The Mustang undoubtedly would have slid all over the place had its tires actually been touching the ground. Even given how fast they were going, Mason worried they wouldn’t get there in time.
“Can this thing go any faster?”
He’d obviously forgotten whom he was dealing with.
Ramses cocked a smile, hit the gas, and reminded Mason why he needed to choose his words more carefully around his old friend. The white landscape whipped past to either side in a blur. Before he knew it, they were on I-70 and firmly slotted in the icy tire grooves.
The Mustang careened down the off-ramp and blew sideways through the red light at the bottom before the wheels caught with a lurch and propelled them uphill to the north. Ramses finally let off the gas. The Peak View Inn was lost in the snow to the right. The trailers they were looking for were to the east, back up in the dense woodland behind the adult bookstore and the hourly motel. She’d been right across the street the entire time.
“Drop me off at the top of the hill and I’ll work my way down through the trees.”
Mason’s cell phone rang. It was Gunnar.
“You have a Bluetooth?” he asked.
“Yeah. Give me a second.”
Mason watched the trailer park flash past through the pines, but he could see little more than the backs of the units closest to the road. He hooked the Bluetooth to his ear, pocketed his cell phone, and glanced at the in-dash clock. It was only five o’clock, two hours before their scheduled meeting.
“Can you hear me, Gunnar?”
“Loud and clear.”
As soon as they crested the hill, Ramses turned into the vacant parking lot of a strip mall and parked close enough to a twenty-four-hour convenience store that the Mustang didn’t stand out any more than it already did.
“You see anything yet?” Mason asked.
“Movement in the trees to the northeast. Downhill,” Gunnar replied.
“You want me to go with you?” Ramses asked.
“Stay here. If I’m not back in thirty minutes, call the cops and get the hell out of here, okay?”
Ramses nodded and Mason jumped out into the snow. The cold hit him like a truck. He wished he’d grabbed a heavier coat, but there was nothing he could do about that now.
“Talk to me, Gunnar.”
“Still nothing, but I don’t dare mess with the view at all. I’ll be caught in a heartbeat. As it is, it’s only a matter of time before whoever’s watching notices I’ve piggybacked on their feed.”
“Then get out of there. I can handle this on my own.”
“The hell you can.”
Mason ducked behind the strip mall at the first opportunity and used the shadows to conceal his approach. Once he broke cover, he would have to cross a lone street, and then he’d be in the trees behind the uppermost row of trailers, without any idea how many there were or how they were numbered. And without the slightest clue as to what kind of situation he was potentially hurling himself headlong into.
“Where are you now?” Gunnar asked.
“Crossing the road to the south, at the top of the hill.” Mason darted across the street and threw himself into the evergreen shrubs on the other side. “Going silent now. Copy?”
“Copy.”
He crawled out of the junipers and crouched behind the trunk of a pine tree while he gauged his surroundings. The road to his left was invisible from this vantage point, as were the trailers and whoever might be lurking in the shadows.
“If they’re still in there,” Gunnar said, “it’s only because they haven’t found her yet.”
That confirmed what Mason had been thinking. Maybe they’d been able to use satellites to follow her back here after the woman abandoned his car, but there was no way they could have known about the proposed seven o’clock meeting, which also meant they had no reason to suspect that he would be here.
The snow fell heavily above him, causing clumps to drop from the overburdened branches. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Everything else was so quiet that his breathing sounded too loud in his ears. He moved downhill. Slowly. Picking his way from behind the trunk of one pine tree to the next. The first mobile home materialized from the storm about two hundred feet to the northeast. There were no lights in the windows, no movement behind them. He used the back of the trailer as cover to get closer to the road. Wedgewood Circle formed a wide, wending S shape that slithered down through the trees toward the river. There were no tracks on the road and the few cars parked along the narrow shoulders were buried under snow.
Mason drew his pistol and eased around the side, taking full advantage of the shadows for as long as possible. He could only see two other units from where he crouched: one cattycorner across the street, behind a tall chain-link fence, and another about a hundred feet to his right at the end of the bend. Neither had mailboxes or anything resembling a house number. He took a deep breath, sprinted across the street, and knelt in the snow against the side of a small truck with rust around the wheel wells.
“Something’s happening,” Gunnar said. “Whoever’s controlling the camera zoomed out a little. And I see movement. To the east. Behind the tree line.”
“Give me a landmark. I’m flying blind out here.” Mason crept around the front of the truck. Took a quick peek. Sprinted along the length of the fence and ducked down behind some shrubs. “Damn it, Gunnar. I need something to orient myself.”
“The southernmost trailer has an old-fashioned TV antenna. The one across the street to the northeast has a basketball hoop in the yard.”
Mason crouched and peeked around the side of the tree. He could barely see a thing through the overgrowth of pines and scrub oak.
“More movement to the east,” Gunnar said. “No, southeast. They’re surrounding the trailer to the east of the one with the antenna.”
There was another massive pine tree fifty feet to the east. Mason ran low along the ridgeline and dove behind it. Glanced downhill. He could just barely see the roof of a trailer home to the northeast through the branches. He leaned farther forward and caught a glimpse of the antenna through the blowing snow. The adjacent trailer would be roughly a hundred feet to the east of it, which meant that the movement Gunnar had seen was on the same ridgeline as Mason, maybe two hundred feet dead ahead through the forest. He halved the distance at a low sprint and knelt in a copse of skeletal aspens.
“Movement to the southwest,” Gunnar said.
“That’s me.”
“Someone else noticed. Get out of there, Mace. You’re about to have company from the east.”
Mason couldn’t see anyone coming, but if they were being coordinated from a distance like he was, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He took two quick strides to the north and slid downhill feetfirst. Crashed into the scrub oak at the bottom. Scrambled to the other side. He expected to hear the report of gunfire and bullets tearing up the bushes around him, but no shots rang out. They didn’t want to spook their prey.
Just because they hadn’t shot at him didn’t mean they weren’t still coming, though.
“Directly uphill and behind you, Mace. Two more closing from across the street to the north and northeast. Get moving! If I can see you, so can they!”
He crawled out of the bushes and looked toward what he assumed was unit nine. The window screens were torn, the rear deck sagged, and it almost appeared as through the whole trailer was leaning away from the road onto its buckled skirt. He glanced back to his left, toward the trailer with the old antenna. From this angle, he could clearly see the small security camera directed toward him from behind the row of icicles clinging to the roofline.
Clever girl.
“Jesus Christ, Mason! They’re right on top of you! Get the hell out of there!”
He could hear his pursuer behind him now. Maybe fifteen feet up the slope, moving through the aspens. He aimed his pistol at the sound and ran to the west, toward the other trailer, then dashed uphill through the densest cover he could find.
“He knows you’re there. He’s coming right for you!”
Which was exactly what Mason hoped he would do.
He guessed at the angle his pursuer had taken to intercept him, which would force him to pass right through a narrow gap between pine trunks, and barreled straight toward where he expected him to appear. He was already airborne when a man wearing black fatigues shoved through the branches. Mason caught him up high across the chest, knocking him off his feet. The man landed on his back, with Mason’s shoulder planted firmly against his sternum. His breath exploded past his lips as they slid down the slope. Mason forced his left hand down over the bridge of the man’s nose. The snow rode up over his head, but Mason could still tell where it was. He slammed the butt of his Sigma down onto the man’s forehead. Again. And again.
Mason leaped up from the man’s chest and pointed the gun right into his face. He wore a black ski mask, which revealed only his closed eyes, and a gas-operated Heckler & Koch model 417 modular assault rifle on a strap across his chest.
“Get out of there!” Gunnar said. “They’re coming around both sides of the trailer and the image is focused directly on you!”
He holstered his pistol, commandeered the HK417, and ran toward the trailer with the camera. If nothing else, at least there’d be a record of his death. Maybe he could even buy the woman enough time to get out of there, if she hadn’t already. He raced along the back side of the trailer and ducked around the corner. Pressed his back against the siding.
Waited. Pulse pounding in his ears.
They’d send one man from either side. He needed to stay in the middle for as long as he dared before tipping his hand. As far as they knew, he didn’t have access to their level of satellite technology, which gave him an advantage, slight though it might be.
“One coming for you along the north face of the trailer, the other along the south,” Gunnar said. “Moving low to the ground. Coming in fast.”
If Mason went for the one to his right, heading along the north side, he’d be totally exposed to the road and the units on the other side of it. If he went left, he’d be able to scurry uphill into the woods again. It was a no-brainer. Which was why he went quickly around the side to his right, with all of his instincts screaming for him to go the other way.
The man’s eyes widened in surprise a heartbeat before Mason lunged at him with the HK417 raised high. He caught the man squarely in the temple before he could get off a shot. He hit the ground hard, shoulder-first. The entire left side of his face was misshapen and blood seeped out from beneath his torn eyelid.
“Behind you! Damn it, Mace! He’s right—”
“Drop the rifle and get on your knees,” a man’s voice said.
“You’d shoot an unarmed man in the back?”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Gunnar said. “Ramses is on his way. Just try to stall, okay?”
“Throw it down in the snow,” the man behind him said. “Now!”
“How about you tell me what you want with her,” Mason said.
“How about you shut up before I put a peephole through the back of your head.”
Mason heard a crumpling sound to his right, from inside the trailer. Like someone trying to discreetly transfer weight across floorboards that hadn’t been manufactured with discretion in mind.
He threw down the rifle in order to make the loudest racket possible. He needed to keep the man behind him from hearing whatever was going on inside the trailer.
“Your buddy here could probably use a quick trip to the emergency room. I don’t think his eye’s supposed to look like that.”
“He dies, you die. I don’t care if you have a guardian angel or not.”
“You know who I am?”
“Shut up and put your hands on your head.”
“Ramses just turned into the park,” Gunnar said. “You need to buy yourself another thirty seconds. If that.”
“How do you know who I am? Tell me, damn it! Did you know who my wife was, too?”
Another creak and a groan to his right. Subtle. Close to the front door of the dilapidated unit.
Mason could hear the smile in the man’s voice when he spoke.
“She cried out for you the whole time she was burning.”
A car engine to the west. Coming in fast.
The sounds of shifting weight inside the mobile home, the click of a hand settling on a doorknob.
The man’s words reverberated inside Mason’s skull.
His vision turned red and the edges throbbed in time with his pulse. Never in his life had he felt such depths of hatred. He wanted to tear this man apart with his bare hands.
He never got the chance.
Ramses’ headlights swept across them as he came hard around the corner in a controlled slide, throwing their shadows up the side of the trailer and onto the door as it opened outward. A dark silhouette emerged, the barrel of a shotgun leveled at Mason’s chest.
“No!”
He tried to get his body between the weapon and the man behind him. He needed to know what the man knew about his wife’s death.
An explosion of light and sound.
A gust of hot wind screamed past his cheek.
The sting of discharged particles, biting into his skin.
“More coming from the southeast!” Gunnar shouted through the Bluetooth in his ear. “Get out of there while you still can!”
A concussive clap against his eardrum in the other.
Mason whirled around and saw a spray of red where the man’s head had been. Streamers of blood unraveled into the night and spattered the hood of the Mustang as it struck the guy’s body from the side. He flopped onto the hood, bounced right off of it, and struck the trailer in a starburst of blood.
Someone was shouting at Mason, tugging on his arm. He could only stare down at the heap of humanity sprawled in the wash of Ramses’ headlights. The man’s blood dribbled down the broken siding and glistened in the light as the Mustang backed away and swung out into the street.
Gunnar shouting, directly in his ear. He couldn’t decipher the words from the ringing.
More tugging.
Something whizzed past his face and struck the trailer, throwing sharp vinyl shards in every direction. He was moving before bullets filled the air around him.
Mason saw Ramses through the open passenger door, yelling and waving him in. He wrapped his arms around the woman who’d been pulling on his arm and tackled her onto the seat. The Mustang was already slipping and sliding in reverse before he could even attempt to grab for the door to close it. The window exploded and the door jumped. He managed to maneuver the woman onto his lap so he could close the door. Two men ran down the center of the road, golden flashes dancing from the barrels of their assault rifles. Mason could hardly see their outlines through all the cracks and spattered blood.
“Get down!” Ramses shouted, and accelerated straight toward them.
Bullets ricocheted from the bumper and hood.
The men dove out of the way.
And then the Mustang was around the corner and out of sight.