Mountain Shelter. Cassie Miles

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СКАЧАТЬ door, remembering herself in the bathroom when the knob had jiggled. Don’t be scared. It’s just a door. Shivers trickled up and down her spinal column as Dylan helped her out of her heather-blue trench coat. When he opened the door, her jaw clenched.

      And nothing happened. The boogeyman didn’t jump out. There was nothing to be scared of. The sooner she remembered that, the better.

      After he hung up her jacket, he returned to her side. Towering over her, he pushed his glasses up on his nose with a forefinger. “You went through a scary time tonight.”

      “I’m fine.”

      “Yeah, you are.” Though she refused to meet his gaze, she knew he was watching her and had seen her fear. His voice was low and soothing. “Over the next couple days, you might have flashbacks or be jumpy or tense for no apparent reason. I’m sure you know all about post-traumatic stress. I mean, you’re a brain surgeon.”

      “Not a behaviorist.”

      “What’s that mean?”

      “There are many theories about how the brain works, and I can only speak for my own opinion. The source of many emotions can be pinpointed on the naked brain, but it’s extremely difficult to control behavior.”

      “Emotion isn’t your thing,” he said. “You’re into memory.”

      “With my neurosurgery, I can stimulate old memories that have already formed, but I can’t implant new memories without the experience.”

      “But you don’t have to experience something to recall it. I’ve learned about volcanoes but never seen one erupt.”

      She hadn’t intended to meet his gaze, but she found herself looking into his cool, gray eyes and seeing the sort of deep calm associated with yogis and gurus. At the same time, she realized that her moment of panic and flashback had passed. Dylan had distracted her by luring her into lecturing him about her work.

      “Very clever,” she said. “You handled me.”

      He directed her to a side chair upholstered in a patterned blue silk that echoed the colors of the wallpaper, while he sat on the sofa and opened a metal suitcase on the glass-topped coffee table in front of them. After removing a laptop computer, he flicked a switch on a mechanism inside the case. A small red light went on.

      “What’s that?” she asked.

      “It means we can talk freely in here without fear of someone listening in.”

      The various dials and keyboards in his case were nowhere near as complicated as the equipment she dealt with in neurosurgery. “You can be more technical, Dylan. I’m capable of understanding.”

      “I don’t doubt your smarts,” he said. “I just don’t expect you to be interested in my security tools.”

      “Unless I say otherwise, you may talk to me in the same depth you use with your colleagues.”

      “That won’t be too hard.” Dylan called out to his partner. “Hey, Mason, do you want to know about the circuitry in my white-noise machine?”

      His partner stepped into the bedroom doorway. “As long as it works, I don’t care.”

      She glanced between the two men. Mason was clean-cut and muscular. Dressed in a leather jacket and khakis, he looked like a bodyguard. Dylan was a different story. With his horn-rimmed glasses, his purple Colorado Rockies baseball cap on backward and his long hair, he didn’t appear to be a tough guy. And yet, if given a choice, she’d pick Dylan every time. There was something about him that connected with her.

      He motioned for Mason to join them as he explained the machine to her. “Much of my equipment is proprietary. I invented this stuff for my own use in security. This machine emits a noise that disrupts any other listening device but is too sensitive for our ears to hear. While we’re in this room, we can speak freely.”

      As a neurosurgeon, she understood the concept of blocking different frequencies of sound, but she didn’t understand why this sort of machine was needed. “Who would want to overhear?”

      “I have something important to discuss.” He glanced toward his partner. “You need to hear this, too.”

      “Shoot.”

      “There were prints found in Jayne’s bedroom. They were on the wineglass that was on the bedside table.”

      “I didn’t pick up the glass.” Revulsion coiled through her as she visualized the man in the ski mask touching her things.

      “The fingerprint belonged to Martin Viktor Koslov, a hired assassin from Venezuela who learned his trade with the Columbian drug cartels.”

      Mason growled, “What kind of trade are you talking about?”

      “Think of the worst torture you heard about interrogation methods,” Dylan said. “Koslov has worked for Middle Eastern emirs and superrich oil men from his home country. For the past eight years, he’s been sighted in the US, including Alaska.”

      “Why Alaska?” She couldn’t imagine why an assassin would take a side trip to Juneau.

      “The pipeline,” Dylan said. “He’s not a bomber or a terrorist, but he’s suspected in several murders, thefts and complex arms deals.”

      Mason looked toward her and asked, “How did you get away from this guy?”

      “He said he didn’t want to hurt me.” She remembered his accent. It didn’t sound like Spanish, but she really didn’t know. Languages weren’t her thing. “Detective Cisneros seems to think he wanted to kidnap me and hold me for ransom so he could get something from my dad.”

      “Your father is...?”

      Dylan filled in the blank. “Peter Shackleford, international oilman with interests in the Middle East and in South America.”

      Mason nodded. “Kidnapping seems like a neat, logical working theory.”

      “I’m not so sure,” Dylan said. “I’d like more evidence, starting with interviewing the person who disabled Jayne’s home alarm system. That hack took a high level of expertise, and I can only think of three or four locals who could pull it off.”

      “Did you contact them?” Mason asked.

      “I’m the bodyguard, not the investigator. I gave their names to Detective Cisneros.”

      Mason sank back in his chair and rubbed his hand across his forehead. “What do you want me to do?”

      “That depends on Jayne.” Dylan turned to her. “You had a surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. My advice is for you to postpone.”

      Though she had been thinking the same thing, she didn’t like having her plans dictated by some South American assassin. Koslov didn’t rule her life. She took her cell phone from her jeans pocket and checked the time. “It’s just after midnight. If I could sleep until nine in the morning, I could operate.”

      “We don’t know what to expect from this kidnapper. СКАЧАТЬ