Jason flopped like a flour sack as she nudged him. GJ immediately checked his head, relief rolling off her as she found he had no broken bones. Though the cut was bleeding, it wasn’t bad. It appeared to be a perfect shot, right to the temple.
But another ping came above her head, followed by a thud as the pebble dropped beside her. Grabbing Jason firmly, she shook him until his eyes opened. “What?”
Huffing a small sigh at him, GJ admonished, “Don’t look at me like that. You took a rock to the side of the head and went down. We have to get out of here.”
His hand reached up, touching the wound, brown fingertips smearing with red blood. Luckily, he did no more than frown at it. He couldn’t pass out again—her first thought had been that she wasn’t strong enough to carry him. And leaving someone behind was not an acceptable FBI agent move. Leaving a civilian behind? No way.
They weren’t supposed to bring civilians on assignment anyway, and GJ was developing a new respect for the rules. Quantico had been full of them. She’d had no trouble following the ones she understood, and she understood the ones about civilians a lot better right now.
She pointed back the way they’d come. It might not be safe. The guy aiming at them might have seen them come in. But the other direction would take them closer to the gate and the guards. Though their weapons were concealed well, GJ had spotted them, so getting closer to that section of the fence was not on her to-do list. She and Jason would have to make due with retracing their steps. “Army crawl. That way.”
He did as he was told, and for that, she was grateful. Rocks continued to come at them; GJ even took another one to the arm, the sting not slowing her down. As she hooked her elbows into the sand and pulled herself along, she took stock. The rocks were small, which either meant he didn’t have enough force at this distance to fling bigger rocks, or he wasn’t trying to kill them.
Is this Allison’s killer? If so, he’d easily dispatched Allison and even made it look like an accident.
Accident?
Her brain scrambled. What accidental death was he trying to create with them here? If they hit the water, they might get pulled out by a riptide. GJ almost discounted that idea. Unless he could control an ocean tide—unlikely if he couldn’t throw larger rocks—the chance of survival was too high. She looked for other traps and couldn’t find any.
Shit.
That left the option was that he wasn’t trying to kill them at all. Miranda Industries was playing her, the same way they’d played Neriah. They were going to follow her back to the others.
By the time she and Jason made it to crossing the gravel street, the rocks had long since stopped flying, but GJ refused to be lulled into a false sense of security. She ducked and wove her way across, then pushed through the trees, hypervigilant about her surroundings.
When they arrived back at their bikes, she spent far too long examining them for trip wires, explosives, tracking devices, and more. When she could find nothing wrong, she finally told Jason, “Go. Let’s ride out of here. See if we can stay on the trail and off the roads.”
He nodded, understanding the severity of the situation—or at least, that was her take on his silence. They took the long way around, giving in to GJ’s fears. She could not lead anyone from Miranda Industries, especially Allison’s assassin, back to the hotel. She would have run out the clock, but it seemed the safer option not to. At least she’d turned off any cell service to her phone. They couldn’t have cloned it, because they couldn’t see it.
When she and Jason finally hit a stopping point, they sat at a table at a sidewalk cafe and she turned her service back on. She was risking exposure, but it would be worse to risk her fellow agents mounting a search for her and Jason if they didn’t check in. Hitting a few buttons, she took a deep breath, glad to finally stop for a moment, even if she couldn’t let her guard down. “Eleri, we got pictures, but we got found out.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, but I’m not certain we aren’t being followed.” She sighed and explained. “I think you need to move everyone. I’m sorry.”
They would have to casually wait here for a long time, trusting the others to pack up the things they’d left behind and get them to a new location. She and Jason waited it out by eating at the café, a boon as GJ was ravenous after her heart-pounding exit from the beach. She bought a hat and got Jason a new t-shirt, giving him another color and hopefully scrambling anyone who knew what they were looking for. She could only trust it was enough.
Two hours later, she was hauling the bike up the stairs of a new building. This one looked like GJ’s idea of a Southern home. Not a plantation, but the sprawling house with wide porches set with ceiling fans. Thick wood railings lined the outdoor seating area, and dormer windows stood sentry on the roof. Only here they eschewed the final touch of the deep south with more lacquer and less white paint.
Inside the suite, all five of the others waited for them. Hannah and Noah had been the designated sleepers for this shift, though they didn't look rested. Eleri greeted them at the door with, “What did you get?”
Sitting at the table—she sank like a brick into the chair, because she was now thoroughly tired—GJ plugged in the tiny camera, eager to see the pictures. Behind her, Eleri was trying to give the original crew of the Calypso something to do that didn’t involve FBI business. But, though the three of them sat on the other side of the room, there wasn’t much to keep them out of private FBI business.
They were all in this, Eleri realized. It was hard enough discussing the necessary things as agents without even delving into any of NightShade’s business with three casual onlookers standing by.
The four agents crowded around the screen, analyzing the building layout.
“They’re right on the shoreline,” Eleri commented. “You’d think that wouldn't be good at high tide. Or if there was any kind of surge.”
“It looks like they may be elevated a little bit. Can we get satellite images?” Donovan asked even as he was reaching for another device, probably already logging in to pull up whatever images he could.
GJ looked to the other three faces. She didn't want to tell them. “Here's the bad news. I can't be positive, but I think we encountered our guy.”
“Our guy?” Noah looked up at her, brows pulled tight.
She hadn’t wanted to say it, but there was no way around it. As GJ opened her mouth, Jason—from the other side of the room—filled it in. “The one who killed Allison.”
“Somebody was throwing rocks at us. Overall it was pretty mild.” That brought a scoff from Jason, but she continued. “But we couldn’t see who. They must have been in the trees, across a wide road. Unless it was someone with a rock gun he could aim, the gravel should not have sailed that far at that speed.”
“Well, crap. He's here,” Eleri commented, agreeing that this was the same person who’d murdered Allison.
Hannah’s voice chimed in from across the room. “But that means we can get him. Right?”
The agents looked to each other. Nobody wanted to make that kind of a promise.
“The satellite images are good.” Donovan quickly changed the subject. “They show Miranda has a high volume of boat traffic at this location. I guess they're delivering whatever they've got here. The question is, what is it?”
This time, Jason stood up and walked over to stand behind GJ. So much for keeping the other three out of the conversation. “They aren't boating it out. They're diving it out.”
“What?” GJ asked. She’d been there, too, but she hadn’t seen that.
“You wouldn't let me talk.” Jason’s tone held a bit of accusation.
“No,” she replied. Not that anyone could have stopped him. “We were found out quickly enough as it was.”
He didn't apologize, but he didn't push his point anymore, either. “It's a dive operation.”
“How could you tell?” She was still looking up at him rather than at the pictures.
“The trucks that came through the gate had a series of straps in beds. Those straps hold dive tanks. So they're not only bringing in tanks for whatever they’re doing at the compound, they’re bringing in enough tanks to line the walls of pickup trucks. That's an operation, not just a few casual dives.” He motioned to GJ to scroll back a few pictures. “The guys we saw coming in? Those are divers.”
“How can you tell?” Donovan asked.
This time, it was Hannah who answered from her seat against the wall. “I don't know what to tell you, but we divers recognize each other. It’s probably that we're generally lean. We're fit. We have saltwater hair. We've got good lung capacity, and we can walk around with forty pounds of equipment on our back and fins on our feet. There’s a certain look.”
GJ glanced to Eleri, then to Noah. They were the divers of the group, and she didn’t see anything on them that said “diver”—but they were only occasional divers. They didn't dive for their livelihood or run an operation the way these guys did. The three agents shrugged to each other and let it stand.
“So, we have tanks and divers going in—” GJ said, just to keep the forward momentum, but Jason interrupted her again.
“More than that.” He motioned her to stop on a particular picture. “These buildings—here—that you were looking at. The steps go up the front.” He turned next to Eleri. “And you were right about the water coming up to them. The steps go up so high in the front because the base floor is at the top of those steps, about a floor and a half above the ground level here.” He pointed to each spot.
“These tanks—” he said, pointing next to twin, silo-like features on the front of the building.
They’re tanks, GJ thought. It hadn't occurred to her.
“They’re for sea water. They've got piping that goes out the back of the building. That's why the building is so close to shore. They're sucking seawater directly into the tanks to hold it for use inside. Then, once you're in the building, if you go downstairs. . . you can't see it from this picture.” He pointed as though motioning around to the back side. “There are boats under there. The water does come up under the building, and that's the point. You walk down the stairs into a floating dock and launch directly into the water.”
Donovan held up another picture on the tablet. He’d found an overhead shot of the building. “Unless you’re out on the water, you can’t see the backside of the building. Which means they are loading these boats in almost complete privacy.”
He flipped through a few shots, and Eleri stopped him on one. There was a boat in the picture a decent distance from the Miranda dock, aimed outward into the ocean. “You can’t be sure, but it looks like it’s leaving the compound. And it looks like the cigarette boat we saw.”