Into the Storm (35 page)

“I don’t need a ride. Thanks, though.” There was something seriously wrong with this guy, and she was really frightened now, but she knew she shouldn’t show it. “I
do
need some coffee. Excuse me.”

He shifted, blocking her. “I don’t care what you need. Get in the car.”

Dear God, he actually had a gun.

Tracy looked up from the barrel, into his eyes. And she knew with a certainty that was terrifying that if she got into this man’s car, it would be the last thing she ever did.

It wasn’t bravery that made her run for it, despite the instant death that could come pouring out of that tiny little hole. Running was the only option. She bolted for the entrance to the store, and sure enough, he didn’t shoot her.

He did, however, give chase.

She flung open the door. “Call 911, call 911!”

But there was no one behind the counter. She ran for the back, searching for someone, anyone.

And found the store clerk in front of the door to the bathroom. Lying facedown in a pool of blood, eyes open and staring, the back of his head caved in.

There was nothing to grab and swing, nothing to use to fight back, and she tried to open the ladies’ room door, tried to lock herself in, when the stoner hit her, hard.

Pain mixed with disbelief. This couldn’t be real. Things like this didn’t actually happen. Not to her. Please God, no.

But her chin smashed into the floor, and the overhead light seemed to short and spark. He hit her again, and the world disappeared.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

“S
o…provided we can get this program to work,” Lindsey said, “we’ll just…what? See a little blip on a map, and that’ll be where Tracy is?”

“That’s correct,” Tess said, her fingers flying across her computer keyboard. She had hands like a concert pianist or a surgeon—with long, elegant fingers. At least compared to Lindsey’s.

Please God, let this work…

“Did we find her?” Dave asked, as he and Sophia joined the crowd in the tiny motel room.

“Not yet,” Decker said. He was the only one besides Lindsey who glanced up from the computer. Everyone else—including Tess’s fiancé, Jim Nash, who’d sheepishly turned up smelling almost as much like a distillery as Tracy had last night—was glued to the screen.

Scanning for signal,
was flashing there. Followed by the message,
downloading map of sector 817.

Slowly a map appeared, starting at the top of the computer screen, and filling in down through the bottom. It included most of New Hampshire.

They all leaned closer.

“Come on, Tracy,” Dave murmured. “Be in Manchester, at some four-star hotel.”

“Have we called her ex?” Decker asked. “Lyle—is it Anderson?”

“Andrews,” Lindsey said. “And yes. We did.”

“He hasn’t heard from her, doesn’t seem particularly worried,” Tom told them.

The map was just about completely downloaded.

“I don’t see any blip,” Lindsey said. “Isn’t there supposed to be a blip?”

“Yes, there is,” Tom said. But there wasn’t.

“Is something wrong with the computer?” Dave asked. His voice was tight and as Lindsey glanced up, Sophia put her hand on his shoulder.

“The program seems to be working,” Tess reported. Again, her hands flew, and info flashed across the screen at lightning speeds. “Yeah, the codes are all correct. I’m sorry.” She turned and looked up at Tom. “There’s no signal from the jacket.”

Lindsey swore. “I
so
wanted this to work.” Disappointment made her stomach hurt.

Dave, too, looked as if he might hurl.

“Is it possible she’s left the sector?” Tom asked.

Again Tess’s fingers made the keys clack. This time, instead of a map, what looked like programmer’s code filled the screen. “There’s no signal from anywhere in the hemisphere. Is she in China? I could access other satellites to look. But we’d risk catching the attention of someone at the Pentagon. If they’re alert, they might also notice that Team Sixteen is supposed to be in transit to Germany, and cut us off. See, we’re kind of borrowing their access codes.”

“Oh, good,” Tom said. “I love hearing things like that.”

“What would keep the satellite from picking up the signal from the jacket?” Lindsey asked. “Something like putting it in a lead box, or…what?”

“It’s far more likely that Tracy’s in a dead zone.” Tess not only looked like a sweet, cheerful second grade teacher, but she had a tendency to try to educate. She couldn’t help herself. “You know how it’s impossible to talk on your cell on the stretch of road near the Krispy Kreme, if you’re heading east past the Troubleshooters office in San Diego? It’s some kind of weird no-signal area, probably due to cell towers that aren’t spaced closely enough together. This sensor system that we’re using for training relies on cell towers, just like your phone. The signal goes from the jacket to a nearby tower to the satellite, then back to the tower nearest to this computer, then to the computer. If the jacket’s in a dead zone, we’re not going to see it here.”

“So what we have to do,” Lindsey said, “is map the dead zones and focus our search to those areas.”

“Or put up more cell towers,” Tess said.

“Or move the towers we have,” Dave suggested.

Tess nodded. “That’s if we can assume Tracy’s stationary—that she’s not going to be on the move. If we move the towers, and she moves…” She shrugged.

Tom stood. “I’ll make some calls.”

“Is there a way to access the history of the jacket’s movement?” Lindsey asked, desperate for some good news. Dave looked like he could use some, too. He was rubbing his forehead as if he had a killer headache. “I mean, Tracy put the jacket on, hours ago, starting here at the motel. Is there a record that will allow us to track her past movements out to the cabin—and beyond? Even if we can’t see where Tracy is right now, can’t we at least see where she
was,
at least until she entered whatever dead zone she’s currently in?”

“Good thinking.” Dave perked up. “That’ll help us narrow our search efforts.”

Tess took a deep breath, blew it out hard. “The short answer is yes. The long answer is…I don’t know how long it’ll take me to find that information. Since I’m going to have to hack into the system…”

“Just do the best you can,” Decker told her. “We don’t have much else to go on.”

She glanced at him. “Yeah. In the meantime, I’ll keep the program running. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and she’ll move back out of whatever dead zone she’s in.”

“What are the odds of Tracy still having the jacket on? It’s not exactly high fashion,” Dave pointed out, his brief burst of hope obviously already deflated. “That’s assuming she’s not lying somewhere, in some dead zone, literally dead.”

“Thanks, Dave. We can always count on your unflagging optimism.” Lindsey put her hat and gloves back on. “I’m heading back to the cabin,” she announced. Maybe there was something there that they’d all missed. “Please call me as soon as anyone knows anything.”

This was ridiculous.

Jenk paced the worn carpeting of the airport’s terminal as he waited for the senior chief to finish speaking with Commander Koehl.

The news had come down that the C-5 troop transport that was due to take them to Germany had, once again, been delayed.

Apparently, it was snowing rather hard in Illinois.

To add insult to injury, Team Sixteen’s little transatlantic journey was only a drill. It was a test of their ability to be available, immediately, on the other side of the world. They were also, Jenk suspected, putting in an appearance as part of America’s “big stick” on the international stage at Ramstein Air Base. Someone was sending a message to anyone who might be monitoring U.S. troop movement that SEAL Team Sixteen was in the house.

Now, if only the seriously disconnected top brass would use them for that which they’d been trained, instead of outsourcing the big jobs—like the capture of bin Laden—to people whose loyalty was for sale to the highest bidder.

And as long as Jenk was wishing for the impossible, he willed his phone to ring. He was desperate for Lindsey to call, telling him that Tracy had been found, safe and sound.

Tommy Paoletti had kept Commander Koehl updated throughout the night. The news that both Lindsey and Decker had tracked Tracy all the way to the road without finding her had landed like a punch to the gut.

Team Sixteen should have been out there, helping to beat the bushes, setting up search patterns from both the cabin and the point on the road where Lindsey had lost Tracy’s trail.

The senior chief had told Jenk, over and over, that there was nothing they could do that Tommy wasn’t already doing—except provide more manpower. More eyes to search. More boots on the ground.

Izzy had been sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall, head in his hands. But now he stood up. “Where’s the senior chief?”

“Finally talking to Koehl,” Jenk told him.

“Oh, good,” Izzy said. “That’ll give me the opportunity to let Lew know what I think of commanders who care so much about their own career advancement that they’d turn their back on a missing woman.”

“Jesus, Izzy…”

But Izzy was already moving, like a heat-seeking missile, on a path of mutually assured destruction, although in this case the mutual parties were Izzy and Jenk.

“Zanella, don’t. I’ve already spoken to the senior—” Jenk caught the bigger man’s arm, but the idiot shook him off.

It took a full body slam, sideways into the wall, to stop him, and even then, it was only a temporary delay.

It also ratcheted up the goatfuck potential by catching both Koehl’s and the senior chief’s attention.

“Get off me, Jenkins!” Izzy may have grabbed the front of Jenk’s jacket to keep from being knocked off his feet, but he quickly shifted from defense to offense as he roughly yanked Jenk away from him.

Or rather, tried to.

Because Jenk had an equally good grasp on Izzy, and he didn’t let go. Which resulted in Izzy losing his balance.

Jenk wrapped his legs around the bigger man as they both hit the floor, which was unfortunate but necessary. Necessary because he didn’t want to hurt Izzy, and their differences in size and weight didn’t leave him with many options. Unfortunate, because to the rest of the world, it no doubt looked as if they were having a very public private moment.

Apparently, Izzy wasn’t feeling the need to not hurt Jenk as he tried to shake him off by crushing him between his own body and the wall.

“Senior’s trying to clear the way for us both to head back to help Tommy,” Jenk grunted into Izzy’s ear. “I told him my shoulder was hurting, and you desperately needed to go to the dentist.”

“What the
fuck
are you idiots doing?”

Jenk turned to find the senior’s boots planted inches from his face.

“Ow,” Izzy said, too little, too late. “My tooth. My God, what happened? Mark, is that you? How did I get here? I must be having tooth-decay-induced madness.”

Way, way up there, the senior chief was shaking his head in disgust. “Sure looks to me like the shoulder’s okay, Jenkins.”

Great. “It’s definitely not, senior chief.” As Jenk untangled himself from Izzy, his wince was not an act. “Izzy was helping me test my ability to extend my—”

“Save your breath, you’re good to go,” he said, holding up a hand to stop Izzy. “Not you. There’re dentists at Ramstein.”

Those were not the words Izzy wanted to hear. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Senior, come on. When do I ever ask for anything?”

“Other than all the time?” The senior crossed his arms.

“God! You know damn well that if this son of a bitch were
half
the CO that Tommy was, we’d already be back there by now, helping look for Tracy!”

The senior chief glanced at Jenk, since it was pretty obvious that this was the reason he’d wrestled Izzy to the ground. He turned to give Izzy his dead-eye glare. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Why don’t you go and try to be very invisible and very silent for a very long time.”

“Sorry,” Jenk told Izzy, as the senior chief walked away.

“Dude, you tried.” Izzy forced a tight smile. “Find her, okay? And no, nothing happened the other night. Tracy’s a nice girl. A stupid girl, but a nice one. I just don’t want to see anything bad happen to her.”

The more Izzy protested, the less Jenk believed him. Still, he let it go. “I’ll call you.”

“Do that. And throw Lindsey another bang while you’re at it.”

Jenk shook his head as he headed for the rental car counter. He felt his shoulders tightening as he walked away, certain that Izzy wasn’t quite ready to be silent or invisible yet.

He was halfway there when Izzy shouted, “Jenkins! I wish I could quit yew!”

Of course. The obligatory
Brokeback Mountain
reference. Jenk flipped Zanella a double bird without bothering to look back.

Cold slapped Tracy’s face and cut off her air, making her gag and cough. She woke up spitting, with her hair dripping down her face and into her eyes. She lifted her head, and the movement made it feel as if it were splitting in half. Oh God, she was hungover again.

But she wasn’t in her own bed. She wasn’t on her bathroom floor either.

This floor was carpeted in a patterned shade of green. Squinting against the light, she realized she was both wet and fully clothed.

Water hit her again, directly in the face, and she sputtered and choked, and turned to see…

“Help her.” Whoever had doused her with those buckets of water was tall and male and…

It all came rushing back. The man she’d thought was stoned because his eyes were so flat and lifeless. The clerk in the puddle of blood.
Get into the car.

Tracy started to cry. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“If you don’t get off your ugly ass and help her, I’ll kill you right now.”

Ugly ass? Her ass wasn’t ugly.

It was an amazingly stupid thing to be focusing on when he’d just threatened to kill her, but her burst of disbelieving indignation was far better than the mind-numbing fear. She could either lie there sobbing and be killed now, or push herself off her
ugly ass
and maybe live through this.

Tracy wiped her eyes. There’d be plenty of time to cry when she was dead.

“Help who?” As she sat up, she saw that the carpeting wasn’t patterned. It was just blotchy with dirt and ancient stains. She also saw a bed. A woman lay upon it, cuffed by at least one wrist to the cast-iron frame.

The smell was horrific, the woman lying on her side because she’d tried—unsuccessfully—not to puke all over herself. She had a nasty-looking gash on her arm, like someone had taken a steak knife to it.

It was all Tracy could do not to add to the mess on the floor and bedcovers. With her head pounding and stomach churning, she was at a serious disadvantage, made worse by the fact that when she touched her hair, her fingers came away streaked with blood. Still, she’d had experience dealing with the pain and nausea of hangovers. She’d coped with cleaning up messes like this one with a throbbing head plenty of times before. Although it was probably easier when the vomit was her own.

“Which of these will help her?” her own personal Ted Bundy asked, dumping two big bags of drugs on the floor. Some were in pharmacy-sized containers, others were in little bags, with information about the prescription and dosage stapled to them.

How should I know, I’m not a doctor
was on the tip of her tongue, but she stopped herself from speaking just in time.

Are you a nurse?

Tracy had told him yes. She was here, living this nightmare because she’d told him yes, she was a nurse. Of course if she’d said no, he probably would’ve killed her right then and there.