Fear No Evil (20 page)

“I realized that Trask was planning on meeting me away from where he has Lucy. Probably because he believed I would tell the FBI. So I have the element of surprise. I’m going to the second coordinates. Lucy said she was on an island.”

“You need backup.”

“Yes, but who’s going to believe anything I say now? Your brothers and Quinn walked into a trap. If the feds go to the island, they’ll most assuredly get Lucy killed. If they go to the mountain, Trask will know. He’s expecting them, but he’s not expecting
me
to come in alone. It’s the element of surprise. Don’t you see? I have to go to the second location first, get there faster than I told him I’d meet him. To see if Lucy is there. If she is, I can rescue her and then still have time to meet Trask on the mountain. If she’s not there, then he kept his word and brought her with him. He promised to trade Lucy. I’ll have enough time to get to the mountain location and save her.”

“You can’t believe him.”

“I know that! But I can kill him.”

“And he knows you want to kill him! You’re blinded by revenge. You’re not seeing the big picture, Kate; you’re going to get yourself
and
Lucy killed.”

Dillon stared at her, his eyes bright and almost wild. “Is that what you want? Do you want to look into that man’s eyes as he rapes you? Do you want to give him the pleasure of strangling you? Or slicing your neck open? Because believe me, he gets extreme pleasure out of killing. It fuels him, satiates him, makes him feel like he has power. And because you screwed up his plans five years ago, revenge will drive him even further. You will not get off lightly. He’ll bring you to the brink of death and back again, and never even let you beg for mercy.”

Kate’s eyes burned but she refused to cry in front of Dillon Kincaid or his arrogant military brother.

She turned from him, picked up the battery, and left the plane.

Dillon caught Jack staring at him. He rubbed a hand across his face, his temper still high. He didn’t normally lose his temper. He didn’t attack vulnerable women. And that’s exactly what Kate Donovan was. For all her physical strength, her mental prowess, her training, and her determination, at her core was a vulnerable, lonely woman who was crying out for help. And he’d intentionally terrified her.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing.”

Dillon didn’t want the respect he saw on Jack’s face. Instead he stared out the dark window. A flash-light bobbed around the plane and he heard Kate mumbling something. A metal door clicked shut. A minute later Kate jumped back into the plane, slammed the door closed, and locked it.

“Your death will not be on my conscience,” she said. She sat down, flipped switches, and started the plane.

“What’s your plan?” Dillon said, ignoring her comment.

“We have a full tank. I can go eleven hundred miles. There are a couple small airports I can stop at to refuel in northern Arizona. Might be a little tricky, but I’ll figure it out.”

“Tricky?”

“Avoiding customs, the fact that my license expired, little things like that. But I can talk my way around it.”

“Shit,” Jack mumbled from the back.

“You have a better idea?” Kate snapped.

“I know a place south of Red Rock where we can refuel.”

“And they’ll just refuel with no questions?” Kate smirked. “Good friends.” She glanced at a map. “That’s over eleven hundred ten miles. Cutting it really close on the fuel.”

“It’s twenty miles south of Red Rock. Take it or leave it. Even with our added weight, you should be fine.”

“Doesn’t make me feel much better.” She looked at the map. “Still, that’s nine hundred miles from Seattle. We’ll make that leg easy.”

“How fast does this little prop go?”

“The Stationair is one of the best ‘little props’ Cessna makes. The 206 cruises at 164 nautical miles.”

Jack did a mental calculation. “That’s 188 miles an hour? That makes it about eleven hours when you factor in one stop to refuel. When does that put us in Washington?”

“About eleven thirty a.m.”

Dillon said, “And you arranged this meeting with Trask when?”

“Two p.m.”

“Where?”

She hesitated.

“Dammit, Kate!” Dillon slammed his fist on his knee, took a deep breath. “No more secrets. We’re in this together, got it? Jack and I are not leaving your side. We need to find Lucy. That’s our number one focus. Not Trask.”

“You’d let him go to kill again?” she spat out.

“It doesn’t have to be either/or. But the most important thing is to save Lucy. Or do you not agree?”

She stared at him, eyes wide. He saw when she realized what she had been saying. “Of course I agree,” she said quietly, looking down.

Kate finished her preflight check. They started moving forward, rapidly increasing speed. The plane bumped and bucked on the uneven runway. Dillon had no problem with flying, but he couldn’t see anything. The plane’s lights only lit up the ground immediately in front of him.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

“I’ve flown this plane a dozen times.”

“But there’s a cliff—”

“I know.” They were going faster.

Suddenly the ground gave way. They were airborne. Kate made a sharp turn to the right, turning a full 180 degrees. She checked her instruments as they continued to ascend.

“We don’t have oxygen on board,” she said, “so I’m going to keep it under twelve-five.” She glanced back at Jack. “Red Rock?” she said, skeptical.

He nodded. “Straight as an arrow. When you hit the Nevada border, wake me.”

“It’ll take six hours.”

“I haven’t slept in two days.” He closed his eyes.

“What’s your plan?” Dillon asked Kate.

“I had planned on meeting Trask at a campground near Mount Baker, until I got the second coordinates. They’re nearly two hours apart. I was going to check out the island first, but now that you’re here you and your brother can go to the island and I can meet Trask on the mountain. It actually works out better.”

Dillon shook his head. “You care about one thing. Killing Trask. Jack and I care about saving Lucy. If he brings her to the mountain, I want Jack there. And if she’s on the island, I’ll be there.”

“Trask isn’t going to screw with me. Not on this. I told him I wouldn’t come unless he took her off-camera. Remember when Denise went on? He stood by his word.”

“Yeah, but for how long?” Dillon asked.

She couldn’t answer that.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re coming to the island with me.”

“How can you think I would jeopardize her life?” Kate felt sick to her stomach. Maybe she deserved it.

“Because I think you are so blinded by revenge that you can’t see the whole picture. I also think we should call Peterson.”

“No,” Jack and Kate said in unison.

Dillon glanced at his brother. “I thought you were sleeping.”

Jack opened his eyes and leaned forward. “I think Kate is a wack-job, but she’s right about this.”

“Thank you,” Kate said sarcastically.

Jack continued. “This bastard so much as smells a fed, Lucy’s dead. I know men like Trask. They have a sixth sense when it comes to the authorities.”

“We can’t act like a bunch of vigilantes. The FBI has resources, surveillance, and equipment. Manpower. I’ve worked with SWAT. They can come in low and quiet and no one will know they’re there.”

“They’re not going to believe me anyway,” she said. “Especially after the trap your brothers walked into.”

“But Trask contacted you,” Dillon said.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s my word they don’t trust.” Kate glanced at him, the green glow from the controls and gauges giving her face an odd, ethereal presence. “I’m surprised you even trust me. I almost got your brothers killed.”

“Connor and Patrick are grown men. They did what they thought was right. And you were right about the trap,” Dillon said. “You warned them.”

“And this could be another trap. And another. If it weren’t for the second set of coordinates I don’t think—” She paused. Full disclosure. “I think they have an undercover agent inside Trask’s operation.”

“What?” Dillon exclaimed. “How can that be? Lucy was
raped.
They couldn’t possibly allow that.”

“Normally, I’d think not, but you’re forgetting that Trask killed two federal agents. They want him as badly as I do.” Kate stared at Dillon. “I’m the one who had to run from my country, blamed for Paige’s death, yet the powers that be can infiltrate Trask’s network and Lucy becomes collateral damage as long as they take down the organization.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Believe it,” she said. “That FBI code is definitely in-speak. Possibly an agent who turned, or undercover. I think the latter. Because I recognized the man onscreen before Trask pulled Lucy.”

Dillon shook his head. “This is ridiculous. A conspiracy theory run amok.”

Kate looked at Jack. He agreed with her, she could see it in his eyes. “Jack agrees with me.”

“Nothing surprises me,” he said calmly.

Kate frowned. Maybe Dillon was right. How could she go into this alone? She felt like she was covering her ass, wanting to call Quinn Peterson and give him the information. So that
when
Lucy died she wouldn’t feel guilty.

Nothing could stop her from feeling guilty.

“We’ll call Peterson when we’re in Red Rock,” Kate said. “Give him the information. But I don’t think anyone in the Bureau is going to believe me anymore. I’ve sent them out on too many wild-goose chases.”

“But Peterson must know about the undercover agent.”

“Maybe, by now, but there’s something very odd about this setup. The FBI doesn’t handle clandestine missions like this, jeopardizing civilians. And even if a civilian was in jeopardy and the agent couldn’t save her, there would be some mechanism to know where the agent is. Like a GPS microchip implanted under the skin.”

Jack snorted from the rear of the plane.

Kate ignored him. “Trask has been playing me for a long time,” Kate admitted, the realization terrifying and angering her. “This time I
know
he’s there. But I feel like the girl who cried wolf.”

Dillon put his hand over hers. “No one is going to die. Not Lucy, not you.”

She wished she believed him.

He forced her to look at him. She flushed under the intensity of his gaze. “I mean it, Kate. We’re going to find Lucy and everyone is walking away alive.”

EIGHTEEN

Q
UINN
P
ETERSON GLANCED
at the clock. Three fifteen in the morning. Six fifteen on the East Coast. Late enough to rouse his pal Hans Vigo from sleep.

“What?” Vigo asked.

“I need you to dig around for me.”

“It can’t wait?”

“No.”

He moaned. “Okay, what?”

“Merritt has an undercover agent with Trask.”

Vigo was silent. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“For how long?”

“Longer than he’s had Lucy Kincaid.”

“Fuck.”

“You can say that again.”

“Fuck. What do you want?”

“Who, what, when, and how.”

“Why?”

“I know why.”

“Paige.”

“Bingo.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Who do you trust up north?”

“No one.”

“Seriously.” Quinn tried to sound lighthearted, but failed.

“I am serious. Exactly where?”

“I need someone to interview Charles Morton. My records show him living in Boston.”

“Boston. Abigail Resnick.”

“I’m going to e-mail you a list of names. Kids who went to school with Charles Morton’s son nearly two decades ago. What I need is for him to identify anyone Roger Morton was close to.”

“Roger Morton, as in the man who raped Paige Henshaw and killed Evan Standler?”

“That’s him.”

“You’re going to get fired. I have seniority, I’ll probably just get my ass kicked and demoted to the basement to read cold case files. But you? You’re already on the hot seat for working off-the-clock on the Butcher investigation.”

“Water under the bridge. I’ll take care of Merritt.”

“The man’s a serpent.”

“I know.”

“What are you thinking? That one of these guys Morton went to school with is Trask?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“A forensic psychiatrist out here has this theory that—”

“I’m a forensic psychiatrist.”

“The best, but you weren’t working this case five years ago.”

“True.” Vigo sighed. “Okay, I’ll call Abby.”

“Abby?”

“Abigail,” Vigo corrected. “She’ll do it for me. Just cover her ass, Peterson. It’s a mighty fine ass, and I don’t want to see it bruised.”

“Consider it covered.”

Trask sat locked in his office doing research. Research Roger should have done. Perhaps on the surface Roger made a stab at checking out who Mick Mallory was, but no one was as good as he was. Trask prided himself on knowing everything about everyone.

And, to be truthful, he had been blinded by Mallory’s performance on the last job. The guy had watched Rayanna die and hadn’t done anything about it. Obviously he was who Roger said he was—an ex-con who had violated parole and didn’t want to go back. He was willing to do anything.

But he’d supposedly been in prison for rape. Trask had given him the perfect woman—practically a virgin, restrained, beautiful—and he hadn’t done anything. He’d approached her as if he wanted to be her lover.

That in and of itself wasn’t a red flag. Perhaps Mallory was a bit sick in the head, an obsessive type who fixated on a woman over time. Women loved being fondled and admired, up to the point where a man showed his balls and finally did something about it. Then they cried rape and abuse and any other thing to get attention. Saying that they’re scared.

Trask showed them what being scared meant. Some pathetic loser stalking his ex-girlfriend was child’s play. Nothing. A jerk. But Trask knew fear, had tasted it, and he gave it back to the bitches times ten.

On the surface, Mick Mallory had served five out of an eight-year sentence for raping his next-door neighbor, Trina Bowers. There was a warrant out for him because of a parole violation, following Bowers home from work a month after his release. He fled, contacted Roger.