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“I do.” She let out a long sigh. “And that’s probably exactly what she was doing. She loves to go exploring, and she loves riding that motorbike of hers. I don’t go into a lot of details about my work with her, and that’s probably a mistake. I haven’t made her aware of the dangers she needs to avoid.”
“Beck, there is no way Leslie could know there’s a group of anarchists up here—if indeed that’s what they are—and that they might be planning an attack of some kind somewhere in this country. If the message Hank got is true, that is, and not just speculation.”
At that moment, they both heard Hank’s voice in their headphones.
“Bulletin for Roman and Beck.”
“Go for Roman and Beck,” Roman answered for both of them.
“Just heard back from the sheriff. They had three tourists take a header down one of the long embankments over the last couple of years. Their bikes were found with them, and they looked like ordinary accidents. And there were so few of them, no one connected the incidents. Shit like that happens on mountains like this when you have people tackling trails beyond their abilities.” He paused. “But the sheriff also said they all could have been staged.”
“So, unsuspecting people could have stumbled on something that led them to the Loyalists, and they got thrown off a cliff for the knowledge.” Beck swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth.
“That’s it,” Hank agreed. “More than that, two other people disappeared altogether in the past eighteen months, and there isn’t a smell of them anywhere.”
“Shit.” Roman spat the word out. “Something’s definitely going on there. I’ve got the other teams checking other mountain locations, but my spidey sense tells me you guys are hitting gold.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Beck said in a tight voice. “Okay. We’d better get a move on. I told Roman this is exactly the kind of trail Leslie would get off on. If the Loyalists are really here, she’s riding right into big trouble. She’d be so busy looking at everything and taking pictures, it would land on her before she even realized it.”
“Good luck.”
“Keep those other teams looking just the same,” Roman told him. “You never know what they’ll find.”
“Oh, I am. Count on it. Hank out.”
“Okay, let’s move.” Roman put his hand on the keys. “My neck itches like we’ve got eyes on us, and I have a feeling they could be right around the corner.”
At that moment, as if someone had been listening to them, they heard the roar of engines coming from farther up the trail. They sounded as if they were heading in their direction. Roman looked up and frowned.
“What the hell is that?” Beck asked.
“What’s going on?” Hank’s voice sounded in both their headphones.
“You game to take a look?”
Beck nodded. “Do we just do the casual tourist thing? Head up there on our bike? Take a casual look around?”
“Yup. Works for me. Let’s go. Hank, we’ll get back to you.”
Beck climbed onto the motorcycle behind him, he kicked over the engine, and they moved farther up the trail. But there didn’t seem to be anyone heading in their direction. They were alone on the road. Hank had been right. This trail got very little traffic, exactly the kind of thing Leslie would head for. But someone was up ahead of them, someone with a powerful motor of some kind. They weren’t imagining it.
Even though no one was currently watching them, at least as far as they knew, Beck and Roman still did their best to put on the casual air of tourists and not look like they were studying the countryside too closely.
Actually, it wasn’t too big a problem. There was plenty of vegetation with colorful blossoms and thick, thick clusters of bushes, lots of birds and small animals. The sun cast a golden glow on everything. Beck was sure under other circumstances they’d have lost themselves in the beauty of the environment. But right now, every nerve vibrated as they listened for the sound of the motorcycle engines or any other kind of activity, like trucks. They pulled far enough off the winding road to hide themselves in a cluster of thick bushes and waited. And waited.
The sound of the bike engines suddenly broke the air above them. It came so close, Beck was sure whoever it was had to be around the next bend in the road. Then the roar died, but no vehicle of any kind passed them.
“What the hell?” Roman whispered the words. “I’m going to take a look.”
“Be careful,” Beck whispered back.
“I’m leaving the bike here for the moment,” he told her. “We can stash it in these thick bushes while I go take a look. You want to come with?”
“No.” She shook her head. “One of us should stay with the bike just in case we need it in a hurry. Go on. My ego’s not involved. I know you respect my input.”
“Good. But keep your gun ready.”
Pulling her M11-A1 Compact Sig Sauer from the holster at her waist, she crouched down beside the motorcycle in the shrubbery and watched Roman climb the hill. Making his way quietly up the incline to the winding road, he moved with practiced stealth until he reached the roadway then disappeared along the edge. He was gone about fifteen minutes according to her watch, fifteen very long minutes, before he was back, so quiet he startled her.
“Nobody’s there,” he murmured in her ear. “It’s the damnedest thing.”
“What?” She stared at him. “What do you mean? We heard that bike come roaring down.”
“I mean exactly what I said. There isn’t a soul on the roadway.”
“Were you careful, just in case they were hiding?”
He frowned at her. “Beck, this isn’t my first day on the job. You know that.”
She bit her lip. “Of course I do. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Just worried about my sister.”
“And that’s understandable. But, of course I was careful. Are you kidding me? I hid in the trees and bushes as much as I could. But all for nothing. There’s no one there and no place for them to have gone. Damn it. The other side of the road is all boulders right into the granite mountainside.”
Beck frowned. “I see that. Let’s check in with Hank and the others in our little group. See if they’ve come across anything. I know we’re spread out pretty wide, but these are all experienced people. If whoever this is had equipment with engines that powerful, maybe someone else heard or saw them, too.”
“Yeah. Let me tap them.” Roman shook his head. “But here’s what I want to know. Where the fuck did whoever this was disappear to? Thin air?”
