Hidden Identity. Alice Sharpe

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СКАЧАТЬ He ran to the back door and snatched the loaded rifle he kept there, then let himself out and moved to the northeast corner of the deck, where he could track the helicopter.

      One thought drummed in his head: they found me.

      He expected the aircraft to land in the meadow, close to the house. He expected an army of men to disembark, guns blazing, Holton’s revenge swift and lethal.

      He didn’t expect the helicopter to look so ancient. It wasn’t his adversary’s style. Was this flyby simply a matter of a stranger’s harmless curiosity about the old house or was it more than that? Had Holton employed mercenaries?

      The helicopter didn’t land and that left Adam relieved and yet confused. It flew toward the river, gently descending above the water, where it remained for a minute or two. Then the aircraft tilted suddenly—that had to throw the passengers around a little. He stepped around the corner of the house to see better. The chopper moved away from the river, briefly hanging over the meadow, then it climbed eastward toward the forest, its movements jerky and unpredictable.

      Engine trouble? Trouble of some sort, that was for sure, including trouble for him. Even if it disappeared over the far mountains, the fact that it had circled the house meant that it was time for him to clear out. It might have been reconnaissance for a ground-based unit who even now could be advancing via the only road connecting this cabin and the nearest town. He’d rigged a sensor down at the beginning of his twisting lane. Once activated, it would beep the monitor in his pocket and he would know he had about ten minutes to disappear.

      A sudden noise caught his attention and he turned to see the helicopter’s aft rotor tangle with the top of the tallest tree. Parts went flying. The aircraft seemed to stall. Nose down, it disappeared into the forest. He jumped off the porch, the rifle still clutched in his hand. While his brain told him to get the hell out of there while he could, his heart said he had to see this through.

      Crashes and thuds echoed from the forest. A fiery explosion seemed inevitable, but none came, just the continuing cacophony of breaking trees and mangled metal. He vaulted the rock wall and sprinted across the meadow, ever wary of a sniper but growing more convinced by the moment that what had happened was an accident and that lives were in danger.

      And this meant other people would be coming, as well. Friend or foe, this crash would be investigated and that would bring killers and cops right to his doorstep. Turn around and go back—get out of here now. He ignored his own warning.

      After the full light of the meadow, the forest seemed dank, dark, secretive. He’d been away from Arizona, his home state, for more than a year now, and never more than at this moment did he miss the open desert terrain and the warm, dry air. The underbrush was difficult to traverse. His own crashing noises echoed in the dense closeness as he headed in the direction he figured the chopper had gone down. There were few other sounds.

      He finally emerged into a clearing of sorts, but that quickly erupted into a battered, mowed-down trail of broken branches and flattened saplings. It had to be at least thirty feet across, lined with scarred trees and pieces of metal strewn about. The faint smell of fuel urged him forward. And sitting at the end of the trail was the downed chopper, bladeless now, the rear end still mostly intact, no signs of fire or of life.

      He made his way down the newly created and narrowing path to the tail of the helicopter. As he moved forward, he saw the crumpled metal of the front of the chopper. It was about half as big as it should have been, thanks to an old growth stump that had put an end to its forward momentum.

      The cargo door was the only possible way to get inside. It had jammed, though. He searched for something to use as a makeshift crowbar.

      “Anyone in there?” he yelled as he picked up a branch and discarded it. Too flimsy. He continued the search. “Hello, can anyone hear me? Can you open the cargo door?”

      He finally found a long piece of metal, probably a portion of one of the blades, maybe a piece of a skid. Using that, he leveraged it into the door crack and shoved. Eventually, the metal moved and he was able to slide the door half-open.

      Boxes and crates filled the rear of the aircraft. The passenger and pilot seats had been pushed back. There was just room for him to step inside and almost stand. He shifted debris to clear his way to the pilot, where he paused a second before putting his fingers against the pilot’s throat, but it was for confirmation only. The poor guy sat half-crushed behind the controls; broken glass had slashed his face and hands. His right shoulder sported an ugly wound that looked like a gunshot. That, however, didn’t make sense.

      Turning his attention to the passenger, Adam moved aside leafy branches and glass until he could check for a pulse. He detected a faint heartbeat and immediately began clearing debris, careful when he came across a two-inch pine spur lodged in the base of the man’s throat. That’s when he also noticed the guy had one limp hand threaded around the grip of a revolver. The safety was off. Adam gingerly reached for the weapon but as he did so, the guy’s eyes opened and his grip tightened.

      “Take it easy,” Adam said.

      The man struggled to focus as blood ran down his forehead and cheeks. He finally croaked out a single word. “You...”

      “I’ll get you out of here,” Adam said, though he knew that was probably impossible. “Stay still.”

      “You’re...a—a dead man,” the injured man mumbled. As he spoke, he managed to raise his arm until it bumped against the spur lodged in his throat. The branch ripped free, leaving a hole big enough around to stick a thumb through. The guy’s hand immediately fell back to his lap as blood spurted from his carotid artery. Adam tore off his own shirt to hold against the gushing wound but it was too late. He’d bled to death in those few short seconds. Adam shrugged his shirt back on as he studied the lifeless and unfamiliar face.

      There wasn’t a doubt in Adam’s mind that this guy had been sent by Holton. He dug out the man’s smartphone from his jacket pocket. As it required a code, he wiped the blood off the dead man’s right pointer finger and held it against the fingerprint reader to get around the code, his heart sinking when he saw a call had been made to Arizona within the last thirty minutes. “Leave a number” was the only response when he hit Call. He turned it off, wiped off his own fingerprints and put the phone back where he found it. There was no reason to try to disarm the GPS system, not when the gadget was sitting in a downed aircraft with an emergency locator of its own. He scanned the guy’s wallet. It held what was probably a fake ID and a little cash. He replaced it. Straightening up, Adam glanced at the pilot, but there was no way to access the poor man’s pockets. The gunshot wound in the man’s arm kind of cinched his position as a hapless victim in this scenario anyway.

      This had to be the work of Holton.

      He dug his phone from his pocket and punched in a number.

      “Yes?”

      “Whip? It’s me, Adam.” He heard the warning buzz that announced the burner phone was running out of prepaid time. “Holton found me again. I’m headed out of the mountains.”

      “Did the fake ID I sent you come?”

      “I don’t know. I was going to check today, but not now. I’ll have to leave without it.” Adam felt terrible that he’d asked Whip, a cop, to break the law to help him get false identification, and now it was pointless.

      “Damn. Are you okay?”

      “Yeah. There was a crash—the hit man is dead. This is important. СКАЧАТЬ