Chapter Eighteen

 

 

River moved through the heavily wooded area, looking for landmarks. She knew most of them in this forest. They were everything from the ranger way station, where they stored emergency stashes of water and supplies, to certain trees. She always knew she was close to Creede when she got to the massive tree they called The Bear’s Scratching Post due to the deep gouges in its trunk. She knew she was coming out on the southern side of the forest when she found the pond on the edge of the Harper Stables. Of course, she always stopped when she saw the sun gleaming off that water because it could be dangerous to walk up to that pond if the person hiking didn’t want to see how well the Harper twins loved their wife, Rachel. Those three spent a lot of time naked in that pond. But that wasn’t what she was looking for today.

Where was it?

“You know the trees?” Jax asked the question carefully, as if he wasn’t sure she was being serious. Sometimes he had to figure out if people were joking, she’d discovered.

And sometimes he thought she was just plain crazy. It was okay. He wasn’t the first to look at her like she was weird when she walked up to trees and ran her hands over their trunks. She studied the tree. “They don’t allow any cutting in this part of the woods. These trees have been here for thirty or forty years. Somehow even when we have big fires, they seem to miss this place. I played here a lot as a kid.”

This part of the forest was familiar to her, though in a vague way. It wasn’t a part of the forest she would take clients to, not even small, well-trained groups. It was overgrown and there were no trails. Jax had been forced to use those muscles of his to move several major boulders that had fallen down the mountain. They were at the base of one of the mighty mountains here. They were at over eleven thousand feet at this point, and the mountain climbed another three thousand above them.

“You had an interesting childhood,” he said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

He’d been quiet all morning. Not that he hadn’t been affectionate. He’d made love to her twice since her revelation. He’d held her hand when he could and when they stopped to rest, he would pull her onto his lap and kiss her senseless. But there was no denying her lover had something on his mind.

Probably the fact that if they were successful, he would have to leave.

“I had the best childhood.” It was easier to look back now and smile. It was as if a veil had been lifted and she could see past her grief and anger to the reality. Her father was more than those last few terrible months. She was satisfied now. Satisfied that she’d done right by him, that her pain had been in service to their connection.

Love wasn’t safety and sex and fun. Love was about the work put into a relationship. It was about the risks one took, and one of those risks was always death. Hell, it wasn’t a risk. In the end it was a certainty. She would lose him one day. Even if they had fifty years together, death was inevitable, and the fact that they’d had a life together wouldn’t make it easier.

They would be torn apart. Whether it was by the danger to him now or death or some random act no one saw coming. They would not get out of this life together, and there was no guarantee of some magical place that would reunite them.

And yet she believed. There was the certainty of pain, and yet she was going to love that man because it was what she’d been born to do.

“I like hearing your stories,” he said, clearing the way.

“It’s been a long time since I liked telling them. It feels good to talk about my dad.” She stopped, hearing something moving to her left.

Jax went perfectly still and suddenly there was a semiautomatic in his hand.

It was a reminder that this was no fun hike. She was silent for a moment and watched as a bunny hopped out of a bush, looking up at them as though surprised and then bounding away.

She breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s okay. There’s a lot of wildlife out here. I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe that people have been through here in the last couple of days.”

“You can tell?” His shoulders were still stiff, a sure indication he was on his guard.

She nodded. “Oh, yes. People leave lots of signs. If someone wanted to follow us in here, they could. We’ve been careful. We’ve picked up all our trash, but there are always traces left behind.”

“I haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary,” he said. “I doubt Levi Green would trudge through the woods. He wouldn’t mess up his expensive loafers.”

She’d spent a good portion of the morning questioning him about the CIA agent who had almost wrecked her life. Jax didn’t know a lot about him, but he had several strongly held opinions about the man’s ancestry.

“Might he post a guard?” It had been bugging her. “There’s all this classified information out here and no one’s guarding it?”

“I’m sure there’s security, but it likely won’t be human. I think they’ll have some kind of surveillance, but if they post guards they have to get them in and out. Regular traffic would invite local questions. Local questions would lead to national ones,” Jax explained. “And you have to understand that Levi Green isn’t in charge of The Ranch. He’s doing the bidding of his bosses.”

From what she understood now, there were several factions in the Agency and they warred against each other as much as they did enemy intelligence agencies. She wondered what faction Solo belonged to. “And they don’t want anyone to know about what we’re doing here. Even if we get in and steal the information?”

“In this case secrecy is more important. I think they also believe if that intelligence gets out there, it’ll actually be easier to get their hands on it. They don’t have to brief the president on the fact that it’s been there all along. They can say some bad guys had it and they liberated it. If you think about, we’re kind of doing their bidding.”

“They’re underestimating you.” Those men would fight like hell to keep that knowledge from getting into the wrong hands.

“I hope so. I have to wonder how Levi got here so quickly,” he mused, leaning against a massive boulder, his pack at his feet.

He looked relaxed again. She’d been surprised at how easily he moved in the woods. He might not remember his past, but she would bet he’d been an accomplished hiker. Though his body was relaxed, there was a stony expression on his face and she could guess why. “You think it was Solo.”

He shrugged, a negligently graceful movement of his shoulders. “No matter what she said, I think she would likely have informed her bosses. What else could it be? We took serious precautions coming out here. We left under cover. We made sure no one was following us. Obviously it wasn’t like we flew out of Heathrow. We went in a private jet and had three of the best hackers in the business cover our tracks. No one knew where we were going. The Agency should think we’re still sitting on our asses at The Garden.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s against you.” She’d been angry with the woman she’d called Heather, but the purging of the previous night had made her look at everything with new eyes. “I hope not everyone in the CIA is some kind of drooling villain.”

His lips curled up slightly. “Not at all. Hence the factions. Levi Green works for a particularly bloodthirsty one. I think the worst part is they truly believe they’re doing what’s best for this country. They believe sacrifices must be made. Of course, they’re not the ones sacrificing. It’s why Ezra left, though he has his secrets, too. I don’t know who Solo is working for. I only know Ezra doesn’t trust her, and she’s the most likely suspect to have given away our position.”

“Like I said, she could have done it because she had to, not because she was trying to bring you all down. She was a good friend to me. She didn’t have to be. I would have kept her around anyway. As long as she’d done her job, she would have had all the access she needed to keep an eye on Henry and make her assessments. But she did far more. She helped with my father. She held my hand at his funeral. She was my friend.”

“Then I’m glad she was here,” he said, his expression warming. “I’ll think about it. I don’t trust her right now, but part of that is Ezra’s influence, and he’s conflicted to say the least. Did you know she’d been married?”

“She talked a lot about her ex-husband and how she was still in love with him.” Now all the pieces had fallen into place. “She said he left her after she got his brother killed.”

“I can’t help much there,” he replied. “Ezra plays things close to the vest. I had no idea he’d been married. He hasn’t dated in the time I’ve known him, and the man could walk into a sex club and not be tempted.”

Jax would know because apparently he’d lived in one for a while. The Garden, she’d learned the night before, had been his haven after Taggart had liberated him from the crazy evil doctor’s lab. The Garden was also a BDSM club, but then he’d likely be going straight to another one. They were going to retreat to someplace called Sanctum when they were done with this mission. The idea that the man had been surrounded by willing women and hadn’t taken a single one boggled her mind. She looked at him and all she saw was how gorgeous he was, how intensely sexy the man could be, and she couldn’t help but wonder. “He’s not the only one who doesn’t get tempted. Why didn’t you take comfort from them? I’m sure there was some woman who would have been happy to have you in her bed.”

“They felt sorry for me,” he replied, his eyes losing a bit of their light. “I wanted more, and besides, I did find comfort. I found friends. I had people who cared about me, though not like you do. It’s different. I think I always knew something like this was out here. I wanted it to be special and it was.”

She dropped her pack and strode to him, plastering her body against his. How would she ever live without this feeling? “It is special. This thing between us, it’s everything.”

He held her close and kissed the top of her head. “I’m glad I waited.”

She was, too. Still, she was worried about a few things. “So you said they’ll have security. How will we get in? They don’t have like lasers and stuff, right? I’m sorry. I know I sound crazy but I’m imagining this Indiana Jones thing where we pull a file and a boulder rolls out to squash us.”

His laughter echoed through the forest. “I watched that one. No, I don’t think they’ve got it rigged like that. They’ll be much more high-tech, and from what I understand they didn’t have a ton of time to set booby traps. We’ll be dealing with tech, and I have something to help with the problem.”

“What’s that?”

“They’ll have to have everything operating remotely. I’m sure they’ll have drones over the area frequently. I have a device that will scramble any Internet or satellite connections to the facility and for a few miles around it. Well, except for mine, of course. I’ve got a sat phone I can call back to base on and I’ve made sure the program I’ll run won’t interfere with the frequency we’re using. The communications blackout won’t last forever. Whoever is monitoring it will try to counteract. I’ve modified it to switch frequencies every few seconds, but if whoever they have on the other end is good, they’ll figure it out in twenty minutes tops. Then we’ll have maybe another thirty or forty minutes for them to reach us if they’ve got a chopper around here.”

That wasn’t a lot of time. They would have to move quickly. If she could find it.

“I need you to promise me something.” He stared down at her for a moment. “If someone comes for me, I want you to run.”

The idea turned her stomach. She couldn’t leave him alone. Not again. “I can’t do that.”

“You have to. If anything happens, you run and hide and get back to Bliss. Find Ezra or Big Tag. They can start the search.”

He truly believed someone was coming for him. Maybe not today, but someday. It was there in his grim stare. He wasn’t sure how many tomorrows he had. No one ever was, but his worry was more immediate. It was real, and she would have to sit up nights wondering where he was in the world.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I don’t want to bring you down.” He kissed her forehead and sighed, hugging her tight. “I just want you to be ready in case things go bad.”

She had a pistol in her pack. She should move it to her pocket. It wouldn’t do to tell him, but she had zero intentions of leaving him behind to save herself. They were in this together. Men had weird ideas, and in this case she would ask forgiveness and not permission. “I will be.”

She would be ready to defend him, to protect him. She would be ready to give him her all.

He stared down at her. “Can I ask you a question?”

She nodded, hoping he wasn’t going to ask something like “are you lying to me about running when I tell you to.”

“Is it a good time? I mean…how likely is it?”

Her heart softened. It had been an impulse to tell him to make love to her without condoms the night before, but she didn’t regret it. And she wouldn’t lie to him. “It’s not a particularly good time, but you never know.”

He frowned for a moment. “It’s not a particularly good time because you could be pregnant or because you aren’t?”

She went on her toes and brushed her lips against his. “Because I’m probably not. I don’t think I’m ovulating, babe. I wish I was. I really do.”

He dropped his forehead to hers. “I worry I’m being selfish.”

He had every right to be selfish. “You’re not. But you are being pessimistic. I know that’s pretty hypocritical of me since I haven’t exactly had a sunny outlook on life the whole time you’ve known me. However, this is more like the real me, the one I was before my dad got sick and my ex turned out to be an ass.”

A smile crossed Jax’s lips as though he was thinking about something nice.

“You’re thinking about him in jail, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he agreed. “I think he’s likely scared and miserable and worried he’s going to have terrible things happen to him.”

She had nothing to say to that. She knew she should be more sympathetic, but she was with Jax on this one. “We have some money to distribute.”

“I’m already working on the problem. I’ve got a list of his known aliases. We’ll make things right.” He kissed her forehead again, though this time she could feel him ramping up the heat.

Her whole body responded. “Do you want to park it here? I know we still have the whole afternoon, but we’re both tired. I saw a spot that would be big enough for a campsite.”

Especially now that they wouldn’t need two tents. She fully intended to zip them in together tonight.

His hands managed to find her ass. “I’m not that tired.”

She lifted her face to his, her body starting to hum, and that was when she saw it. A rock peeked out a mass of bushes. A moment from her childhood flashed through her head. There had been far less brush around it. She had scaled it, scrambling up and scraping her knees. She’d held a stick up like it was a sword and proclaimed that she was the queen of everything she could see.

She’d looked out over the clearing and she’d run out like she was leading an army.

Her father had stopped her at the opposite tree line. Before she could move into the shadows, he’d caught her up in his arms.

No, sweetheart. You can’t play here. It’s dangerous. Stay in the light and you’ll be fine.

Stay in the light.

What had Jax said?

If they post guards, they have to get them in and out. Regular traffic would invite local questions.

The Ranch had been closed for years. What would have been the easiest way to get people in and out? They would use the same roads the rangers used. They would likely bring them in when the rangers had supply runs or present them as environmental scientists or researchers. No one would question that. But they would need to use roads for much of the trip.

“What is it?” Jax was staring the same direction.

“I think we’re close.” She moved away from him, trying to put together the map in her head. Bliss was to the south. The only way to get in from there was to hike in, but there were several places along 149 where a larger vehicle could go off road. The Wheeler Geologic Area was straight to the east.

It had been three years, but the signs would remain. Three years and a couple of good rainy seasons would guarantee that there would be growth, but the road would still be there.

“My father wouldn’t let me go past that tree line.” She pointed to a spot outside the clearing. The meadow was still green and a few arnica flowers remained, their bright lemon-yellow pedals like beams of lights. “I was just a kid but I remember how upset he got once when he found me exploring back there.”

“Maybe he was afraid of bears. We’re pretty high up.”

“No, this was different.” Her father knew they always ran the risk of running into bears or cougars or wolves. He wouldn’t have had that slightly panicked look as he’d carried her back to the sunlight. She walked out into the meadow. Where would one hide a whole facility in the middle of the mountains?

Inside one of them, of course.

“No one would question blasting back then,” she said. “Back in the mid-century, they were building roads and they would blast off the sides of mountains to do it sometimes.” Excitement thrummed through her because she was sure they were close.

“Help me up.” She pushed past the brush to start to climb up what her father had called his thinking rock. It was flat on top, but hard to climb because of it roundness.

Jax simply lifted her up and placed her on top. He then hefted himself up like it was no big deal.

So damn sexy.

She looked out over the meadow. Looking at it with adult eyes, she could sense the eeriness of it all. A sunlit meadow surrounded by dark forest. She could be standing in perfect light one moment and doused in shadows the next. Her father had been afraid of whatever was in those shadows. “We have to search the tree line. I think it’s there.”

He shook his head. “This isn’t where my research showed the glints of metal. If anything, I would say it’s on the other side of the mountain. That’s where I thought we were heading.”

And they had been, until she’d had the dream. “It’s here. I know it is. Do you trust me?”

He took her hand. “Always. I’ll grab our packs. We’ll start a search.”

He hopped down and she looked over the land. His secrets were here. She could feel it.

 

* * * *

 

Jax looked down at the ground River was kneeling on. She was incredibly excited about some grooves. They’d been searching for a good three hours, painstakingly moving through the tree line that separated the meadow from the base of the mountain above them. His quads were getting a workout, moving up and down the slope looking for the hidden entrance.

“It’s faint, but do you see how the ground slides off slightly here. Someone cleared a path years ago. I think someone even leveled this part off. This was a road once,” she said.

When he looked closely, he could see the difference. She was right. At one point someone had built up the path. He paced to the other side, to the spot where the hard-packed dirt descended slightly. This had been a decently wide road. Not wide enough for two lanes, but large trucks might have gotten through. “This couldn’t be from three years ago.”

She shook her head. “No. This is old, but think about the history of The Ranch. It was originally built as a shelter during the cold war. There would have been secrecy around it, but they wouldn’t have been able to hide the fact that they were doing something back here. They would have to have brought in large construction equipment. It would have been easy to keep people out of the area though. If they came in somewhere between Bliss and Creede, there’s not a lot of population to worry about.”

“And when they switched the facility over to a black ops site, they could have used a couple of Jeeps to move people in and out.”

“And potentially helicopters from time to time,” she added. “The meadow would be a perfect place to drop off. There’s a similar spot on the north side of the mountain that would be even less likely to have a stray hiker around. I say we follow this road.”

His yellow brick dirt road. He took her hand and they started along the path. Now that he was looking at it from this vantage point, it was easy to see the path. At some point someone had clearly cut the trees. Nature had made a resurgence, but the trees along the road were obviously younger than the ones around them.

When they got to the end of this road, he would have to leave her. Levi Green showing up had made that plain to him. Whether it had been Solo who tipped the man off or cosmic good luck on Green’s part, he wouldn’t stop. He would hound them all.

He had to find a way to leave River out of it.

And he would have to find a way to come home to her if he could.

Despite what she’d said, he still felt selfish. The idea of getting her pregnant, of having some piece of him survive if the worst happened…he didn’t even have words to describe how that made him feel. But he couldn’t leave River alone with a baby.

He brought her hand to his lips and then let it swing back down.

“Jax, we’re going to find a way,” she said as though she could read his thoughts.

“I know.” Sometimes a little lie wasn’t the worst thing.

“You don’t, but you will,” she promised. She stopped, pointing ahead. “Do you see that?”

He stared for a moment and then saw the glint of something distinctly not natural up ahead. It was nothing more than a flash as the sun struck it, but it was enough to have them both jogging up the slope. There was no more road to follow this way. His boots found purchase and he followed behind her. Despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn’t help but admire how good her ass looked. She wore a pair of cargo pants that somehow managed to be perfectly functional and sexy as hell.

He didn’t want to let her go. Not ever. Maybe they were wrong and this was one major wild-goose chase. Maybe they could stay here in the woods and never come out. They could live together in the forest, away from the rest of the world. As far as he could tell, the world was shitty without her.

She reached the place where they’d seen the glint of metal and strode up to the tree. There was a large spike sticking out of it. “I think this is a marker. I don’t know why else it would be here.”

He trusted her instincts. “Let’s canvass the place then.”

She stood there for a moment, looking around. “We need an entry. I think what we’re looking for is inside this mountain.”

He wasn’t sure. He’d seen the aerial views. He was fairly certain the pictures hadn’t been of that spike. He was starting to worry they were on the wrong side of the mountain.

Of course, if they were that would mean getting around to the right side of this monster, and that would take a few days. A few days where he would have to be with River twenty-four seven. He would have a few more nights with her. It wouldn’t be so bad to be on the wrong side of the mountain.

“There it is,” she breathed.

And he saw it. Up ahead of them was a cave. He would think they might be heading into some bear’s home except he could see the bars crossing the entrance. Someone had tried to cover those iron doors with vines and foliage, but at some point they’d dropped away.

This was the entrance to The Ranch.

River rushed forward, scrambling to get to the cave.

He followed, overtaking her. “I’m going first. I don’t know what kind of security they have.”

She let him move ahead of her.

He glanced around, looking for anything that might come out of nowhere to get them. There had to be motion detectors somewhere. They wouldn’t leave it completely without defense.

He found what he was looking for about fifteen feet off the ground. Shit. There was a camera pointed right at the cave entrance. It was likely on a long-term battery and connected to a satellite. He was glad he hadn’t let her run ahead of him or she would already be on their radar.

He had to protect River at all costs.

She followed the line of his gaze and cursed under her breath. “I might be able to climb up there.”

And potentially break her legs if she fell. “No. I’ll take care of it, but you have to know the minute I take it down, we’re on a clock.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she replied. “How fast can they possibly act?”

He set his pack down and pulled out the rifle Solo had given him. It would be easier to work with than the pistol he had. He attached the scope because he didn’t want more than one attempt at this. “Well, they had an agent embedded in your company, so I think they probably work pretty fast.”

“Good point,” she replied. “Though I suspect it would be hard to have someone show up here quickly if we trip an alarm.” She put a hand on his arm, looking at him with worried eyes. “Jax, we should think about this. What if we can’t get that door open? We’ll have to break in. It looks like someone attached it to the actual mountain. We may have to chip away at the rock, and that could take a while. I don’t have anything we can use. Maybe we should go back and come in with the proper tools.”

He liked her idea because it would give them more time together. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be sure there weren’t more cameras and they hadn’t been caught. The truth was they were already on a timer and it was ticking away.

He got to one knee, brought the scope up, lined up his shot and pulled the trigger.

The camera blew apart in an instant.

“So we’re a no on getting the right tools,” River said, shaking her head.

He was already reaching back into his pack. He’d come ready for this job. He pulled out a lock picking set. “I got special honors in lock picking class and no, you do not want to know what happened to the guy who finished last.”

It had been Tucker, and he’d had the holy hell beaten out of him. Jax still felt guilty at times for winning that particular “class.”

“You think you can get that sucker open?” River followed behind him.

“I’m more worried about the inner door.” He got down on one knee, selecting a pick and torque. The lock was quite large.

“There’s another door?”

“There’s always another door, and the next one won’t look anything like this.” He’d been in enough secret labs to know how they rolled. This first door was merely a deterrent. The second would be the one to keep them out. And then there would be more inside. There would be any number of obstacles, the worst being time.

He would give them an hour. If they hadn’t found what they needed, he would get her out of here. He couldn’t risk that someone would show up.

The lock was surprisingly easy to pick. Two minutes and they were in.

They moved from the sunlight into shadows and a chill went up his spine.

River’s hand slid into his as they made their way into the cave. “This place feels wrong. I know it’s my mind playing tricks on me.”

“Or intuition,” he replied.

“This is not what a cave normally looks like. It’s far too clean.” She touched the side. Roots were starting to press through. “Someone used to clip these.”

Something moved up ahead and River jumped. He moved in front of her and then stopped when he saw the flash of eyes staring back at him. “Well, they couldn’t keep everything out.”

She sighed in relief behind him. “Possums get in everywhere. Be careful. She might have babies, and that’s when she’ll get vicious. She’s a smart girl. Not a lot of predators can get through those bars.”

The possum hissed at them as they carefully moved around her nest. He saw something else that didn’t belong here. A red light flashed at the back of the cave.

A clicking sound echoed lightly and then he could see again. A beam of light shone on the metal door that covered the back of the cave. This was the door meant to keep people out and secrets in.

“Shine that light on my pack, baby.” He got to one knee and reached for his laptop and a connector cable.

River moved the light with him, illuminating his space as he found the electrical box and popped it open. He found the input and connected to the computer that ran the facility’s major systems.

“What are you doing?” River asked, her voice hushed in the gloom of the cave.

“I’m attempting to take over the system.” He looked down at the screen. Password. “I’ve spent the last couple of weeks writing a program to break in. I worked with a woman who used to work for the Agency. She’s a brilliant hacker and she knows their systems better than anyone else.” The light went green. Chelsea Weston was fucking brilliant. “And we’re in.”

“Just like that?”

He had total control in a few keystrokes. They would be able to move through the facility freely. And there were a couple of options he hadn’t counted on. “I can do one better than merely getting in. Apparently there’s still a generator.”

He touched the key and the lights sputtered on. There was a screeching sound as their furry friend obviously took exception.

“Sorry, buddy,” River said. “We’ll be done soon.”

He hoped they would. “Now comes the hard part.”

“Because we’re not sure which lab she worked in?”

He disconnected and shoved his laptop back in his pack. The lights were all on. Now he had to hope no one was home.