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He hadn’t even hesitated. She’d planned to be downstairs with Rory and Vivi, watching the video feeds. Didn’t matter. Her schedule had just been cleared. “I’ll be waiting.”
After they disconnected, she stared at the phone for a moment, her mind blank. There were simply too many avenues for her to consider. The fact that he even acknowledged SFI was saying something, the fact that he had called her directly, and now was driving all the way there from Langley to talk to her, made her skin crawl.
There were protocols she’d put in place, ones written years ago on the off chance something like this might happen.
Cal was in Colorado. So was Trace. The one time she needed them, she’d sent them off on a mission. Taking a deep breath, she buzzed Connor.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Not in the least.” Her feet were in the fire. “Initiate Protocol Zero.”
NINE
Moe sniffed the clean, clear, mountain air. They’d driven as far along the roads as they could get but the nudge in his gut drew them into the woods. One of the many national forests bordered the uneven path he guided Remy along, letting the horse set the pace. Her footing was sure but he didn’t need a lame animal out here.
Colton was on the walkies, giving Moe details about this little-known path that led to a quarry. The location, along with the mining company that had run it, was closed. Silver, gold, and other valuable minerals were buried deep in these mountains, and that had spawned a gold rush in the 1800s. Excavating the valuable minerals took more than most folks realized. The business had eventually abandoned the site and left behind everything—earth-moving equipment, dump trucks, trailers, and more.
Romalov and his merry band of soldiers were survivalists. They’d lived in brutal conditions, often doing it on purpose to enhance their skills. The quarry was close enough to the abduction site to get there quickly afterward, but far enough that it wasn’t immediately obvious. The public entrance was nearly a mile past, right off the highway, but Moe suspected they’d scouted this trail as a potential exit when they were done with Charmaine. They would be keeping an eye out for anyone using the paved road leading to the gated entrance, but probably not this convoluted, mostly hidden trail that also led to the mine next door.
If he were them, this was the manner he would have used to come and go from the camp without notice. The entire thing was covered by a canopy of trees and held no appeal to hikers since they were more likely to take those trails inside the national forest.
Behind him, he heard the clump of Yandi’s hooves, the squeak of the leather saddle. Parker had said nothing, following silently, even when he stopped and got down to look around. Using a flashlight from the backpack, he found freshly broken branches and the plastic wrap off a carton of cigarettes. He didn’t only rely on his gut to tell him he was on the right track, these pieces of evidence confirmed it.
The radio crackled softly. “I’m starting to…” Colton’s voice cut out and came back. “…reception. A few more feet and I won’t be able to…”
Wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks. This far in, the signals were too weak. “Roger that,” he replied. “We’ll be at the edge of the line in another mile. As soon as we have reception again, I’ll be in contact. Henley out.”
No one understood why he’d chosen that particular Rock Star moniker, and he’d left them guessing, no matter how many times they asked. For him, it wasn’t about Don Henley or the Eagles. Hell, he never even listened to them. Henley was the name of his first dog. The puppy he and Jordy had picked together from a neighbor’s litter. Henley had been the runt, and the owner suspected he wouldn’t live. Jordy and Moe had looked at each other, unspoken communication passing between them. “This is the one,” Jordy had said.
Not only had the dog lived, but the runty terrier mix had grown a foot taller and twenty pounds heavier than anybody expected. His sire was probably a dog twice the size of his mother and he’d been smart as a whip, eager to please, and extremely protective of all three of the kids. He’d eaten like a wolfhound and ran it off with constant patrolling around their family’s three-acre estate. The boys had played with him nonstop whenever they weren’t in school, and he’d hung out in the barns with their two horses, trotting alongside the animals when they went for rides.
Moe had wondered many nights early on, while he stayed up coaxing Henley to live, if he’d been a runt, too. Maybe that’s why his mother had left him behind that shop. If George Bouchard hadn’t been walking home on that fated night, would Moe have died next to a dumpster? His adoptive father had taken him home and phoned the police, while George’s wife, Alyssa, had held and fed him.
The coppers were too busy then and even the next day to send anyone. By the time the woman from child services arrived, Alyssa had bonded with Moe. He’d only been a few days old and she’d wanted another son. Since the orphanage was always overwhelmed, the social worker allowed George and Alyssa to foster him while the paperwork was going through the various departments. It took nearly a year, no one showing up to claim him before the Bouchards were allowed to adopt him. They made the fateful decision not to tell him of his true heritage, but when a man showed up on their doorstep requesting a DNA test to see if he was Moe’s biological father, their carefully crafted world fell apart.
At least Moe’s had.
While George and Alyssa refused and the man disappeared, not forcing the issue, Moe couldn’t wrap his eight-year-old head around the news that they’d lied. He’d acted out and became harder and harder for them to control. They’d tried, and maybe if they’d ponied up for therapy then, he wouldn’t have been such a handful.
After Jordy’s death, the world became the apocalypse it was now. He’d joined the Royal Navy to get away from it, them. The academy had honed him into a young soldier, the military prepared him for the Marine Commandos.
A particular covert rescue put him on MI6’s radar. At the age of twenty-six, he became a spy, continuing with the special operations force and also running undercover ops. Acting as a spy wasn’t hard to do, since he’d spent most of his life pretending to be someone else in order to get along with his family, friends, and teammates.
Continuing along the narrow trail, he shifted brush out of the way, flicking the beam of the flashlight across the ground and along the tree line. He imitated smoking, drawing in the tobacco and breathing it out slowly, walking alongside his horse at a healthy, but not hurried, pace.
The abductors might have been moving slower, or faster, but the terrain was rough enough, and the drop on the edge deep enough, that he didn’t believe they would risk injury or death—to themselves or their captive—especially when they were protected by the canopy overhead.
“What are you doing?” Parker called.
As he suspected he would, a few yards ahead, he saw a cigarette butt beside the trail. Idiots. The entire west coast had been plagued with wildfires, but then these guys weren’t worried about starting a forest fire, were they? He fished in the backpack for a plastic bag and used it to collect the evidence. He held it up, shining the flashlight on it. “They came through here.”
He secured it and then checked his watch. Two hours until sunrise. He needed to pick up the pace.
TEN
The first time Parker had seen Moe, it was as if she’d been struck by lightning. She knew her life would never be the same.
With him, she felt a kind of passion she’d never experienced. Simply watching him fascinated her. When he glanced her way, she felt like that lightning rod, drawing his intensity to her.
