the thin line between justice and vigilantism.

She led him to the edge of the pool, where a flat rock hung over like a wide diving platform. Instead of the cool of the cave, the air beside the water was mild, and the spray from the cataract felt warm on the exposed skin of his hands and face.

“Is there a hot spring underneath?” he asked, pitching his voice so Mariah could hear him over the thunder of water.

She lifted her free hand in a gesture of “Who knows?” “Either that or the bowl somehow creates a miniclimate of its own. I’m a photographer, not a scientist. The water’s warm, that’s for sure.”

Which reminded him of something that got his gut twinging. “The pictures Lee wrecked. Were they of this place? Could he follow them here?”

She shook her head. “No, those were older pictures, ones I’d taken before I met Lee. Once he and I got married, there never seemed to be time for me to shoot pictures, or I was never in the mood. It wasn’t until later that I realized that was another way he was controlling me. Then, after the attacks there was the trial and all the problems with my parents and the media, and there was no way I could see beauty in the world the way I used to.” She paused. “I only started taking pictures again a few months ago, after I found this place. It gave me…perspective, I guess you could say. Maybe it’ll do the same for you.”

And maybe it’ll help you remember,
he thought about saying, but didn’t because he recognized the urge for what it was: a cop-out, a pretense that this was about the case rather than the two of them, and the simpatico connection that had grown between them whether either of them liked it or not. So rather than deflecting the moment, he gave in to it, dropping down to sit at the edge of the warm stone overhang, where a natural depression formed a place where they could lean back comfortably. He tugged her down beside him, no words seeming necessary.

They sat there for a long moment, watching the waterfall. The liquid curtain was both hypnotic in its relentless rhythm and surprising in the endless variety of patterns that arose from water falling along the exact same path.

After a while, he said softly, “I don’t remember the last time I talked about Ken, Trish and the baby. I guess
I got tired of everyone telling me their deaths were on al-Jihad and his people, not on me. But the whole mall trip was Trish’s idea of how to get me out of my own head. She said she just wanted to see me smile.”

“What would they say if they saw you now?”

Gray winced at the question he’d consciously avoided asking himself more than once before. “Doesn’t matter. They’re dead.”