Twenty-Six

When Sara came to, Lopez, the cap and beard gone, and blood streaming from multiple cuts to his face, was hauling her out of the backseat. Sharp pain seared up her right arm. Seconds later, he unsnapped the cuff around her wrist and jerked her to her feet. She staggered and gripped the bent and twisted car door. Pain shot up her arm again. It wasn’t broken, but she must have come close.

She checked inside the car and the immediate surrounds, but she couldn’t see any sign of Helene. Either she was crushed beneath the vehicle, or she had gone out on her own.

Lopez jammed the barrel of a gun into the side of her neck. “Walk, or I’ll shoot.”

Pines towered, the canopy cutting out the sun as they climbed. The thick layer of needles muffled their footsteps. A chopper skimmed overhead, hidden by the thick branches. In the distance she could hear the slam of car doors.

Lopez continued to push her ahead of him. They stopped to rest on a ridge. Disoriented, she tried to get her bearings. The sun was almost directly overhead, which didn’t help, and there were pines on all sides, flowing in ranked formation, which indicated that they were in a managed plantation, not a wilderness area.

Lopez produced a GPS then slipped a cell phone out of his pocket. In the distance a second helicopter hung in the air, and she realized what was happening. They were close to the border, possibly in Canada already, walking toward a prearranged rendezvous.

He crouched down, put the GPS on the ground and dialed a number. Taking a deep breath, she threw herself down a bank, rolled to her feet and hit the ground running. She could hear Lopez behind her, the thud of footfalls, the whipping sound as branches rasped against his clothing.

Fingers caught in her hair and bunched in the material of her sweatshirt. Her feet slid from under her. As she fell, she twisted and rolled. Something punched into the small of her back. Lopez’s knee.

Panic, raw and visceral exploded. She twisted, using the downslope of the hill to knock him off balance. The hand in her hair released, the gun went flying. Something snapped beneath her weight, a small sapling. Then she was in midair, falling.

Iron-hard ground punched all the breath from her lungs and for a stunned moment she stared blankly at the sky, unable to breathe. Lopez appeared, looming over her.

There was a deep sting in her arm. Then he was gone, withdrawing silently into the trees.

Oxygen shoved into her lungs. She doubled up, rolling onto her side, gasping at the painful rip of air. She pushed to her knees, and rubbed at the numb tingling area where Lopez had injected her, as she took stock.

Lopez was nowhere in sight, although that didn’t mean he was gone. If he had simply wanted to cross the border and disappear, he would have left her. Instead, he had taken the time to inject her.

Sucking in a deep breath, she began to climb back up the bank she’d fallen down. Aside from the sound of the helicopters, the forest was utterly silent.

Gripping the trunk of a pine, she pulled herself up and over the lip of the bank. He had dropped the gun. Unless he had retrieved it, it had to be here somewhere. She could see the disturbed patch of pine needles where they had fought, the smashed sapling at the edge of the drop-off.

Something flickered at the edge of her vision. Her head jerked around. Adrenaline pumped. Lopez, melting into the trees. A split second later her gaze locked with Bayard’s.

Shock held her immobile for long seconds. He was standing amongst the trees, almost invisible in a dull green T-shirt and camouflage trousers. She shook her head, indicating she didn’t want him coming to help her, then stared directly at the last place she had seen Lopez. When she looked back, Bayard was gone.

Head feeling progressively heavier as the drug took effect, her limbs already clumsy, Sara searched the small clearing, but she couldn’t find the gun, which meant Lopez must have come back to collect it.

With the gun no longer a viable objective, she moved a few paces to her left. Lopez was using her as bait, therefore he would want to keep her in sight and would have to move with her. When he shifted position, Bayard would have an opportunity to pinpoint him.

She continued to scan the forest as she sat down, propping her back against a tree so she would stay upright and awake. A shadow materialized, more forest than man, but the cold prickling at her nape told her it was Lopez. The way he had disappeared into the trees after he had injected her replayed itself. He hadn’t run, he had withdrawn.

The shadow disappeared and she blinked, fighting drowsiness, abruptly caught between two worlds, one warm with dappled sunshine filtering through the trees, the other, icy-cold and filled with shadows. Stein.

A flicker of movement snapped her back to sunlight.

Not Stein. Lopez. And it was Bayard he wanted—his focus intent, malicious.

The breeze lifted slightly, a branch shivered.

Something moved off to one side. Lopez.

On the opposite side of the glade, a figure Sara hadn’t noticed before, also dressed in camouflage, was briefly visible. Lopez took a half step to make his shot. Simultaneously, Bayard, who until that point had been standing absolutely silent and still, stepped out of the shadows, a rifle nestled in the crook of his shoulder, and fired two shots at Lopez in quick succession. In contrast to the popping sound of the pistol, the sharp crack of rifle fire echoed in the valley below. Lopez toppled forward.

Bayard walked through the trees and stood over Lopez for a few seconds, the rifle still in the ready-to-fire position. The second man, now recognizable as Bridges, joined him.

Sara blinked at the textbook simplicity of the action. A decoy to draw Lopez out. No messing around with handguns—just two businesslike shots from a weapon that had guaranteed accuracy over long range. Clinical and effective.

Seconds later, Bayard dropped down beside her and gripped her arms. “What’s he given you?”

“He injected me with a sedative. It’s the second shot. I slept for several hours before. I don’t think it’s fatal, but I don’t know how much he gave me.”

Bayard’s face went bone-white. “You are not going to die.” He made her lie down, spoke briefly into his lip mike then reached for his cell phone and stabbed the speed dial.

When he couldn’t get service, he stood upright, moving to a slightly higher position, standing almost exactly where Lopez had when he had made his call.

Lopez. A stark shudder went through her.

The low timbre of Bayard’s voice indicated that the call had finally connected.

Her lids slid closed.

   

Heart pounding at the paleness of her expression, Marc shook Sara awake. “Wake up, honey. We need to walk.”

Her eyes flickered, fixed on him, and she smiled sleepily. “Bien sûr.” Of course. And for an eerie moment something inside him shifted, refocused.

“Get me out of these trees and I’ll fly.”

The pulse of helicopter rotors snapped him back to hot sunlight and the warm scents of earth and pines.

Sara’s eyes had closed again. He shook her slightly, until she was able to focus on him. “Try to stay awake. It’ll take a few minutes to get down to the road, another few minutes flight time to Rochester.”

It took twenty minutes to reach the road, fifteen to touch down in Buffalo—not Rochester—where a specialist medical team and a toxicologist were waiting.

Marc stayed close to Sara, using his clout to stonewall state and federal authorities and generally piss off the medics. He pulled rank, using the federal investigation and the fact that Sara was a federal witness to justify his presence in the emergency suite.

A suit from admin had balked at Bridges, who stood outside the door, still dressed in a faded green T-shirt and DPM trousers, a businesslike Glock holstered at his thigh. But when Bridges had politely produced his National Intelligence ID and referred the suit to him, the protest had dissolved.

Marc watched like a hawk as intravenous lines were put in, demanding to know what drugs were being used, and the precise quantities. He knew enough about the procedures to be damned irritating, but he didn’t care. This was about Sara. And if anyone slipped up, he wanted to know about it before it happened.

An hour later, in a quiet private room Marc had demanded Sara be moved to rather than the much noisier recovery room, she came out of her unconscious state.

Her gaze fixed on his. His grip on her fingers tightened. And just like that, happiness surged, making him feel as giddy as a kid at Christmas. “How are you feeling?”

“Horrible.”

“That’s because you should still be out cold.”

She blinked. “I need coffee.”

“I’ll get it.”

He poked his head out the door. Bridges was still on guard, looking toned down now that he’d changed out of the camouflage gear and into street clothes, but still dangerous enough that the medical staff were giving him a wide berth.

Five minutes later, Bridges walked in with a foam cup of coffee. Two minutes later, he reappeared with a second cup. The reason he hadn’t carried two at once was habit, pure and simple. He was on guard duty, which meant he needed to keep one hand free to go for his weapon if he needed to. The pedantic attention to detail was one of the things Marc liked most about Bridges.

He had to help Sara hold the cup, because she was still shaky. By the time she had sipped her way through the first coffee, she was steady enough to hold the second cup on her own.

A nurse, carrying a clipboard, stepped into the room. “I heard she’s awake.” When she saw the empty foam cups she frowned, but didn’t say anything. Marc figured she thought he’d had the coffee.

She took Sara’s pulse and fixed Marc with the kind of look he hadn’t been on the receiving end of since his mother had swatted him for dragging his grandfather’s air rifle out of the gun cupboard at age four. “She’s not supposed to have anything but water. According to the toxicologist, she was injected with a cocktail of drugs. So far he’s identified the constituents for Temazepam and Rohypnol. There are even traces of some kind of antihistamine. I heard she also swallowed some kind of transmittor. The last thing she needed was a dose of caffeine.”

“I feel fine,” Sara said flatly. “I’d like to go home.”

The nurse shook her head, checked Sara’s blood pressure, asked her a few questions and made some notes then walked to the door. “The doctor will be along in a few minutes.”

Thirty minutes later, the doctor was convinced that Sara was well enough to leave. If they didn’t let her go, having Marc and Bridges on the premises was going to be an even worse pain in the ass than it already had been.

Bridges produced the keys for an SUV he’d had delivered to the hospital parking lot. He had also arranged a flight to D.C., complete with an attending doctor. The private jet was waiting, fueled and ready at the airport.

Marc opened the back door of the SUV and helped Sara in before walking around to the other side to join her. Bridges climbed behind the wheel.

Now that Sara was away from the prying eyes of the doctor and nurses, her energy had evaporated in a rush. She was having trouble holding her head up, and staying awake.

He had expected it, which was why he had arranged for a doctor to attend her on the flight. He had wanted her away from Buffalo and into a safer environment, but he hadn’t wanted to take any unnecessary risks.

Sara smothered a yawn. “Did you find Helene?”

He buckled them both in and pulled her head down on his shoulder. “Helene got away. She had a plane waiting at a private airfield. She’s free. For now.”