Serving a life sentence for treason will be the least of your worries.”
Agent Martin slammed the door behind him and Reyna rushed over and slid the dead bolt back into place. She slumped against the door and onto the floor, her legs no longer able to support her.
After she drew in a handful of calming breaths, she could think clearly once more. She needed help. The type of help Eddie had explained in his letter. If anything happens to me—if they come for you and threaten you—go to Defiance, Colorado. Find my former colleague, Jase Bradford.
But finding Jase Bradford was going to prove a near impossible task since he’d supposedly died from his battle injuries three years earlier—in spite of Eddie’s insistence that Jase wasn’t actually dead.
Reyna killed the lights, crawled over to the window and glanced outside. A black Suburban was parked down the street from her house. They weren’t leaving. They were going to watch and see if she led them to the laptop. She couldn’t let that happen.
She got to her feet and raced to her bedroom. Taking down her old suitcase, she threw as much stuff as she could fit into it and then slipped out the back door. She didn’t dare risk using her vehicle. They’d be looking for it. She’d have to borrow her neighbor and good friend Sara Dawson’s car if she stood any chance of staying out of prison long enough to retrieve the laptop and find Jase Bradford.
As Reyna walked out into the humid Texas night, it scared the daylights out of her to think that she was risking her freedom, if not her life, on locating a man who the entire world believed was dead.
Reyna’s breath stuck in her throat. She clutched the steering wheel in a death grip to try to keep the tiny car from sliding off the ice-encrusted road. She was way out of her comfort zone. Truth be told, she had been since the nightmare first began.
She slowed to a snail’s pace as an onslaught of ice and snow clung to the windshield, making visibility next to zero. The storm had continued to intensify since she’d been up on the mountain. She had never felt more terrified or alone than she did at this moment, yet turning back wasn’t an option. Behind her lay almost certain prison time—or worse. Agent Martin had all but promised as much. Still, no matter what lay ahead, she had to find out the truth. Was Jase Bradford dead or alive? Reyna believed her life might depend on the answer.
Her eyes darted fearfully to the rearview mirror. What if the men watching her house had somehow managed to follow her here to Defiance, Colorado? She couldn’t let them find the laptop and then kill her before she had the chance to clear Eddie’s name and prove her husband had been murdered. To keep that from happening Reyna had devised a plan. After she’d called the hospital to let her supervisor know she would be taking an extended leave of absence, she had left the laptop in a secure storage facility in Eldorado, Colorado. Then she’d sent a letter to Sara letting her know where to find it if something were to happen to her.
Reyna scrubbed her hand over her weary eyes. The frantic thirteen-plus-hour drive from Stevens, Texas, to Defiance had taken its toll. She was exhausted beyond belief. Thinking clearly took more strength than she had. She’d hit Defiance a couple of hours before darkness descended and just as the edge of the storm arrived.
Maggie, the woman working the night shift at the diner, told her there were only four houses up on Defiance Mountain and none of them belonged to a Jase Bradford. Still, Reyna pressed on because she was all out of options. She believed Eddie had been murdered for what he’d discovered on the laptop. If she wanted to stay out of prison long enough to prove that, then she’d need Jase Bradford’s help to unravel the contents of the files hidden there.
Reyna leaned forward in her seat. She’d driven past three of the houses already and there were clear signs no one had been home in quite some time. One house remained. The last one up was almost at the top of the mountain, according to Maggie, and the storm wasn’t showing any sign of letting up.
She could now barely see the hood of the car, much less the road. The conditions were deteriorating quickly and she had no idea how much farther the car could make it.
Even facing all those dangers, her biggest fear was that Eddie had been wrong and the man buried in Arlington National Cemetery was indeed Jase Bradford. After all, they both had attended his memorial service at Langley. Everyone including the CIA acknowledged Jase was dead.
Why then had Eddie been so convinced in the weeks before his death that Jase was still alive?
She eased down on the gas pedal and the tires spun on the slick gravel, spewing debris against the underside of the car. Since she’d moved from DC back to her childhood home, Reyna had grown accustomed to mild winters. Nothing in Stevens, Texas, had prepared her for this.
The tires finally caught, the car lurched forward, and Reyna remembered to breathe. The road continued its upward spiral broken only by a series of switchbacks that snaked around the side of the mountain. Her heartbeat pounded a frantic rhythm in her ears when she reached another ninety-degree bend. She’d been at it for over an hour and had only managed a quarter of a mile.
Up ahead, the headlights flashed across the left side the road. It appeared to slough off a good foot from the edge. It was pitch-black out and she had no idea how steep the drop-off was. A fall would almost certainly result in major injuries...or death. If she did survive, hypothermia would set in quickly. She’d be dead by morning.
Reyna nudged the car along. She had almost reached the end of the switchback when she felt the vehicle slide on black ice and inch closer to the side of the mountain. Panicking, she jerked the wheel hard in the opposite direction. The small car skated backward some twenty feet. As a result, the tires lost their tenuous grip and slithered closer to the edge.
She floored the gas and the vehicle wrenched forward, swerved sideways and headed straight for the drop-off. Reyna screamed and tried to turn the wheel but it was useless. It moved freely in her hands. She had lost control.
Reyna closed her eyes and prayed with all her heart. She didn’t want to die up here. Not alone like this. Not without proving Eddie’s innocence.
“Please, Lord, no.”
The car spun 360 degrees a couple of times until the front tires slipped over the edge of the mountain and were suspended in midair. The car rocked a couple of times and then stopped. Reyna slowly reached for the door handle. If she could just open the door, she could leap out before it was too late.
She tentatively lifted the handle; the vehicle tilted back and forth from the simple movement. An eerie silence surrounded her. The car hung in place for a second longer and then tipped forward. Reyna barely had time to scream again before the tiny car hurled itself headfirst over the side of the mountain.
* * *
Davis Sinclair stomped hard on the brakes of his battered SUV and somehow managed to keep from spinning out on the slippery road. The first storm of the season had hit hard and fast. It was barely September and already the storm had dumped a foot of snow in a matter of hours. It had piled up on the gravel road leading to his house.
He had been so focused on getting back home through the wintry mix that he hadn’t noticed the skid marks on the road until he was right on top of them.
Someone else had been up his mountain.
The new-fallen snow covered most of their
