Betrayed (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 9) (6 page)

Sensing his urgency, Bautista leaned in closer to better see the screen. “What are we looking for?”

“Late nineties model silver Chrysler, four door,” he answered, already scanning for it, phone held to his ear. “Go back to fifteen minutes before the start of the event and play up ‘til now.”

The man did as he said, playing the recording at double the speed.

There was no car matching the description for the first ten minutes. Then at the fifteen-minute mark, Bautista saw it. “There,” he said, touching a fingertip to the screen where the car matching the description pulled into the lot.

The head of security paused, then slowed the footage and hit
play
. All of them watched as the car turned right into the lot and quickly drove out of view.

“Back it up,” Rycroft ordered. “Can you get a close-up shot of the driver?”

But the angle was wrong, the image too blurry to make out anything more than what appeared to be a female silhouette in the driver’s seat. Bautista’s heart beat a little faster as he looked at Rycroft. “What have you got?”

Rycroft straightened and motioned for them to follow him out the door. In the hallway he spoke as they hurried for the parking lot. “Same car was reported stolen over an hour ago. Cops found it a few blocks from here, back door left wide open. Apparently there was some evidence left inside.”

Was it Georgia? Bautista jumped into the back of the SUV as Briar fired it up and headed to the scene. Three police cars were already there.

At the side of the quiet access road he spotted the silver Chrysler parked at a haphazard angle on the shoulder, its left rear passenger door wide open. Whoever had taken it had left in a helluva hurry.

He got out and followed the others over to the cops, waited while Rycroft showed his ID and gained access to the vehicle.

“We’re just waiting for the forensics guys to get here,” one of the cops was saying to him.

“They’re not going to find any prints,” Rycroft said to him, using his sleeve to open the driver’s side door and take a look inside, and spoke to Briar. “See if you can find anything else we can use.”

Bautista followed her over while the cops gathered around. As soon as he got near the rear door, he caught the sour smell of vomit.

A glance inside showed someone had thrown up in the back, on the floor. Whoever it was had also left a heavy blanket crumpled up on the backseat so there would definitely be plenty of DNA left behind for them to analyze.

He glanced up, shared a long look with Briar and knew from the grim set of her mouth that she didn’t like the feel of this any better than he did.

Rycroft was on the phone to someone named Zahra back at NSA headquarters. “Check CCTV footage from the surrounding area. See if you can get a decent shot of the driver’s face.”

The chances of them getting footage of her leaving the car were as low as finding her prints anywhere inside that vehicle. And there was still a large chance it wasn’t her at all.

Bautista dragged his attention away from him and glanced to the backseat again for a moment before turning to scan the surrounding area. The shops and businesses here were mostly industrial, and spaced far apart. There were any number of places the driver could have disappeared to.

The thought that it might be Georgia filled him with a mixture of hope and frustration. They’d been so close to her, and now the opportunity was likely lost.

The forensics people arrived. Rycroft’s phone rang a few minutes later. Bautista watched as he talked, saw the moment his face brightened. Bautista knew what the agent was going to say before he opened his mouth.

“It’s her,” Rycroft said, his tone one of complete confidence.

The news hit him like a jolt of electricity. Bautista spun about and searched around them again, a sense of urgency humming through him.

Georgia was seriously ill. It was the only explanation for why she’d left the car like this, in plain view of anyone who came across it, and without scrubbing it of any evidence first. Leaving evidence behind was sloppy, way too amateurish for someone like her.

Which meant she had to be in bad shape.

“Fan out and take a look around,” Rycroft said to him and Briar, his posture tense. “If she’s that sick she couldn’t have gone far. Bautista, you’re with me.”

He tightened his jaw in resentment of the command. “You’ve already got a tracker on me.”

The tiny electronic capsule was smaller than a grain of rice and currently embedded somewhere under the skin. All so the NSA could keep tabs on his every move. If he tried to breach the contract and disappear, they’d be able to track him until he carved it out of his own flesh, and even then the residual isotope could give off a signal for their satellites to follow.

“I don’t need a damn babysitter,” he snapped. “And I can cover more ground on my own.” Georgia was in serious trouble. She was out there somewhere, and she was damn sick. Maybe even dying. She needed help right
now
.

“It’s not up for discussion,” the agent answered tersely, and walked past him without another glance.

Bautista shoved back the bitterness rising inside him and followed in silence. His gut already told him they wouldn’t find her. Not here, anyway. Not tonight and probably not for a few days at least—if they got lucky and caught a lead.

Unless she was unconscious or dead.

He dismissed the possibility outright. The thought of finding her body now, after all this time they’d been apart, while knowing there was a chance she still had feelings for him, was unthinkable. He refused to accept it.

No. If she was still functional she’d have stolen another vehicle by now, be on her way out of town. She was weak. Would want to go to ground. But where?

And what if she’s sprawled on the floor in one of those buildings across the road right now?

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath and followed Rycroft across the street toward a group of warehouses.

The countdown was on, and it was shorter than he’d ever imagined. They had to find and stop Georgia before she got herself killed trying to take out the targets on her hit list.

Once they did, if he found out what they’d shared was real, he’d move heaven and earth to get her to safety.

If it had been real, then he was going to make her his.

****

Georgia wiped the sweat from her face with an unsteady hand and strained to see the curving mountain road through the glare of her headlights reflecting off the wet pavement and the rain currently lashing against the windshield.

The wipers swished back and forth in a blur of movement on their fastest setting, and still they didn’t clear away the drops fast enough. She shook as another chill snaked through her despite the heater being cranked up to high, the clammy sweat trapped against her skin making her feel cold all over.

She slowed to take a sharp curve in the road, ignoring the impatient blare of a horn from the driver behind her. It was all she could do to stay upright and concentrate on steering right now.

The moment the road straightened out the truck that had been stuck behind her pulled out and passed her with another long blast of its horn. Georgia shuddered as another wave of cold swept through her, kept both hands locked around the wheel.

She’d crossed the state line into North Carolina hours ago, after changing cars and having to stop and be sick several times. Her stomach was long since empty but didn’t seem to care or notice.

By now it was clear that whoever had poisoned her hadn’t intended to kill her. Yet. Had they just intended to weaken her, so they could move in and take her alive?

In her current state she couldn’t focus properly, knew she’d been sloppy back in D.C. The cops would have long since found the first car she’d ditched.

Whoever was after her might have seen it, may have been able to pick up the trail and follow her. She’d switched cars three more times over the past eight hours but it might not be enough.

It has to be enough
, she thought fiercely. She refused to be caught when she’d been so close to killing one of her remaining targets. He needed to die for what he’d done.

The road turned into a series of switchbacks as it climbed higher into the mountains, the constant swerving of the car making the nausea worse. God, her head was pounding and fatigue was making the rest of her numb.

Her hiding place wasn’t too much farther now. All she had to do was ditch the car and get there, lock the place down tight before crashing for a few hours.

But she didn’t have the strength to walk far, so she’d have to risk leaving the vehicle closer to her hideout than she wanted. She needed fluids, meds, and she needed sleep.

If her body could just recover from whatever this was, then she could plan her next move and get back into action. Though she hated to lose any time, there was no way she was capable of carrying out a hit right now, much less locate her target and plan an op.

When the sign welcoming her to Bryson City finally came into view an hour before dawn, she could have wept from relief. On the far side of the historic district she turned down a mountain road that led out of town. A mile out, when she was certain the road was empty, she ditched the car in an abandoned farmer’s field and began hauling out her stuff.

To the east the sky was beginning to lighten behind the trees. The rain was freezing against her hot skin, her muscles shaking from the effort of carrying the guitar case and duffel. Her boots left prints in the muddy dirt road but she didn’t dare stray into the woods bordering either side of it.

She was too weak right now to climb over branches and rocks, too far gone to worry about anyone tracking her footprints. Best she could hope for was the heavy rain would help wash them away over the next several hours.

Georgia set her jaw and stumbled onward. She hated the weakness, the helplessness.

She’d spent her entire life learning to be self-sufficient, had vowed never to make herself vulnerable to another person ever again. Yet she was more vulnerable than she’d been since that awful day when she was nine. With each wobbly step she knew that whoever was hunting her was drawing ever closer.

Her teeth chattered, every muscle and joint aching as she doggedly forced one foot in front of the other.
Not much farther, just a little more
, she ordered herself.
You can do this. You
have
to do this.

Amazing, the endurance the human body was capable of when faced with a life or death situation. Because that’s what this was. If she dropped down into the mud and slept like every part of her body ached to right now, she would die.

Maybe not in the next few hours, but soon. The hunters would come, even here, where she’d retreated to buy herself time. Eventually, they would find her. Before that happened she needed to get stronger and prepare to defend herself.

The will to survive drove her onward, step by painful step.

By the time the tiny cabin set near the creek appeared through the trees at last, her hair was plastered to her skull and her clothes soaked through. She was numb from the neck down, pushed beyond her limits.

Dropping her things onto the wooden porch, she stumbled a few dozen yards away to the rock at the foot of the oak tree where she’d hidden the keys. She gagged once, leaned forward to brace herself on her hands, the ends of her wet hair dragging through the mud as her stomach heaved. There was nothing to come up, not even bile.

When it faded she began to dig. Her numb fingers scraped through the layer of fallen leaves and through the mud until they hit metal. She unearthed the small box and removed the keys, then replaced everything and shoved to her feet, weaving for a second until she found her balance.

Exhaustion pulled at her like a lead weight, making every movement slow, her eyelids heavy. The cabin looked old and decrepit but it held more than a few state-of-the-art surprises, and it had the supplies she needed.

Taking a cursory look around at the anti-tampering devices she’d set into place near the front door, didn’t see anything off, and disarmed them. Her hand shook as she at last shoved the key into the lock and opened the door with a creak. A faintly musty rush of air tinged with the scent of old wood hit her.

She hauled her bags inside, locked the door and set the alarm, then pulled off her muddy boots and wove toward the back room. Her wet clothes hit the old floorboards with a slap as she peeled each item off and dumped them on the floor on the way to the bedroom.

Through the open doorway, there was just enough light coming through from the front of the cabin to reveal the neatly-made bed waiting for her, covered with a thick down comforter. After stopping in the adjoining bathroom to take something for the fever and pain, she stumbled to the bed.

Naked and shivering violently, she pulled back the covers and slid inside, wincing at the chill of the sheets against her sore skin. Within moments of being huddled beneath the covers her body began to warm the bedding, bringing with it a surge of relief.

Before the heavy wave of sleep could drag her under she remembered to grab the monitor for the surveillance system from the bedside table and switched it on. She didn’t even remember her head hitting the pillow.

A sharp beep brought her awake sometime later.

Rain pattered against the walls and roof. Disoriented, feeling bruised all over, she blinked into the darkness, then remembered where she was and what the beeping meant. The alarm.

Someone had breached the perimeter.

Her stomach rebelled with a hard twist when she rolled over to grab the monitor and sat up. The display showed a single heat signature moving around about a quarter mile to the north, near the road. It was too big to be an animal.

As she watched, the monitor beeped again. Seconds later three more signatures appeared on screen, two to the west, one to the northwest.

Cold spread through her gut.

They’re here.

A spike of adrenaline shot through her, erasing the chill. But it didn’t erase the sharp edge of fear it brought with it.