Mountain Investigation. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ the cabin, the motion-sensitive lights snapped on. The bright illumination showed a wide swath of stumps in stark relief, mute evidence of the terror that had driven her to chainsaw every tree within a fifty-foot radius of the cabin, and install a low-lying, solarpowered electric fence to keep the animals away.

      In the center of the clear-cut zone sat the cabin. It was sturdy and thick-walled, its proportions slightly off, a bit top-heavy, and if she’d thought a time or two that she and the cabin were very much alike, there was nobody around to agree or disagree with her. She lived alone, and was grateful for the solitude. She used to think she wanted the hustle and bustle of a city, and the mob of friends she’d lacked during childhood. Now she knew better. Once a loner, always a loner.

      Reaching into her pocket for the small remote control she carried with her at all times, she deactivated the motion-sensitive alarms. The security system wasn’t wired to call for any sort of outside response, first because she was too far off the beaten track for the police to do her any good, and second because she didn’t have much use for cops. That wasn’t why she’d installed the system; she’d wanted it as a warning, pure and simple. If she was in the cabin and trouble appeared, she’d know it was time to get out—or dig in and defend herself. If she was somewhere in the forest, she’d have a head start on escaping.

      The Bear Claw cops and the Feds had offered her protection, of course, first when Lee had been arrested for his terrorist activities, and again when he’d escaped. But those offers had all come with questions and sidelong looks, and the threat of people in her space, watching her every move, making it clear that she was as much a suspect as a victim.

      Victim. Oh, how she hated the word, hated knowing she’d been one. Not as much a victim as the people Lee had killed, or the families who mourned the dead, but a victim nonetheless. Worse, she’d been selfish and blind, not looking beyond the problems in her marriage to see the larger threat. She had to live with that, would do so until the day she died. But that didn’t mean she had to live with strangers—worse, cops and FBI agents—reminding her of it, and hounding her and her parents. Not when there wasn’t anything she could do to help them find her ex-husband.

      “There’s no way he’s coming back here,” she repeated, shifting the shotgun farther back on her shoulder so she could fumble in her pocket for the keys to the log cabin’s front door. “He’d be an idiot to even try.”

      She unlocked the door and pushed through into the cabin, starting to relax as she keyed the remote to bring the motion-sensitive alarms back online.

      They shrieked, warning that something—or someone—had breached the perimeter in the short moment the alarms had been off.

      A split second later, a blur came at her from the side and a heavy hand clamped on her arm, bringing a sharp pricking pain. Jolting, Mariah screamed and spun, but the spin turned into a sideways lurch as her legs went watery and her muscles gave out.

      Drugs, she thought, realizing that a syringe had been the source of the prick, drugs the source of the spinning disconnection that seized her, dampening her ability to fight or flee. The tranquilizer didn’t blunt her panic, though, or the sick knowledge that she was in serious trouble. Her heart hammered and her soul screamed, No!

      She fell, and a man grabbed her on the way down, his fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arms. His face was blurred by whatever he’d given her, but she knew it was Lee. She recognized the shape of her ex’s body, the pain of his hard grasp and the way her skin crawled beneath his touch.

      He took the remote control from her, and used it to kill the alarm. Then he leaned in close, and his features became sharp and familiar: close-cropped, white-blond hair; smooth, elegant skin; and blue eyes that could go from friendly to murderous in a snap.

      Born to an upper-class Boston family, the second son of loving parents with a strong marriage, Lee Chisholm had been sent to the best schools and given all the opportunities a child could’ve asked for. Logic said he should have matured into the cultured, successful man he’d looked like when Mariah had met him. And on one level, he’d been that man. On another, he’d been a spoiled monster whose parents had hidden the fact that he’d had a taste for arson and violence. That nasty child had grown into a man in search of a cause, an excuse to indulge his evil appetites. He’d found that cause during his years at an exclusive, expensive college, where he’d been recruited into the anti-American crusade.

      As part of a terrorist cell, under the leadership of mastermind al-Jihad, he’d gone by the name of Lee Mawadi, and had arranged to meet Mariah because of her father’s connections to one of al-Jihad’s targets. Lee had wooed her, courted her, pretended to love her…and then he’d used her and set her up to die.

      She hadn’t died, but in the years since, she hadn’t really lived, either. And now, seeing her own death in her ex-husband’s face, she cringed from him, her heart hammering against her ribs, tears leaking from her eyes.

      Lee, no. Don’t! she tried to say, but the words didn’t come, and the scream stayed locked in her throat because she couldn’t move, couldn’t struggle, couldn’t do anything other than hang limply in his grasp and suck in a thin trickle of air.

      Then he let go of her. She fell to the floor at the threshold of the cabin and landed hard, winding up in a tangled heap of arms and legs, lax muscles and terror.

      He crouched over her, gloating as he held up the small styrette he’d used to drug her. “This is to shut you up and keep you where you belong,” he said. Then he stood, drew back his foot and kicked her in the stomach. Pain sang through her, radiating from the soft place where the blow landed. She would’ve curled around the agony, but she couldn’t do even that. She could only lie there, tears running down her face as he said, “That was for forgetting where you belong, wife. Which is by my side, no matter what.”

      He grabbed her by the hood of her parka and dragged her inside, kicking the door shut.

      The sound of it closing was a death knell, because Mariah knew one thing for certain: the man she’d once promised to love, honor and obey didn’t intend to let her leave the cabin alive.

       Five days later

      Michael Grayson was a man on a mission, and he didn’t intend to let inconsequential details like due process or official sanction interfere. Which was why, just shy of six months after he’d nearly been booted out of the FBI for sidestepping protocol, Gray was back on the edge of the line between agent and renegade, between law officer and vigilante. Only this time he was well aware of it and knew the consequences; his superiors had put him on notice, loud and clear.

      The threats didn’t stop him from taking his day off to drive up through the heart of Bear Claw Canyon State Forest to the hills beyond, though, and they didn’t keep him from using a pair of bolt cutters on the padlocked gate that barred entry to a narrow access road leading up the ridgeline. Up to her house.

      He drove into the forest as far as he dared, just past a fire access road that marked the two-thirds point of the journey. He tucked his four-by-four into the trees, off the main track so it couldn’t be seen easily from the road, pointing it downhill in the event that he needed to get out of there fast.

      Then he started walking, staying off the main road and out of sight, just in case. As he did so, he tried to tell himself that it was recon, nothing more, that he just wanted to get a look at Lee Mawadi’s ex-wife six months after the prison break. But he couldn’t make the lie play, even inside his own skull. His gut said that Mariah Shore had secrets. There had to be a reason she’d moved into a cabin on a ridgeline that, on a clear day, provided СКАЧАТЬ