the keys would be in plain sight or that her captors hadn’t created some sort of roadblock farther down the lane. So she ran the other way, deeper into the forest, limping on her badly abraded feet, but unable to slow down for her injuries. Her breath sobbed in her lungs, burning with each inhalation, and wetness streamed down her face, a mix of tears, sweat and panic.
“There!” Brisbane shouted from her right. “Over there! For crap’s sake, get her!”
Brush crashed, the noises closer now and gaining on her. Mariah kept going, but her body was weak; her legs had gone to jelly and her feet and calves screamed in pain. She stumbled, dragged herself up and stumbled again. This time she went down and hit the ground hard. For a second, she lay there, stunned.
Before she could recover, rough hands grabbed her.
Panic assailed her and she started to struggle, inhaled to scream, but someone clapped a hand across her mouth and hissed, “Quiet!”
Then the world lurched and he was dragging her, lifting her and wrestling her into what looked like a solid wall of thorny brush from a distance, but up close proved to be scrub covering a deep depression, where a tree had fallen and the root ball had popped up, forming an earthen cave of sorts.
Excitement speared through Mariah alongside confusion. She looked back and got an impression of a square-jawed soldier wearing a thick woolen cap, heavy, insulated camouflage clothing and no insignia. He wasn’t Lee or Brisbane. He was…rescuing her?
He shoved her into the hiding spot and crowded in behind her.
“Down,” he whispered tersely, pressing her into the cold, moist earth and following her, rolling partway on top of her so she was beneath him and they were pressed back-to-front, with his heavy weight all but squeezing the breath from her lungs.
The fallen tree had rotted over time, providing nourishment for the profusion of vines and scrub plants that had sprung from it, forming an almost impenetrable thicket. But would it be enough to conceal them fully?
Her rescuer’s arms tightened around her, and he breathed in her ear, “Be very still. They’ll see us if you move.”
Coming from nearby, she heard the sound of footsteps in the undergrowth, and a man’s muttered curse. Freezing, Mariah pressed herself flat beneath the soldier, and held her breath, praying they wouldn’t be discovered.
The noises stopped ten, maybe fifteen feet away. After a moment, Lee’s voice called, “Are you sure you saw her? There’s nothing here.”
“She was there a second ago. Keep looking.” Brisbane’s answer came from the other side of the woods, back toward the cabin. After a moment, Lee moved off.
Mariah counted her heartbeats, trying to stay calm as she exhaled slowly, then risked inhaling a breath. Another. The sounds of the search diminished slightly, suggesting that the men had moved to the other side of the cabin.
Hoping that Lee and Brisbane were walking into one hell of an ambush, she rolled her eyes back, trying to get a look at her rescuer as she mouthed, “Where are the others hiding?”
He must be part of a coordinated attack, right? Somehow, someone had learned that she was in trouble and had sent help.
Most likely, the FBI agents—particularly the cold, gray-eyed bastard who’d kept questioning her father even after he’d started complaining of chest pains—had been keeping watch on the cabin. They’d probably identified Lee days ago and were just now moving in, knowing al-Jihad was on his way. The thought that they’d known she was in there and hadn’t bothered to mount a rescue beforehand brought a kick of resentment, but it was no more than she’d come to expect from the Feds. They carried out their own plans on their own timetable, and to hell with the people they hurt in the process.
But the soldier shook his head slightly. “I’m alone,” he breathed in her ear. “Quiet now. They’re coming back.”
What? Mariah’s thoughts churned. It didn’t make any sense that he’d be up on the ridgeline alone, but she couldn’t deny the physical reality of him, either. She would’ve demanded an explanation, but just then, Brisbane and Lee returned, stopping very close to the thick copse where Mariah and the soldier were hidden. The two men conferred in low voices.
Breathing shallowly through her mouth, Mariah flattened herself against the moist, partially rotted leaves and twigs beneath her. She was acutely aware of the man pressed against her. The solid weight of him was more reassuring than it probably should have been, and she fought the urge to huddle her chilled body into his heavy warmth as her mind continued to race.
What sort of soldier worked alone?
“I’ll call down and have the boss bring up more men,” Lee said. “We’ll fan out, search every rock and tree until we find her. The bitch has to be hiding somewhere nearby—there’s no way she got away that fast with no shoes.”
“I told you to keep her drugged,” Brisbane spat, disgusted. “Told you she was smarter than you gave her credit for.”
Lee’s voice edged toward a whine. “I thought al-Jihad would prefer her awake.”
“Awake doesn’t do us any good if she’s gone. This was your idea. At this point, you’d better hope to hell she doesn’t make it down the ridge, or your ass is toast.”
“Al-Jihad wouldn’t do anything to me. He needs me.”
“Al-Jihad doesn’t need anybody,” Brisbane countered. “Come on, let’s keep looking. I’ll start over here while you call down and tell the others we need a fullfledged search party. Have them bring up infrared, night vision, the whole works. They’ll want to watch the roads, too. The bitch is bound to turn up somewhere.”
Despite the warm weight of the man pressed against her, Mariah began to shiver, fear and confusion warring within her. What did they want from her? Whatever they wanted, the men were right about one thing: in the absence of help, it seemed highly unlikely that she’d make it to safety—the nights were too cold, the trails difficult to manage without proper climbing equipment, never mind without shoes of any kind. If she had help, though, she might very well make it off the ridge and into the city safely.
Question was, did the man who held her count as help?
As Lee and Brisbane moved off in opposite directions, the sounds of their steps fading to forest silence, she stirred beneath the stranger, twisting around to get a good look at him. “Who are—” She bit off the question with a quiet hiss when she recognized the cool gray eyes beneath the woolen cap, recognized the suit-clad monster in the man she’d thought was a soldier. “Grayson!” She spat the word out like a curse.
It was Special Agent Michael Grayson, the FBI agent who’d made her life a living hell and nearly killed her father in his efforts to get at a truth that had existed only in his mind.
And now she was at his mercy.
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