Mountain Investigation. Jessica Andersen

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      Chapter Two

      Gray stayed very still. He was wearing camouflage and stood hidden behind a screening layer of trees and underbrush; as long as he didn’t move, Mawadi shouldn’t be able to see him. Gray wasn’t totally motionless, though: his blood raced through his veins and his heart pumped furiously, beating in his ears on a rhythm that said he was right, the ex-wife was part of it, after all.

      And Lee Mawadi had very definitely not fled the country, as all the reports had indicated.

      The bastard stood there—blond and Nordic, looselimbed and relaxed, cradling a Remington shotgun in the crook of one arm as he scanned the forest. Then he headed for the corner of the porch, shouldered the shotgun, unzipped and urinated, all the while scanning the forest. He seemed to be looking for something, but what? Had he seen Gray skulking in the trees? Was he expecting company?

      Mawadi finished and rezipped, then turned toward the still-open door, calling, “You said they’d be here at five, right?”

      Gray didn’t hear the answer, couldn’t tell if the responding voice belonged to a man or a woman. His brain raced, trying to parse the tiny nugget of information. It was just past four o’clock, which meant the meeting was an hour away. And if he could figure out who was coming for the meeting, it could be a huge break in the case, allowing them to identify more of the terrorists, maybe even the traitors they suspected might be working within the Bear Claw Police Department, and maybe even the FBI itself. For half a second, excitement zinged through him at the thought of al-Jihad himself showing up. Gray would give anything to be the one to subdue all of them, the terrorists and the ex-wife, and put them where they belonged—in the ARX Supermax or a grave, either way was fine with him.

      Then Gray cursed, realizing that if the newcomers were driving up the mountain, he could be in serious trouble. The only way up the ridgeline to the cabin was the narrow track he’d come up, or the fire-access road that merged with the track just below where he’d parked. His four-by-four was off the road and somewhat hidden, but the concealment was far from foolproof. A driver coming up the lane might see the vehicle, even in the gathering dusk.

      Which meant he had two choices. One, he could retrace his path, pronto, in hopes of making it down the ridge and hiding the truck before the other vehicle turned up the road. Then he could boogie down the mountain, get into cell range and call for backup. Or two, he could stay put and hope his four-by-four escaped detection while he cobbled together some sort of a plan to subdue Mawadi and whoever else was in the cabin, then capture the others when they arrived.

      Gray wasn’t a glory seeker by a long shot, but for both personal and professional reasons, he liked the image of dragging in the murdering bastards himself. Not to mention that there was a good chance that even if he made it to cell range, SAC Johnson and the others would give him a less than enthusiastic response. Gray had cried “wolf” before and it had come to nothing, and then he’d dropped the ball on that damn message during the festival, with the result that al-Jihad and the others had very nearly succeeded in their aim of destroying a stadium filled with tens of thousands of city residents awaiting a benefit concert. Which meant that Gray wasn’t exactly the go-to guy for anything these days. For all he knew, Johnson would ignore his report and put him back on administrative leave for going near the cabin in the first place.

      All of which is one big, fat rationalization, Gray admitted inwardly, staying quiet because Mawadi was still on the porch. But spoken aloud or not, it was the truth. He was making up excuses for doing what he fully intended to do, whether or not it was reasonable. He was going in now and alone, not just because he didn’t trust Johnson and the other special agents in the Denver office, but because he didn’t trust the system itself. Not anymore.

      The system hadn’t stopped pampered rich-boy Lee Chisholm from taking his love of violence and his knee-jerk hatred of his father’s politics and turning it into terrorism. The system hadn’t been able to pin any one of a half-dozen other crimes on al-Jihad in the years between the 9/11 terror attacks and the Santa Bombings. The system had let down all the men, women and children who’d died in the attacks; it had failed them and their families twice over—once by not preventing the bombings and again by not keeping the terrorists behind bars. All of which meant the system couldn’t be trusted this time, either.

      That was why Gray had taken his day off to hike up the ridgeline, and it was why, even though he knew he should focus on returning Mawadi and the others to prison, in reality he wanted a far more permanent solution, and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Justice.

      An image flashed in his head, a baby in a PICU incubator, her tiny hands clinging to her breathing tube just as tenaciously as she’d clung to life for twenty-two endless hours.