Walker slid the TAGI goggles down to hang around his neck as he trekked through the rain. Any hope he’d had of following Maeve’s trail had turned to mud, just like the ground underfoot. He had seen that parachutist floating toward the trees and he’d needed to make a split decision. Whoever had that chute would also be searching for Maeve, and he’d banked on them having more intel than he did, or at least a more efficient way to track her. It was a thin strand of hope to hang on to, but for the moment it was all he had.
Which troubled him.
Where are the satellites? he thought. American spy satellites could focus with such clarity that surveillance could count the whiskers in a man’s beard. In the rain and through the trees, that might be more difficult, but Alena should be able to get some satellite surveillance of this damned mountain, give him some help.
Walker wondered if he’d been set up to fail. According to her reputation, Alena Boudreau didn’t operate like that, but his doubts grew with every step. He had anticipated field support, more intel, more everything upon his arrival here. Instead, he had been dropped into town with zero guarantee of backup, and when he’d called in, the person on the line had been David Boudreau, Alena’s grandson. The assignment felt very quiet, very insular, and it had his thoughts awhirl.
Whoever the parachutist was, they wouldn’t have dropped onto the mountain without some sense of Maeve’s location. Walker figured they had their own satellite surveillance working for them or some other way to find her. Which meant they either weren’t American, or the Department of Defense didn’t know Alena had sent Walker onto this mountain.
Or both.
He didn’t like where this train of thought was heading, but he couldn’t stop its progress. He had gotten himself into hot water with his bosses, and they had benched him until they felt they could trust him again, which he had known might be never. His employers had been furious at him for dropping the only sample of a potentially deadly bacterium into the ocean, but mostly because they wanted that contagion for themselves.
Of course they had sidelined him. The fact they hadn’t court-martialed him or found some other way to lock him up could only be ascribed to their own self-preservation. He had saved a lot of lives, but even his friends had told him he would never be put into the field again, that nobody would trust him.
Yet here he was. In the field, alone, at the behest of a woman who claimed to have been put in charge of a new operation—the Global Science Research Coalition—just yesterday, and who needed his help.
How many times had Walker slipped something useful out of DARPA because nobody had been paying attention? Because, in that moment, it was an item nobody needed? That was him, Walker knew. Put into a box on a shelf or stored away in some climate-controlled warehouse like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders. And Alena Boudreau had sneaked in and snatched him off the shelf.
Soaked with rain, sick of trudging, covered with scratches, he knew the conclusion was inescapable. Alena had sent him up here because she didn’t have anyone else to send and because he was expendable. She’d also sent him because he had a history of rash behavior, and if he fucked up, she could say it wasn’t her fault, that was just Walker being Walker.
He trudged onward, growing more determined. One man, by himself, without a trail to follow, had almost zero chance of locating Maeve now, if she didn’t want to be found.
But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
Walker slowed his pace, quieting his steps as he drew toward the area where the chutist had landed. From a distance, it was always difficult to gauge perfectly, but he felt he must be very close. Pausing, he closed his eyes and listened. Sure enough, he could hear the patter of the rain striking smooth nylon, and he started off to his left, slightly northward. Fifty feet through the trees and over a fallen oak, he saw the chute tangled in the trees. Whoever had arrived had dropped to the forest floor and run off into the woods.
He reached up to slide his goggles back into place and tapped the side to power them on again. Instantly, the new arrival’s footfalls were revealed. A smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he followed the trail of broken branches and the heat of the chutist’s passing. Given how quickly he’d closed the distance, he gauged he wasn’t more than ten minutes behind.
Walker inhaled the scents of the forest and the rain, and his mind went back to the way this day had begun. He should have been in Virginia, camping in the mountains, swimming in the river with Charlie. If he closed his eyes, even for a moment, he could see the frustration and disappointment on his son’s face. Charlie had grown up with broken promises and long absences that must have seemed like disinterest. Walker loved his son, but it wouldn’t have felt like love to Charlie. Quite the opposite. In the nine months he had been benched, he had worked hard to repair their relationship.
Walker’s own father had let him down so many times, in so many ways, that he always promised himself he’d never inflict that kind of hurt on Charlie. For years, he had told himself his situation was different. As a child, he had felt invisible in his own house. His father had been there in the flesh, but emotionally absent, usually halfway drunk and surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke. He’d been afraid of his own shadow, and his cowardice had filled him with such self-loathing that he’d gone off to Iraq to prove he could muster up some courage when his country needed him.
He’d died there.
Every time Walker lost himself in his work, every time an assignment took him away from home for weeks or months at a time, he told himself it wasn’t abandonment. Lied to himself to make it okay. Good thing I don’t need you, Charlie had said today.
Walker’s father had been frightened of shadows, but Walker himself only feared one thing—that Charlie had been telling the truth.
He hadn’t forgotten the exchange he’d had with Amanda this morning, either. It had been three years since their split, and he still remembered the smell of her hair and the way she had curled against him in the middle of the night, and the times he’d woken up with her nestled into the crook of his arm. There had been women since Amanda, one in particular. Seong didn’t want anything to do with him now, and that was all right. He understood the choice she’d made. Amanda, though …
Walker wanted to get off this mountain.
His earwig buzzed. He tapped it.
“I’m here.”
“Is this Dr. Walker?”
A woman’s voice, but not Alena’s. It took him a second to realize who it had to be. “Dr. Crooker?”
“Any luck in your search?”
Walker saw the bright flare above the path that indicated a branch had broken, and he frowned. The parachutist had gone this way, no doubt, but Walker did not want to catch up with him while talking to Rue. He slowed down, glanced both ways through the woods. If the chutist was close enough to hear his voice, he would hear the noise if the guy made a run for it.
“It’s a big mountain,” he replied. “I’m doing what I can, but if Maeve’s father has any other suggestions about where she might have gone, I’d love to hear them.”
Silence on the line. The wind kicked up and rain trickled down the back of his neck, drizzling along the small of his back. He shivered.
“Rue? You still there?”
“Yes. I’m just wondering if that’s why you went to all the trouble of getting me this phone. The town is quarantined, someone—I’m guessing government—has blocked all phone communications, but you decided I ought to be an exception to that. But you don’t even know me.”
Walker smiled to himself. “That is why.”
“Sorry? I don’t—”
“I’m having significant trust issues right now, Dr. Crooker,” Walker said. “I don’t trust anyone I know, including my current and former employers.”
“So you trust me because I’m a total stranger? How does that make sense?”
“I trust you because you’re a bystander. You’re in this because you live in Jericho Falls, and you were at that parade. You’re in it because Ted Sinclair is your friend and he’s suffered a tragedy that would crush any of us, and because you care about his daughters. I trust you because you stood up to the Garland Mountain people and didn’t take any shit, and because you’re a scientist, and if there’s anything this world needs to learn, it’s to trust our fucking scientists.”
A soft chuffing noise came over the line. It took a second for him to recognize it as a laugh.
“That’s funny?” he asked.
“You’re just coming up with reasons to convince yourself.”
Walker heard a rustling sound back the way he’d come. A squirrel or something, he was sure, but he had a sense this was larger than a squirrel. Please don’t be a bear, he thought idly. He didn’t have time to run from a goddamned bear.
“You’re right,” he said. “But those reasons are good enough for me.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to leave Ted there. I know it’s awful to ask. Maybe you can get a neighbor to sit with him. But I need you to—”
“Abandon my best friend?”
“No. I need you to help him. I’m asking you to put yourself in danger for him.”
“What kind of danger?”
“The kind that leads to people dead in the street at a parade.”
“Jesus,” Rue hissed in admonishment.
Walker hurried on before she could be angry with him. “I’d like you to go back to Garland Mountain and stick your nose in as much as possible, find out whatever you can about Project: Red Hands and what they did to Oscar Hecht. What it’s done to Maeve. If I can find her, I intend to bring her in alive, but if there’s any hope of helping her, we have to be able to hold her and understand what’s happened to her. You have the skill set I need, Rue.”
“Walker, I’m a civilian. They wouldn’t even let me through the gate. I can’t just—”
“You have the knowledge base, and you’re really, really fucking pissed off. Am I wrong about either of those things?”
“No.”
Another rustle in the trees. Walker looked that way. His goggles picked up a bit more light than they had before, streaks of heat where there hadn’t been any before.
He started following the parachutist’s trail again, listening for his pursuers. “I have the authority to hire outside consultants and to grant emergency interim security clearance—”
“Is that even a thing?”
“I’m offering you a temporary consulting position with the SRC so you can get into Garland Mountain and get some answers.”
“You’re basically deputizing me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have any ID,” Rue said. “They won’t take me seriously.”
“When I was there, I spotted a familiar face. Kat Isenberg. I worked with her seven or eight years ago. She was with DARPA then, and I’m guessing Garland Mountain is under the DoD umbrella. Maybe she’s not the person I thought she was, but if she is, then she can’t possibly be comfortable with all of this. See what she can tell you, and see if she can get you into the lab.”
“That’s a tall order for a woman you worked with once, years ago.”
Walker scanned the trees ahead for a place to hide. A place to wait for whoever trailed him to pass by. “She’ll either want to do what’s right, or she won’t.”
“How am I supposed to get in touch with her? The phones are jammed.”
“The earpiece you’re using now should only have two numbers programmed into it, with voice commands for Alpha and Beta. Alpha is me. Call Beta and you’ll get the office of the director of the SRC. Whoever answers will be able to get a message to Kat. There’s no way communications aren’t working at Garland Mountain.”
“So I just call her up?” Rue asked. “What’s to stop her from just telling me to go to hell?”
“Humanity, I hope,” Walker replied. “I need to sign off, Dr. Crooker. I hope you’ll do this for me, but it’s your call. If you get in touch with Kat Isenberg, tell her I have faith in her. Also, try not to get killed.”
Rue swore. “I hope this wasn’t your idea of a pep talk.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I had someone else with your expertise on the ground down there.”
“Someone with my expertise who happens to be willing to do anything so her best friend doesn’t lose more of his children today,” she replied.
“I’m sorry it has to be you,” Walker said.
He ended the call. Rue might be fuming, thinking him an asshole, but she would do as he’d asked. Walker didn’t have time to be polite. He slipped the gun out of his waistband and held it down by his side as he stepped silently off the path and found a space between a pair of hundred-foot northern pine trees. The shadows in the woods had gotten longer and deeper, and in the gray light and the drizzle, it all felt like some strange otherworld. But this was no fairy tale.
None of the fairy tales he knew had guns in them.
Leon Lewis heard Walker’s voice ahead on the path—not the words, just the distant mutter. From the shift in tone, he knew when Walker began to wrap up the call, and he held up a fist to signal Viv Cheng to freeze.
They had been quiet enough, but Leon had started to think maybe Cheng had been right—maybe they ought to have hung back a little farther. In the rain, with the wind blowing, he doubted they’d made any noise that Walker had heard. They’d both been trained to move silently—like a fuckin’ ninja, Leon would have said, except he didn’t want to offend Cheng. She was of Chinese descent, not Japanese, but Leon liked to be what Aaron, his older brother, called “sensitive and shit.”
Cheng touched his shoulder, and he nearly shot her in surprise. Shot her or shat himself. Leon hadn’t realized how tense he had become over the past hour or so, shadowing Walker, but every muscle in his body seemed ready to snap.
With her usual scowl, Cheng motioned for him to continue forward. Leon hesitated until Cheng pointed to the ground and used two fingers to mime walking. Sometimes Leon could be slow on the uptake, but he got this right away, and he couldn’t argue with her logic. They were not on a trail. They had pursued Walker into a part of the forest without any path at all, and that meant that with every second they delayed, they ran a greater risk of losing track of him. Leon had invested a lot of time and sly ninja shit into trailing Walker, and the last thing he intended to do was fuck it up. Never mind that he might well be demoted or even fired.
He steadied his nerves, took a breath, and started forward. Head cocked, he listened to the rain and to his own nearly silent footfalls. Shit. Not a peep from Walker. He tried not to think about the fallout if he and Cheng blew this assignment. Instead of searching the mountain for Maeve Sinclair, they had been told to follow one person, a single individual who had some serious training on his résumé but had never been in combat. Walker might have seen some crazy shit, but he wasn’t special ops.
Leon quickened his pace. He heard Cheng make the little clucking noise with her tongue that always came out when she disapproved of something, but he kept on. Maybe he wasn’t quiet as a ninja in that moment, but he told himself that the rain and wind would cover it.
Thunder cracked somewhere far across the sky. It boomed and rolled, and he picked up the pace even more, scanning the path ahead for any sign of Walker. It might not be nighttime, but with a storm as gray as this and in the dark shadows of the forest, the dark seemed deep enough.
His heart raced. Shit, shit, shit. Where had Walker gone? Unless he had started to run, there was no way he could have gotten so far ahead of them in such a short time. He had been on the phone only two minutes ago. The call finished and then he’d started moving. Leon and Cheng had paused, but not for this long. Anxiety flooded through him. Had Walker diverted through the trees, taking off at a new angle? Maybe he’d learned something in his call that had made him alter his course, but without a path, it would be impossible to know where. Leon cursed under his breath, wondering if his sister could still get him the job she’d once mentioned, as an investigator for the law firm that employed her.
A rustle came from behind him, along with a strangling noise that sounded a bit like Cheng’s clucking tongue. Leon turned.
Walker stood behind Cheng, choking her with one arm across her throat. In his free hand he held a gun, the tip of its barrel nestled in the little concave space just behind her right ear, but his gaze locked on Leon.
“Who do you work for?” Walker asked.
Leon smiled. “We’re all here doing the same job, Walker. Don’t get crazy.”
Walker jabbed the gun barrel into Cheng’s skull, and she cried out.
“Specifically,” Walker said. “Who do you work for?”
Leon lowered his weapon, let it drop onto the damp leaves, and slowly held his hands out in supplication. “We’re on the same side. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man. We’re White Oak Security.”
“Mercenaries, yeah, I got that part,” Walker sneered. “I want to know who your current client is. Who is paying the tab for you fuckers to sneak around up here? And what are they paying you to do that requires you to follow me?”
Leon’s mouth had gone dry. He found himself wishing he hadn’t dropped his gun. Not that he would have drawn on Walker while the guy had his weapon snug against Cheng’s skull, but he didn’t like losing the option bullets gave him. The knife clipped to his belt felt warm and familiar against his hip. It would be clean and shiny now, but it had been dipped in blood before. It would be a damn shame if he had to kill Walker, but better than having to go back and tell the boss he had lost the bastard in the woods.
“We don’t have clients,” Leon said. “We take orders. The boss doesn’t tell us who the client is.”
“Bullshit. You can figure it out.”
Cheng bared her teeth. “Yeah, sometimes we can. Right now, we know it’s government work, just like you.”
“Not like me.”
“Oh, Mr. Fucking Righteous,” Cheng said. She tilted her head away from the gun, but Walker followed with its barrel, kept it nudged against her. “You’re asking questions you already know the answers to. We’re following you because we have orders to follow you. The boss told us you were here, told us to shadow you in case you found the target before we did.”
Leon winced at the word. He saw Walker’s eyes narrow the moment Cheng uttered those two syllables.
“Target,” Walker echoed. “Maeve Sinclair is not a target. She’s a victim.”
“You gonna kill me or argue semantics?” Cheng asked.
Leon saw her legs tense, knew she would make a move. His fingers drifted toward his knife.
“I don’t have time for either,” Walker said. He drew back his hand, went to knock her on the skull with his gun.
Cheng twisted in his grasp, grabbed him by the throat, reached for his gun hand. As she moved, Leon unsheathed his knife, rushing toward them. Cheng wouldn’t need him. She had Walker cold. He watched her thrust her left leg behind his right and drive him backward. Walker started to fall. As he did, he grabbed a fistful of Cheng’s hair and dragged her after him. The momentum of his fall brought them both down. He yanked her over him, put a boot in her gut, kept her moving, hurled her at the trunk of a foot-thick birch with such force that the tree cracked and began to fall, branches catching on other trees on the way down.
“Son of a bitch,” Leon muttered as he took aim at Walker’s back, cocked back his knife hand, and snapped his wrist forward.
Walker wasn’t there when the knife sliced the air. He’d dropped to the ground. The knife glanced harmlessly off a tree branch and skittered into the underbrush, and Leon found himself looking down the barrel of Walker’s gun.
Cheng rushed at him from the left, had the drop on him for sure, but Walker jerked his gun hand up and fired. The bullet took Cheng in the shoulder, spun her around. Leon saw her blood spatter the leaves as she fell.
Walker slammed a boot down on the bullet wound.
“That placement was on purpose,” he told Cheng. “I can shoot you somewhere else if you want.”
“Christ’s sake, we’re on the same side,” Leon snarled.
Walker stepped back, covering them both with his gun. “The possibility of that being true is the only reason I’m not leaving your corpses out here in the woods. You just outright told me you intended to murder Maeve Sinclair. Those aren’t my orders, and I wouldn’t follow them if they were. Give your boss a message for me. I’m going to get that woman somewhere safe, where she can be treated. I’m putting myself in between her and anyone who wants to stop that from happening.”
Gun or no gun, Leon lunged for him, got hold of his wrist to keep the gun aimed up at the sky. Leon caught him with a punch to the gut, then the kidney, but Walker moved with the blows, and when Leon tried to hit him again, the bastard gave him a solid shot to the skull. Leon staggered, rattled, wondering if a man could be concussed by one fucking punch.
Other punches landed, all of them Walker’s. Leon caught a glimpse of Cheng, unconscious now and bleeding in the dirt. Then Walker brought his gun down on Leon’s head, and the lights went out.