Carrie swatted at a bug and stumbled again, the soft ground giving way beneath even her slight weight. She moved away from her armed escort a bit, testing how far from him Grange’s man was willing to let her stray.
Lonnie was walking ahead of her, leaving his flunkies to herd her along.
She ducked under a tree branch and straightened, only to run facefirst into what felt like a spiderweb across her whole face. She jumped, flailing her arms in front of her frantically, batting away the sticky silk, which seemed determined to wrap entirely around her head.
“What the—” the guy in behind her complained. “Stop that!”
Carrie jumped left, banging into the guard walking beside her. She shuddered and brushed off her entire body urgently. “Spiderweb,” she gasped.
“Kee-rist, this place is a hellhole,” the guy behind her grumbled. “I’ll take New York City any day over this godforsaken jungle.”
The other guard agreed fervently. They were both big, beefy men, but not diamond hard and battle honed the way Bass was. Please God, let him have gotten her phone message by now. Surely he would come after her.
For once, his possessiveness and tendency to overreact to any perceived threats in her direction was a boon. Although how he was going to find her out here in the literal middle of actual nowhere, she hadn’t the slightest idea.
No wonder the New Orleans police hadn’t caught the slightest whiff in the past week of Uncle Gary’s location if he was hidden out here. There might as well not be any other human beings on the planet, given how isolated this place was.
Panic surged into her throat for about the hundredth time, and she forced it down yet again. But each time it came back, her control of it slipped a little bit more. Soon, it was going to get the best of her, and she was going to fall apart. And then not only would she be dead, but Uncle Gary would be, too.
“How much further?” she asked no one in particular.
“Shut up,” Lonnie snapped.
She looked questioningly at the guy beside her, and he shrugged.
From behind her, the second guard complained, “I didn’t think it was this long a walk.”
“Quit whining,” Lonnie snapped. “We’re almost there.”
Hah. So much for telling her nothing. She’d counted almost a thousand steps, which put them around a half mile inland, if her count was correct. As best she could tell, they were moving south and east. But that was assuming she hadn’t gotten herself all turned around during the winding ride to the boathouse earlier.
At any rate, she had a rough direction of travel for herself and Gary when they made their escape. If he was still alive. And if he was ambulatory. And—biggest if of all—if they got a chance to make a break for it.
Perhaps three more miserable, sticky, bug-infested minutes passed, and a tiny speck of light became visible beneath the trees ahead.
She’d never been so relieved to see even the tiniest hint of civilization that the light represented. They walked a few more minutes, and the underbrush gave way to a wide-open area paved with weedy old gravel. Two huge cylinders announced this place to be an oil refinery or something similar.
The light was one of those fluorescent affairs that people mounted on barns and that came on automatically at night. It hummed loudly, casting blue light across the refinery yard.
Rust and decay were everywhere. The place must be abandoned. Drat. No workers to recruit to help her.
Lonnie pushed open a gate made of aluminum poles and hurricane fencing and strode toward what looked like a small office. Its walls were wood, gray and weathered, nailed vertically. The roof was made of rusty corrugated metal.
As prison-like as it looked, she was ready to have walls and a roof around her, no matter how crude, as long as they held back the insects and night creatures.
Lonnie threw open the door and waved her inside. She looked around the main room eagerly and frowned. “Where’s Gary?”
“Oh, you thought we were bringing you to him?” Lonnie laughed, an ugly sound.
“That was our deal. Take me hostage and you have to let him go.”
“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to.” He devolved into calling her various names and casting slurs at her, but she tuned them out.
Was Gary somewhere else in this large facility? Lonnie wasn’t a local. Surely he didn’t have multiple hideouts out here in the bayou. Gary must be nearby. If she shouted, would he hear her? Shout back?
One of the guards opened a cooler in the corner and pulled out three bottles of beer, which he shared with Lonnie and the other guard.
Frankly, she found it a bit insulting that they thought they could drink booze while guarding her. Did they really think she was that meek and helpless? She’d successfully evaded Lonnie for years, and the only reason he’d caught up with her now was because he’d dragged her uncle into this mess.
But hey. If they wanted to get sloshed before Bass got here, all the better. She moved cautiously around the small room, trying not to draw attention to herself. She checked out the windows, noting the simple locks and low sills.
“Is there a functional toilet in this building?” she asked.
One of the guards led her down a short hallway to a grungy bathroom that hadn’t seen a good cleaning since the building was new. It had a small window, high up, but she thought she could fit through it if she could reach it.
Making a disgusted face, she asked, “Do you guys have a sponge and some scouring powder? No way am I using this without disinfecting it.”
“I dunno. Look under the sink,” the guy said, unconcerned.
She opened the decrepit cabinet doors and spotted a toilet brush and what turned out to be a fossilized cardboard tube of scouring powder that had turned into a solid block. “I can work with this,” she declared. “Do you have a table knife or a fork I can use to chip off some of the powder?”
The guard disappeared down the hall, and she took a quick moment to check out the lock on the window. It looked broken, and the screen over it barely clung to the window frame.
The guy came back with a plastic spoon, and she rolled her eyes. As a weapon, it was pitiful, but still, it was better than nothing. She scraped at the hardened powder and managed to loosen enough of the stuff to give the sink a vigorous scrub with the toilet brush. She moved over to the toilet and gave it the same treatment. Rust stained the porcelain and made it look awful, but at least it was reasonably sanitary, now.
“Satisfied, Your Highness?” the guard asked.
“Toilet paper?” she responded tartly.
Muttering under his breath, the guy left again and came back in a minute with a handful of tissues. The guy handed it over with rolled eyes and, as she stared him down, backed out of the bathroom to give her privacy. “Two minutes,” he warned her.
Whatever. She wasn’t breaking out of here until Gary joined her, anyway. Even if her old friend, an overwhelming urge to run, was making her jumpy as heck.
Where was Bass? Did he know she was gone yet? He must be furious with her for leaving without him. But it wasn’t as if she had any choice. She had to take the offer to save her uncle. Gary hadn’t done anything to merit Lonnie Grange’s ire, other than be related to her by blood.
Lonnie hadn’t changed one bit. The garlic smell of his breath. The yellowing of his teeth from smoking. The truculent arrogance. The way he’d gelled his hair to disguise how it was thinning.
One thing had changed, though. She was determined to fight him to the bitter end, this time around.
Blessedly, she remembered nothing of his attack on her. The bastard had drugged her and snuck into her bedroom when she’d been spending the night with Shelly. She’d woken up sore and naked the next morning and put two and two together. But even hypnosis had failed to recover any memory of the actual attack. Which honestly was fine with her.
Just living with the knowledge that it had happened had been almost more than she could deal with. It had taken years for her to make peace with the fact that she hadn’t been a tease or done anything at all to deserve what Lonnie had done to her. He was a criminal, and she the victim of a violent crime. End of discussion.
If Gary wasn’t here, she might even entertain the idea of getting even with Lonnie somehow. She could think of a few pertinent body parts of his that she would love to maim or sever.
Memories of Shelly and her mother, both outgoing, fun people and how the light had gone out of both of them while living with Lonnie passed through her mind. He’d been rich, and Mrs. Baker had been lured by the promise of financial security at long last for herself and her daughter. She’d never dreamed what the price of it would be.
The old fear came flooding back, certainty that Lonnie would kill her, too, given the chance.
Of course, he’d conveniently been in Miami and loaded up with airtight alibis for the time in and around Shelly and Mrs. B’s disappearance. The crime had never been pinned on him, but Carrie had no doubts. He’d had his thugs kill them both.
Had one of the men in the main room killed her best friend? Her breathing accelerated and her chest tightened until she thought she might faint.
What had she done? She’d voluntarily handed herself over to the very people who’d killed Shelly! She’d been so focused on getting Gary back, on running away from Bass, on fleeing his offer of safety and permanence—which was nothing more than smoke and mirrors at the end of the day—that she had run right into the arms of killers.
She was an idiot.
She deserved to die. For real.
A fine sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead, although whether it was from her silent panic attack or the muggy humidity hanging in the air, she couldn’t tell.
She had to get away from here. Go back to New Orleans. Find Bass. Lead him back here. She’d suffered from temporary insanity in thinking she could handle this herself. As usual, she’d acted first and got around to thinking a distant second.
A fist pounded on the door. “Open up or I’m coming in!”
She flung open the door and followed the guard back into the office. Lonnie was gone. “Where’d Lonnie go?” she asked.
“None of your damned business.”
She sat in the chair one of the guards pushed in her direction but not before pulling it over to one side a bit, placing it squarely in front of a window. If Bass found this place, he ought to be able to spot her now.
Surely, someone would find her eventually. The way Bass described it, these waters were far from deserted and a lot of people lived and fished in the low country. Someone would spot her and say something to someone else. It wasn’t great as escape plans went, but it was better than nothing.
She had no idea what time it was and didn’t want to pull out her cell phone to check. They hadn’t confiscated it from her, and she planned to keep it that way. When she’d gone to the bathroom earlier, she’d tucked it inside her bra where the guards were less likely to find it if they frisked her. Her cleavage wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was substantial enough to cover up the presence of her cell phone.
All she had to do was stay calm, be patient and wait for her captors to make a mistake. And then she would find Gary and run like the wind.
* * *
Bass spotted an opening in the trees first. Then a petroleum storage tank. He slowed to an even stealthier pace and crept forward step by cautious step.
The team stopped, crouching at the edge of the clearing about twenty yards from a hurricane fence surrounding the facility.
Perriman used infrared optical devices to determine that three heat signatures were clustered in an office building. No one else was visible. But it was a big place with plenty of spots to hide behind thick metal that would mask heat signatures.
Perriman murmured, “Trina, Ford, set up a couple of shooting positions to cover all possible approaches to that office. Mick, I need you to scout the area. Bass, start working your way up to the office. If you can’t look in directly, get me an audio feed.”
Bass nodded and moved out on his belly, low-crawling toward the fence, rifle across his forearms, using clumps of weeds for cover. Hang on, baby. I’m coming.
He’d barely made it to the fence when Mick breathed, “Problem. I’ve got a tanker truck full of liquid oxygen parked behind the office.”
Bass froze. A bullet into a tanker of LOX would cause an explosion big enough to fry the office building and anyone in it.
“Can we move the truck?” Perriman asked.
Ford interjected, “It’s going to have GPS in it. Move a truck full of hazardous materials, and it’ll trigger alarms. We’ll have the sheriff out here in no time.”
Perriman replied, “I can call the sheriff. Tell him to keep his men away.”
Bass muttered low, “As soon as you call him, he’ll tell all his guys a bunch of SEALs are out here pulling off a rescue. All his deputies will show up, along with any civilians who happen to have their police band radios on. We’ll have a damned audience for this op.”
Perriman responded, “Can you disable the GPS, Mick?”
“Yeah, sure. It’ll just take some—” He broke off abruptly, and Bass went on full alert.
What had the Aussie seen that made him go dead quiet? Bass peered off to the left behind a bunch of pipes and fittings that had been the last place he glimpsed Mick.
At first, he saw nothing. But then he spied a light flaring briefly in the window of a large, run-down building that could have been a storage area or some sort of factory. That light would not be Mick. Someone else was out here.
Behind him, Bass felt as much as saw Ford, Trina and Perriman disperse, melting in the night as they moved around the perimeter of the refinery. It was a big place and was going to take them a while to reconnoiter.
They couldn’t realistically move in to rescue Carrie until they identified all the hostiles and had some idea of what kind of firepower they were up against. Not to mention, Gary Hubbard could be out here, somewhere.
Bass’s money was on that big building to be where Carrie’s uncle was being held.
Swearing under his breath at the delay, Bass continued to move toward his primary objective, that small office structure. He stopped to peer at it through his spotter’s scope and saw Carrie immediately, sitting in the window like she was waiting for him.
His heart leaped with joy and relief. She was alive, and apparently unharmed. Thank God. He actually felt weak with relief.
It was a struggle to keep moving at the speed of a glacier, but he finally made it to the side wall of the office and parked underneath the very window Carrie was sitting beside. He heard two men talking inside, arguing about football teams and brands of beer. Which was to say, they were relaxed and showed no signs of being aware that a SEAL team was moving in on them.
Various clicks over his earbud over the next few minutes indicated that the others were still working at clearing the sprawling facility. Carefully, he snaked a tiny camera on a flexible rod over the edge of the windowsill, parking it inconspicuously in the corner of the window.
Carrie’s face leaped into view as he peered down into a black bag containing a three-inch wide monitor for the camera. He’d never been so glad to see someone in his life as he was to see her, uninjured, albeit looking afraid.
Both of the guards were looking away from her, and Carrie was looking straight at the window. He risked moving the camera a little bit. She blinked and stared right at the lens. He moved it again. She nodded infinitesimally, and her mouth curved up into the faintest of smiles.
She wasn’t out of the woods by a long shot, but at least she knew she wasn’t alone now.
Mick came up on the radio, murmuring, “GPS is disabled. But this puppy’s full up with liquid oxygen. One hit, and it’s a fireball.”
Ford replied, which meant Perriman must be someplace sensitive at the moment. “We’ll have to move that truck. The civilians in the office will have no idea to avoid striking that entire tanker.”
“It’s gonna make a mighty roar when I start up the tractor trailer,” Mick warned.
Ford said aloud exactly what Bass was thinking. “We’ll move it simultaneous to making our assault on Carrie’s guards. Speaking of which, how many hostiles are with her, Bass?”
He clicked his microphone twice.
“Copy. Two hostiles,” Ford replied. “How about you, Frosty? How many hostiles have you spotted?”
Two clicks came in reply. There was a pause, and then one more click from Perriman. Ford followed up quickly. “Do you have eyes on Hubbard?”
One click.
That meant yes. One click for yes and two for no.
“Is he alive?” Ford asked.
No clicks at all.
“You don’t know his status?” Ford murmured.
One click.
Bass swore mentally. If Gary wasn’t ambulatory, they would have to allocate more force to liberating him and less to freeing Carrie. It was child’s play for five SEALs to shoot four civilians. However, that liquid oxygen tanker was a wild card, and it was illegal for American military members to kill American citizens, particularly on American soil in an unsanctioned op like this.
Dropping four armed men without killing them—now that was a trick. They would have to close in to hand-to-hand range and drop Lonnie Grange and his men the old-fashioned way. Thank goodness he’d helped train Trina in close combat tactics. He knew full-well her capabilities, and she wouldn’t have any trouble taking out Lonnie or one of his men.
At length, Perriman came back up in Bass’s ear. Obviously, he’d backed away from wherever Gary was being held so he could talk with his team.
“Mick. Get inside the truck and be ready to hot-wire it and move it on my command. Ford, I need you with me to drop Lonnie, who’s over in this building, and pull out Gary. Trina, join Bass. You two have the guards on Carrie. We all go at once.”
Bass was tempted to demand to switch places with Ford so he could be the one to take out the bastard who’d made Carrie’s life a living hell for all these years. But when it came to a choice between saving Carrie and getting revenge on some thug, Carrie was a thousand times more important to him. He sat tight on the other side of the wall from her.
Trina was almost on top of him before Bass spotted her. She came around the back of the office building with admirable stealth.
He passed the camera monitor to her, and she put the black bag to her eye to get the layout of the room. A big, old desk stood in the far corner of the space, and several chairs stood in front of it. One of the guards sat directly in front of the door, and the other close to the back wall, not far from Carrie.
He pointed at his chest and then at the back end of the room. Trina pointed at her chest and toward the door. She then hand-signaled that she would go in through the front door and that he should go in through the window.
He nodded his understanding and craned his neck to stare up at the window. It consisted of two glass panes, bottom and top. He would fit through the lower opening but would have to dive and roll to get through it. Which was okay. The roll would carry him across the room almost to the guard he was assigned to.
“Call when you’re in position, Mick,” Perriman whispered. “Everyone else, click in.”
Meaning click when they were in position to attack. Each of them had a discrete Morse-code sequence which they used to identify themselves one by one. Trina clicked first, then Bass. It took about two more minutes for Ford to click in. Then, last but not least, Perriman clicked in. Now it was a waiting game for Mick to get inside the truck, tear open the dashboard and pull all the right wires. As soon as the Aussie touched the correct leads together, the truck would start.
“Ready, steady,” Mick reported in a whisper. “Make the call, Frosty.”
Perriman gave all of them a moment to collect themselves, to review in their heads what they were about to do.
Trina stood up and moved over to the corner of the building. She would swing around to the side and burst in from the front while he jumped up, knocked out the window glass, and dived past Carrie.
Breathe. Exhale. Relax. No emotion. Just reflex and reaction from here on out.
“Go,” Perriman bit out.
Trina spun away from Bass as a big, noisy engine rumbled to life. Bass jumped up and used the butt of his rifle to smash out the window glass. He paused just long enough to run the rifle stock around the edge of the window frame fast, knocking out jagged shards of glass that could snag his shirt and hang him up.
He caught a glimpse of Carrie’s face reacting in shock as he leaped through the window and rolled practically on top of her feet. His guy had jumped up in the interim and was staring out the far window, presumably at the truck starting to pull away from the office.
And the bastard had a pistol in his hand, pointed outside.
Aww, hell.
Bass came to his feet and rammed his shoulder into the guard’s back, praying he knocked the guy’s aim off target.
The pistol fired four shots in fast succession—bastard had the thing on full-auto—blasting out the window glass and sending bullets out into the night, directly toward the damn truckload of liquid oxygen, but then Bass had him around the throat.
Bass yelled in his throat mic, “Gunshots incoming, Mick! Get out!”
Bass twisted away from the window, dragging the guard by the throat, choking the sonofabitch for all he was worth. It would take a good thirty seconds for the guy to fully black out, and the guard clawed at Bass’s forearm violently. Thank God for his SEAL-issue, micro-armor shirt.
And then everything happened in slow motion. Carrie leaped to her feet, presumably to help him.
Trina’s guy writhed in her grasp, and somehow managed to get a revolver out of his belt.
Carrie opened her mouth to scream, and the revolver fired wildly.
Then the mother of all explosions happened outside. Something hot ripped into Bass's flesh, knocking his arm away from the guard’s throat, and then he was flying through the air.
The hard ground came up to meet him, slamming into him with the force of a freight train. And then the world went black.