Mountain Investigation
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
About the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Copyright
About the Author
Though shes tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, JESSICA ANDERSEN is happiest when shes combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days shes delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes youll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say hi!.
Chapter One
Mariah Shore paused on the ridgeline about a half mile from her isolated cabin. Standing in the lee of a sturdy pine, she scanned the woods around her with a photographers sharp eye. She wasnt looking for a subject for her old, beloved Canon 35 mm, though. The camera was stowed safely in her backpack for the hike home.
No, she was looking for a target for the Remington double-aught shotgun she held across her body.
Theres nobody there, she told herself, willing it to be true. But the woods were quieter than she liked, and the day was rapidly dimming toward the too-early springtime dusk.
With her curvy figure swathed in lined pants, a flannel shirt, a wool sweater and a down parka, and her dark curls tucked under a thick knit cap, shed be warm enough if she stayed put. But her hurry to get home wasnt about the warmth. It was about the cabins thick walls and sturdy locks, the line of electric fencing near the trees, and the motion-sensitive lights and alarms that formed a protective perimeter around the clear-cut yard.
The cabin was safe. Outside was a crapshoot.
She needed to keep moving, wouldve been nearly home if she hadnt heard a crackle of underbrush and seen a flash of movement directly in her path. Shed tried to tell herself it was just an animal, but shed spent the best weeks of her childhood following her grandfather through Colorado woods like these, and shed lived in the cabin thirty miles north of Bear Claw City for more than a year now. Shed hiked out nearly every day since arriving, first for peace and more recently for some actual work, as shed started to feel the stirrings of the creativity shed thought was gone for good. She knew the forest, knew the rhythms and inhabitants of the ridgeline. Whatever was between her and the cabin, her sense of the woods told her it wasnt a bear or wildcat. Her gut said it was two-legged danger.
Her ex-husband. Lee Mawadi.
Or was it?
Hes not there, she told herself. Hes long gone.
Shed kept tabs on the investigation, listening to the infrequent follow-ups on her small radio, and asking careful questions during her rare trips into the city for supplies. Because of that, she knew there had been no sign of Lee in the nearly six months since he and three other men had escaped from the ARX Supermax Prison, located on the other side of the ridge. She also knewor logic dictated, anywaythat her ex-husband had no real reason to come back to the area, and every reason to stay away.
After a long moment, when nothing could be heard but the muted sounds of the sun-loving animals powering down and the nocturnal creatures revving up as dusk fell along the ridgeline, she even managed to believe her own words.
Youre talking yourself into being scared, she muttered, slinging the double-aught over her shoulder and heading for home. Theres no way hes coming back here.
Lee might be a terrorist, a murderer and a liar, but he wasnt stupid.
Still, she stayed alert as she walked, relaxing only slightly when it seemed like the forest noises got a little louder, as though whatever menace the woodland creatures had sensedif anythinghad passed through and gone.
When Mariah reached the fifty-foot perimeter around 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 shed 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 shed 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 wasnt 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 didnt have much use for cops. That wasnt why shed installed the system; shed wanted it as a warning, pure and simple. If she was in the cabin and trouble appeared, shed know it was time to get outor dig in and defend herself. If she was somewhere in the forest, shed 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 hed 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 shed 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, shed 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 didnt mean she had to live with strangersworse, cops and FBI agentsreminding her of it, and hounding her and her parents. Not when there wasnt anything she could do to help them find her ex-husband.
Theres no way hes 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 cabins front door. Hed 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 somethingor someonehad 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 didnt 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 hed given her, but she knew it was Lee. She recognized the shape of her exs 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 couldve asked for. Logic said he should have matured into the cultured, successful man hed looked like when Mariah had met him. And on one level, hed been that man. On another, hed been a spoiled monster whose parents had hidden the fact that hed 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. Hed found that cause during his years at an exclusive, expensive college, where hed been recruited into the anti-American crusade.
As part of a terrorist cell, under the leadership of mastermind al-Jihad, hed gone by the name of Lee Mawadi, and had arranged to meet Mariah because of her fathers connections to one of al-Jihads targets. Lee had wooed her, courted her, pretended to love herand then hed used her and set her up to die.
She hadnt died, but in the years since, she hadnt really lived, either. And now, seeing her own death in her ex-husbands face, she cringed from him, her heart hammering against her ribs, tears leaking from her eyes.
Lee, no. Dont! she tried to say, but the words didnt come, and the scream stayed locked in her throat because she couldnt move, couldnt struggle, couldnt 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 hed 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 wouldve curled around the agony, but she couldnt 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 shed once promised to love, honor and obey didnt intend to let her leave the cabin alive.
Five days later
Michael Grayson was a man on a mission, and he didnt intend to let inconsequential details like due process or official sanction interfere. Which was why, just shy of six months after hed 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 couldnt 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 Mawadis ex-wife six months after the prison break. But he couldnt make the lie play, even inside his own skull. His gut said that Mariah Shore had secrets. There had to be a reason shed moved into a cabin on a ridgeline that, on a clear day, provided views of both Bear Claw City and the ARX Supermax Prison.
His coworkers and superiors in the Denver field office had put zero stock in Grays gut feelingswhich admittedly had a bit of a hit-or-miss reputation. The higher-ups had written Mariah off as nothing more than she seemed: a pretty, dark-haired woman whod married a man in good faith, not realizing that he was using her twice over, once to create the illusion of middle-American normalcy and disguise his ties to al-Jihads terrorist network, and a second time to gain entrée to her family.
When the newlyweds moved to a suburb north of Bear Claw City to be close to her parents, Mariah had leaned on her father to find a job for her engineeringtrained husband within the American Mall Group, where her father had been an upper-level manager. It wasnt until after the attacks and subsequent arrests, when the story had started coming together, that it became clear Lee had manipulated Mariah into getting him the job, just as hed manipulated her into serving as his alibi through the first few rounds of the investigation.