Chapter 15
“It’s a dead end?”
“Yes, but look.” Dav shone the beam of
the light around the chamber they’d come into. A shaft of sunlight,
small and faint, shone from above them, but not enough to show what
the flashlight did.
Carrie’s jaw dropped. Literally. And
Dav laughed.
“Yes, I feel the same way,” he said.
“As if I’ve wandered into that Indiana Jones
movie we were discussing.”
“Good Lord, how many niches?” she
asked, counting as Dav moved the light over the crypts. The light
caught the flash of gold and beading and weaponry. The artifacts
glinted in the light, despite the dust of centuries.
“All the riches in the world and
nowhere to spend them,” he said, feeling unaccountably sad. What
good was wealth if you had no way to utilize it, and no one upon
whom to lavish the beauty of gold or gems? Hadn’t he already been
thinking that, thinking about a family and why he wanted a daughter
or son to carry on his legacy? Had he not already decided on
Carrie, he would have now. His admiration and desire for her soared
once more as he watched her, eyes alight with curiosity at their
find.
Hungry, tired and facing a return down
the difficult passage, she was still appreciative of the beauty, of
the history that lay before them. She moved along the niches, her
artistic interest outweighing any fear or revulsion when it came to
the skeletons. Then again, he had to admit they looked more like
Halloween props than real people.
He felt a wave of weakness. It could be
hunger, or it could be infection. Either one was potentially
debilitating. He knew his strength was waning. “Much as I hate to
say it, we should go back.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, still looking
at the niches.
“I hate to say this too,” he added,
“but we should take a gem or a link of gold or a coin. It may be
our only way to barter ourselves to freedom, or get
help.”
When she turned to him, her face wore a
mutinous expression in the flashlight’s crisp beam. “The site
shouldn’t be disturbed.”
“No, it shouldn’t. But if we can get
free, and we have to use whatever we take, I’ll buy it back and
we’ll see that this find is put into the right hands.”
She hesitated.
“I promise I will get it back if I can,
return it here, Carrie-mou. Do you doubt my word?”
She huffed out a breath. “No, I know
you’ll do it. It’s just...”
He nodded. “I know. I feel bad, but I
also wish to survive, to get you home.”
She nodded as well, and directed him to
shine the light more closely into one niche. A beautifully carved
bowl was held in the hands of the niche’s occupant. It held gems
and links of gold, some hammered, some smoothed. She pulled out
three items, and spoke, directing her words toward the occupant of
the niche: “We’ll bring them back. Thank you for the
loan.”
He said nothing about her promise to
the dead. He would have done the same, said the same. Some
superstitions crossed cultures, he decided.
She pocketed the gold and gems and they
began the onerous return journey.
When they got back to the waterfall, no
light could be seen. The orb of sunshine was gone.
“Do we stop, or try the other path?”
she said, wearily.
He felt himself waver again, felt the
flush of heat that washed over him, then receded.
Fever. Exactly what they’d been
dreading.
“I do not wish to go on,” he admitted.
“But I have begun to feel feverish, Carrie-mou. I think we must
keep moving. If there is any hope that this last tunnel leads out,
we must try.”
Fear made a mask of her features. “You
need more aspirin, and rest.”
He shook his head. “No resting. If I
get worse, you cannot carry me, my flame. The aspirin, I will take,
however.” Every ache, scrape and pain in his body made itself known
as he spoke. The aspirin would be most welcome.
He took two with a gulp of the water,
and they set out down the second tunnel. It ran straight, and even
when it narrowed at several points, Dav could still squeeze
through. They crossed two more pits as well.
Dav was beginning to believe the tunnel
would never end in anything, other than more tunnels, when the
light showed them yet another dead end. This time, however, instead
of a rounded room or platform, a stacked wall of flat, regular,
worked stone blocked the way. He heard Carrie’s moan of
despair.
“It is not a cave, Carrie-mou,” he
said, holding on to that thought with everything he had. “It is
something we have not yet seen, therefore it could be a way out,
even when it does not seem to be.”
As they neared the wall, Dav thought he
smelled fresher air. He stopped her. “I feel a breeze again. Check
with the light,” he ordered. If she resented his terse command, she
said nothing.
Together they braced themselves and she
began to play the light along the floor leading to the wall, then
up the left side, over the ceiling and down the right side. She had
just begun to slide the beam down toward the floor when Dav noticed
the discrepancy.
“Wait. We have to get
closer.”
They moved closer, step by step, until
they were at the wall. The light disappeared into a narrow margin
between the stacked stone and the wall of the tunnel. Beyond the
crevice, the light bounced off rocks and dirt. The stone and earth
were damp—he could see that in the narrow beam.
“Wait, go back to the right,” he said,
peering into the darkness. The light played back and he saw green.
Leaves. Vines, of some kind.
“What is it?” Carrie demanded, gripping
his belt tightly as she moved the light at his
direction.
“Leaves. Something grows in there. I
think that means it’s close to the light, to the surface.” He was
excited now. If there was a way out, they were saved. “What time is
it? How close to daylight?” He was fairly sure they wouldn’t be
able to assess things with just the flashlight, not from here,
through the eight-inch-wide opening.
She passed him the light, her hands
shaking, and dug out her broken watch. “It’s after midnight,” she
said, her earlier excitement giving way to sudden weariness as she
realized how long they’d been lost in the tunnels.
“Then we will sit here and rest until
the sun rises,” he decided.
“Good plan,” she said. “Or as good as
any,” she added as they slid down the wall, sitting with their
backs to the heavy bricks so the faint breeze could play over their
sweaty faces. “Do you feel that?” she added, lifting her face and
turning it toward the crevasse.
“The breeze? Yes, it feels good.” It
felt more than good. It felt heavenly. The stir of air made him
realize how hot he was. Before he’d completed the thought, however,
he shivered. The fever was making itself known.
She must have felt the shiver, because,
to his surprise, her hand touched him gently, resting on his
forehead. “I’m not sure how high your fever is, Dav, but even with
the aspirin, you’re burning up.”
“Yes, I know, my
Carrie-mou.”
“Is there anything I can do?” she said,
kneeling now at his side. “More aspirin? Or is it too
soon?”
“Yes, to the aspirin. And no, I don’t
think it’s too soon. It has been several hours.” He gratefully took
the canteen and drained it, knowing they had the other three left.
“And then, we sleep.”
“Okay,” she said, and she seemed to
appreciate that he’d set an agenda. In fact, she sounded weary and
discouraged. “That sounds like a plan.” She busied herself for a
few moments, finding the canteen and the aspirin. She also got out
a power bar and split it between them. “I forgot I had these, but
we need the energy and the calories.”
“We have burned energy today, haven’t
we?” he said lightly, thinking of their lovemaking as well as their
travels.
“Yes, we have,” she said, and in the
radiance of the upturned light, he saw her smile.
It was her smile that made the decision
for him. Tomorrow, when they woke, he would tell her that he
planned to ask her to marry him. In fact, he decided, leaning back
and closing his eyes, he would ask
her.
She turned off the light and he pulled
her securely under his arm so that he could hold her and they could
be close. Although they’d been hot from all their exertions, and he
even hotter from the fever, the night breeze was chilling them
both. It felt good now, but would be colder by morning, especially
if his fever did not abate.
With his battered coat around his
shoulders, and around Carrie’s back, he sat awake thinking. His
mind circled and circled long after she’d fallen asleep, her head
pillowed on his chest.
He would ask her to marry him. He
wanted to—needed to. Nothing about his feelings for her had
changed. He rubbed at his chest, and whispered, “Andras.” Husband. What kind of husband would he be?
Would he be what she wanted? Needed? On one hand, he felt sure she
would agree to marry him. But his knowledge of himself was less
solid, less quantifiable. There was the cry of a wild animal beyond
the wall, and he felt his heart leap in both hope and
fear.
The cry of an animal that close meant
freedom might be near. But it also meant danger. Carrie shifted in
her sleep.
“Shhhh, darling,” he soothed, and she
murmured something unintelligible and settled once more. He didn’t
think anything could get through the narrow opening to harm them,
but he would watch. And listen. Whatever it was would get to him
first, so at least he could protect her.
Another thought occurred to him. Unless
she was protected with the pills women took, she could also be
pregnant. Not likely, he realized, but stranger things had
happened.
He fell asleep dreaming of daughters
who looked like Carrie and his mother, and sons that were sturdy
and strong, dark-haired and blue-eyed, and calling him
father.
“Sir?” Marjorie called to him as he was
about to exit the plane. Her brow was creased in a frown, so he
presumed that she was worried yet again about disturbing him. He
sighed, but smiled.
“Yes, my dear?”
“There is another call for you,” she
said, sounding a bit breathless. “Would you like to take it here on
the plane, or should I have it routed to the car?” She hesitated
and he began to see the issue. Routing to the car, here in
Guatemala, might be slightly more challenging than it was in the
United States.
“I’ll take it here. José!” he called
down the steps, catching the attention of his local driver. “Stow
the bags; I’ll be there in a moment.”
José nodded, not attempting to speak
over the noise of local air traffic.
He accepted the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Sir, there’s been an issue.” It was
the man he’d sent to watch Niko.
“Yes, go on.” Irritation rose within
him. He didn’t like it when things went awry.
“Two hunters of ours were tracking that
high-value animal and its mate.”
“As we discussed,” he said, irritated
that they were covering the same ground.
“I’m afraid the hunters suffered a
mishap. They’re going to have to turn in their hunting
licenses.”
Dead, then. Hmmm. Not
good, and not part of the plan.
Fury singed him, then receded. His man
was right to report in; it wouldn’t do to take the irritation out
on him. “Do we know what caused the mishap?”
“No, not at this time,” the man replied
tersely. “I’m checking options and possible sources. It may be
there were snakes in the grass, but nothing points to a
snakebite.”
“I see.” Had Davros bought one of
Niko’s men? Had Gates Bromley figured out where Niko had stashed
Dav? He wondered how he could shift these new developments to his
advantage. It might be an opportunity to pursue, to give Davros’s
people a lead and be the rescuer this time. Give him more time to
live now, and kill him later when things were clearer. “Has there
been any sign of the rare beast, or has it escaped its
containment?”
“No, sir.”
“Interesting. Thank you for letting me
know. I will consider our next move. Stand by for more...” He
hesitated, not wanting to say “orders” or “instructions” on an
unsecured network. “Communications.”
“Will do.” He detected relief in the
man’s voice, and let a wry smile twist his lips. They were always
so surprised when he didn’t yell. “Thank you, sir.”
He pondered the new development. Was
there a third player in the field? He had been sure he’d tied up
all the loose ends. No one in Niko’s sphere, now that he’d
eliminated Niko’s team, had the skills to effectively take out
three of his men without leaving a trace his man could find. The
fact that the grate was still locked, with Davros apparently still
inside, puzzled him as well. It would be interesting to see what
Niko reported when he called
in.
Ana and Gates had holed up in the small
hotel at the game reserve where they’d secured space. Here in the
offseason, the rates were ridiculously low and the proprietors were
thrilled to have the team take more than half the available rooms.
They were going to fan out from here, having come to the hotel
straight from the hangar. Holden and Callahan would process
everything, see if they could get a further direction from this
point.
“What if we really have an inside
breach?” Ana asked her pacing husband. “What do we
do?”
“It would explain some
things.”
“Things?” she said. “What
things?”
“Little things that went wrong last
year, things that could have been chance and could have been
interference, but I couldn’t ever pinpoint the source and I knew
they hadn’t come from outside or from our known
enemies.”
He looked grim and Ana didn’t blame
him. When and if they could catch their mole, she decided she would
leave discipline to Gates. It wouldn’t be pretty, and she’d bet
there would be both personal retribution as well as lawyers
involved in a great deal of it.
That brought her back to thinking about
Dav. “It’s been nearly five days, Gates. What are the
chances?”
“The ransom note was delivered three
days in,” he said, instead of answering. “We can’t judge by timing
on this one.”
“Gates.” All the compassion she had for
him and her own fear made the one word come out like a combination
plea and question.
“I know, I know,” he said, raking a
hand through his dark hair in frustration. His thick hair was
darkened to nearly black with perspiration and his fingers left
grooves in the heavy layers. The rooms were stuffy and closed in,
and yet it wasn’t warm enough to want the air-conditioning on.
“There are so many factors here. We have kidnappers who are well
organized, well supplied and funded. We have the death at Carrie’s
gallery, which is connected. Presumably the girl
there—”
“Inez.” Ana supplied the girl’s name.
“Art student, parttime employee for events, moves up to full-time
when Cal leaves.”
“Yes, Inez,” he continued. “Presumably
she was their connection to be sure that the date between Carrie
and Dav went off as scheduled. She was probably instructed to let
someone know when they left, keep the timetable right up to par.
She probably wasn’t aware that she was doing it, Baxter says she
had a new man in her life, according to her friends. One about whom
she was secretive. Obviously, it’s not good to keep those kind of
secrets,” he added grimly. “That said, she wasn’t our inside leak; she wasn’t even there last
year.”
“And yet she died because she knew
someone’s face. Did Bax get anything off the security
tapes?”
“Man, wearing a hoodie, enters and
sweeps the girl off her feet. This is, we presume, the new mystery
boyfriend. They suck face on the way to Carrie’s office, making it
obvious he knew her and had a relationship with her, probably for
some time, since she let him in without hesitation. For five
minutes, the camera shows an empty hallway, then goes
off.”
“No camera in Carrie’s
office?”
“No. Then again, I don’t want one in
mine either,” Gates acknowledged. “Next thing the camera shows is
the wall of the corridor, so the guy went and moved the camera so
it wouldn’t show him leaving. It wasn’t off long enough to trigger
the backup alarms. He knew what he was doing.”
“No doubt.” She said nothing else,
knowing that he had to walk through the crime scene in his mind,
feel the pattern if there was one. They hadn’t had the luxury of
walking through it in person. Now they had to think it through in
order to find a next step.
“So,” Gates continued, oblivious to her
thoughts. “Then, as the whole restaurant deal goes down, with this
guy at the gallery doing the deed with the gi—Inez.” Gates caught
himself and used her name. “Is he a dupe, a cog? Or is he a major
player? I have no idea. The restaurant op went essentially without
a hitch on their part. Sure,” he said, waving a hand to indicate
their opponent’s negligent attitude toward life, “they would
probably have preferred not to kill anyone, but hey, collateral
damage, right?” He ran his hands into his hair again. “So they’re
not amateur operators. We know that.”
“Professionals all the way. They were
in and out of that restaurant with Dav, with decoys flying in all
directions, within four minutes. Police response couldn’t get past
the camera barriers and they were slow anyway because there were
legitimate permits for filming and mock gunfire. Cops thought the
calls were just neighbors who hadn’t known they were filming there.
The security guards were real hires as well. They slowed everything
down because they thought they were protecting the
set.”
“Mass confusion,” Gates snapped, but
Ana heard the renewed admiration in his voice. “Brilliant, really.
And in the middle of the chaos, our real snatch-and-grab vehicle,
full of our real friends, gets away clean. I’d bet they made a
transfer within blocks to a van or another SUV that had nothing to
do with the set.”
“Another lead for Bax to tug.” Ana made
a note to e-mail him that potential directive. Who knew if it was
the way it had gone down, but if Gates thought it a reasonable
scenario, you could bet it was a good thing to check.
“Exactly. But not anything that helps
us now,” Gates growled in frustration.
“Keep playing it out,” she encouraged.
“Anything we can figure about the scenario may help. Laying it out
this way may give us more keys.”
He nodded, paced some more. “Okay, so
we’ve got a nondescript vehicle heading to general aviation at the
airport, maybe even to one of the smaller outlying airports for
smaller planes, maybe to a private strip.”
“Plenty of those around San Fran and
Oakland, in the outlying areas. Wouldn’t have to drive far. Palo
Alto, San Jose, San Martin, any of those would do it.”
“Right. No matter what, though, you get
them on a plane and head them south. We have the planes here, so we
know they left the States pretty soon after they nabbed Dav and
Carrie.”
“That evening at the latest,” she
added, thinking of the time line he was presenting.
“Which leads me to believe they cut
Dav’s and Carrie’s hair here, in Belize, for proof of life, rather
than in the States. The FedEx box came from a drop box in Texas,
but according to the lab, the box had traces of an adhesive only
used on the boxes in the Central American countries.”
“That would explain some of the time
lag,” Ana mused, counting the hours. “And can I say that it’s a
strange day when adhesives take us in the right
direction.”
“Tell me about it.”
She managed a grin at his appreciative
tone. Criminalistics rocked. “So, we’re postulating that either
someone brought it back to the States to send it to us, or they
sent it from here, but through an American account so there was no
question that the return addy and account number was San
Fran.”
“Exactly. And the sender’s address has
no connection to anything or anyone in Texas, Central America,
South America or the like. They make custom doll clothes. I’m sure
it was sent back to the States before it was shipped to us,” Gates
said with conviction. “No question that FedEx gave us real tracking
numbers and listings from their origin point in Texas. That means
we can be ninety percent sure it was shipped from where the label
indicated it shipped from.”
“And we won’t discuss or mention the
hacking you did to confirm that,” Ana said without a blink. “Okay,
so they get them here to Belize, tag ’em for the hair and the ring.
Do they then kill them?” She hated to ask it, hated to think it,
hated to think that this was a wild-goose chase or a fruitless
search to recover only bodies.
“No, not yet. If they only wanted Dav
dead, they could have killed him at that restaurant. He wasn’t
under cover, didn’t have on a vest, and his detail wasn’t close
enough to stop a bullet. If they knew that, they knew they could
take him out right then.”
Ana frowned, thinking it through. Her
heart clenched. “He wanted private time with Carrie,” she said,
knowing that had to be why the normally cautious Dav had ditched
his detail, kept them contained inside while he and Carrie went
outside.
“Yeah,” Gates agreed. “He was nervous
about the date. He wanted to really talk to her, get to know her on
more than a social level.”
“He’s in love with her, isn’t he?” Ana
asked, and her husband looked surprised.
“In love? Dav?” He looked shocked, as
if that hadn’t ever occurred to him.
“Duh, of course,” Ana said, rolling her
eyes. Men just didn’t get that sort of thing the way women did. For
the first time in days both she and Gates laughed. “Why else would
he want to have lunch out? Why else was he so nervous? Why else
would he ditch his detail and walk to the restaurant, make them
stay inside? It’s not Dav’s usual style. You taught him to be
übercautious, and last year only reinforced the
lesson.”
She added up the pieces in her head and
came out with a new theory. “That’s got to be it. She’s the bait
because someone saw that it was more than just interest. Someone
who knows him really well saw something between them that Dav
hasn’t admitted to himself, or to you or anyone. All they had to do
was wait for him to make his move, let himself be vulnerable to
her.”
Now it was her turn to pace, to think
it out. “He’s always with women. He’s dated beautiful women, smart
women, businesswomen. He works with women. Hell,” she exclaimed,
“half his business divisions are run by women. Who would have seen
that Carrie was different? Who on our team knows him that
well?”
“I would have said me,” Gates admitted
ruefully, “and I knew he was interested in her, but I didn’t catch
on that it was love.”
“Maybe Dav didn’t either.” Ana narrowed
her eyes, thinking hard. “Another woman might recognize it, or a
family member.”
“It isn’t Sophia, or the other side of
the family either, the ones with the artist son. They’re not sly
enough, connected enough.”
“I wasn’t thinking about them,” Ana
said. “I’m thinking about the dead brother. You said we couldn’t be
sure he was dead, right?”
“We’re as sure as we can be,” Gates
said, looking frustrated again. “Without seeing his
body.”
Ana shook her head. “I’m thinking we
need to go in that direction. Let’s get the Agency to find out what
the scuttlebutt is here in Belize about Niko. And in Somalia for
that matter.”
Ana began making notes from Gates’s
comments about Niko’s death and their investigation into it. If
Niko was alive, who better to be working this deal?
She had a gut sense that she was on the
right track. This smacked of something personal, really, really
personal. Family-hate personal. There wasn’t anyone other than
Niko, that they knew of, who would have such a deep and ugly grudge
against Dav.
Scribbling notes, she added scorned
lovers from youth and his mother’s people to the list. She was
about to go back a generation and ask Gates about Dav’s unlamented
father, uncles, and so on, when there was a knock on the door. Hand
on his weapon, Gates stepped to the side of the door.
“Gates? It’s Franklin.”
Ana nodded, recognizing the voice.
Gates opened the door. Franklin stood there with one of his dogs on
a lead.
“Yeah?”
“Manager asked me to tell you there’s a
fax for you at the desk. The new guy, Geddey, also called Callahan,
looking for you. Wants you to call in.”
“Thanks,” Gates said, then motioned Ana
ahead of him as they left together to get the fax.
Franklin walked around the compound
with another of the dogs heeling off-lead as he kept the younger
one on the lead. He watched them as they went into the office and
Ana wondered if he was their leak.
She wondered if the mole was with them.
Who could it be?
The fax was simple. It was a number.
The only other information on the sheet was one word, and a time:
Info. 10:00 am EST.
They got back to the room and Gates
fired up his computer to run the number, to reverse-directory list
it and check it with the phone company. Meanwhile, Ana called
Geddey.
“Mrs. Bromley,” Geddey answered on the
first ring. “Glad you got the message.”
“You didn’t call direct,” she stated.
“Why?”
“I wanted your team to know you needed
to call me. You said there was a mole, and I thought it might help
us flush him or her out if I was known to be calling you. I have
some new info on the extra prints.”
Ana’s pen was poised to take the
information down when Gates grunted a curse.
“Hang on, Geddey.” She turned to Gates.
“What?”
“Number’s a cell. A throwaway,” he
growled, tension radiating from every muscle. “It’s on, but it’s
bouncing even as I tune into it. San Fran. Oakland. LA. Seattle.
All West Coast, but bouncing like a rubber ball.”
“Watcha got?” Geddey demanded in her
ear.
“Bouncing throwaway cell. Someone faxed
us here, saying they had info.”
“How the hell did someone know you were
there?” Geddey demanded. “Hell, I don’t even have the fax number
for the damn place.”
“I’ve stopped asking,” Ana said
wearily. “This is more complicated than a plate of Silly String.
Too many loose ends, too many colors, too many sticky parts.” She
took a deep breath, trying not to take her frustration out on “the
new guy.” “We flush that mole we discussed, we may figure that out.
If we call this number, when they say, we may get the mole or we
may get more gooses to chase.”
“Let me know.” It was a demand, not a
request.
She suppressed the irritation she
immediately felt. Geddey had the tough job. He was waiting. And if
Dav was dead, he had no job. Pretty much sucked all the way
around.
“Will do,” she finally
acknowledged.
Geddey had a parting shot of his own.
“Oh, by the way, Declan woke up.”