Essentially, fearless Jessica Reel didn’t have the courage to face the man over it.
But it had been six months since Mississippi, and she had returned none of his calls, none of his texts or e-mails. She had purposely avoided him at every turn, until he had simply given up.
She had volunteered for the most dangerous duty she could think of, and it had very nearly ended up killing her.
And for what reason?
What was the end game here?
You were always supposed to have one. You never started a mission without a concrete goal firmly in mind.
But Will Robie and I are not like a mission. We’re not even close to it. We’re something “else” that maybe neither one of us is prepared for.
Which was why she had written the note that she had.
It’s complicated.
No shit.
So she had taken sniping in Iraq over trying to find common ground with the only man she had ever felt anything for.
Sniping was easy. Sniping was something she knew how to do, excelled at. She feared nothing when she was behind the scope and trigger.
But this other stuff?
I’m clueless. And it scares the hell out of me.
With another whisk of the wipers, her mind returned to where she was going tonight. The minutes ticked by and she finally saw the bent signpost for Bluff Point Road.
She turned down the road, after cutting her lights.
According to Page, the Randalls had flown out to their Hampton digs. But that didn’t mean that the other guys with him on these “other” trips weren’t still in residence.
She passed four dark and what appeared to be empty structures.
The cabin was up ahead. She came to a rolling stop and looked over the place. It was dark, but that meant nothing. It was late and those inside might be asleep.
She got out, made sure she had a round chambered, and checked her ankle holster for her backup.
A Ka-Bar knife rode in a sheath on her right hip.
Serious dudes was how Page had described Randall’s companions. She wondered what serious dudes were doing around here with the rich, spoiled brat. She didn’t think fishing was foremost on their to-do list. So what then?
They had found no connection between Randall and the prisoners in a van. But she didn’t know they weren’t connected, either. And she had to believe that if they found out the truth behind the prisoners, they would find out what had happened to Blue Man.
She moved forward, keeping low and staying in one place only long enough to check for any signs of activity from within the cabin.
Ignoring the front door, she went around to the back. There were no vehicles parked at the place, but that could also mean nothing.
She reached the back door, and after listening for a bit she took out two slender instruments and efficiently picked the lock.
The door didn’t squeak as she opened it, for which Reel was immensely grateful. She stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind her.
Reel looked around the room and nothing jumped out at her, figuratively or literally.
She searched the rooms on the first floor. There was a half floor above reached by a set of stairs. The place was pretty rustic, and Reel couldn’t see rich boy Randall spending much time here. And she doubted that his wife knew anything about it, or if she did, she would never choose to set one foot inside a place that was about as far away from the Hamptons as one could get.
But according to Page, Randall came here often, and he must have a reason for doing so. The fact that he chose this place over his luxury doomsday bunker was puzzling. Reel assumed there must also be a good reason for that. And also a compelling purpose for needing the serious dudes along for the ride.
In an upstairs closet Reel finally discovered some things, although she couldn’t make sense of any of the items.
A pair of work boots covered in dirt and grime and smelling of chemicals.
An old map of an area she didn’t recognize, though it could have been somewhere in eastern Colorado.
A box of ammo. Forty-five-caliber ACPs.
But with one important difference.
Reel slid one of the cartridges out and looked at it. Her mouth dropped open in surprise.
They’re blanks.
CHAPTER
55
Robie slowed the truck about two hundred yards from the bunker’s outer perimeter fence.
He pulled off the road and parked behind a copse of trees, cut the engine, grabbed a pair of night optics from the duffel in the rear, and climbed out. He squatted on his haunches and surveyed the flat ground in front of him.
The dying guy had said the silo.
Were the prisoners in there somewhere?
But how could that be? Why would Roark Lambert have led them on a tour of a place that held people against their will?
Yet as Reel had pointed out, surely they had not seen every inch of the bunker. And for all Robie knew there were secret compartments in there that none of the other owners might know about. In fact, they were almost never here. And the prisoners could easily be gotten out of the way when owners showed up. So prisoners could be kept in there and no one would know about it.
Robie, however, had no way to get in. The bunker was closely guarded, and even if he managed to somehow evade all the security, he had no way to defeat the blast door.
But he would watch the place tonight and see if anyone went in or out, including a white van with prisoners in the back.
An hour passed and he had a thought after mulling over another question of his.
He took out his phone and texted a message to the number that Dwight Sanders had left them.
Ten minutes passed and then the answer dropped into his in-box.
Others have left Dolph. I don’t think he cares. There will always be others.
That answer was puzzling.
The sole reason that Dolph had given for his going after Luke and Holly was that Luke was planning to leave the skinheads and Dolph blamed Holly’s influence on that. But according to Sanders, other followers had left Dolph and the man had done nothing.
There could be only one answer to that, Robie knew.
Dolph had gone after and killed Luke and Holly because he knew that Holly was aware of the prisoners in the van. And Dolph had to assume that Holly had told Luke about it.
So they had to be killed.
Robie stiffened and sank deeper into the shadows as a car passed by on the road heading to the bunker.
As it passed by he saw that it was not a white van.
It was Roark Lambert in a Range Rover.
Through his optics Robie watched the vehicle pull up to the gate. His window came down, and Robie assumed he was speaking into the voice box as he had done on their previous trip to the bunker. The gate opened and he pulled through. After a bit, Robie lost sight of the Rover.
He looked at his watch. A bit late to be heading to the bunker. But then again, he was staying overnight, so it made sense that he would sleep at the bunker.
More time passed and no other car came down the road. At first, Robie had thought that Lambert might be meeting someone here, but that apparently wasn’t the case.
Robie waited a bit more, then climbed into his truck and headed back to town.
His phone buzzed along the way.
It was Malloy.
“Well, you left a shit storm behind,” she said.
“Sorry, but they brought it on themselves.”
“They are with Dolph’s group. Even without the uniforms, I recognized two of them.”
“Right.”
“Where are you now?”
“Heading back to town.”
“Heading back from where?”
“Someplace.”
He heard her sigh.
She said, “You have no problem coming to my home tonight and having sex with me, but you still can’t give me straight answers? How messed up is that?”
“One is completely different from the other. I wall them off.”
“Well, thanks for walling me off right now. But I need you to meet me at the police station and give a statement. If you don’t,” she added quickly, “I’ll have no choice but to get an arrest warrant issued. You did leave the scene of a crime. And I only have your word for it that these guys attacked you.”
“I’ve got rounds from their guns embedded in my truck.”
“Great, I look forward to seeing it.”