Michael was sure that’s where he was not staying. He thanked the clerk, walked out to the Jeep. This was like finding an elephant in a haystack. All he had to do now was find the right cabin, which wouldn’t be too hard, thanks to Juan Carlo’s big red flags and pointers.
He got into the driver’s seat and sat a moment. What was he going to do when he found him? Storm the cabin? Right. Juan Carlo was as crafty and cunning as any arms trader or dope runner could be and undoubtedly was waiting in the trap he’d set for Michael. Without backup—and Michael wasn’t waiting hours for backup—he’d basically have to walk right into the trap if he was going to get to Leah.
He did not relish the thought of doing that, but he figured he had little choice. If she was still alive—and he couldn’t even think of the other possibility—it was his only chance to get to her before Juan Carlo did something stupid. But once Juan Carlo had him, Leah would become secondary. Maybe he could negotiate her release in exchange for himself. He liked his chances much better on his own.
He couldn’t even guess how this was going to play out, but first things first—he had to get Leah away from Juan Carlo.
AS he guessed, Michael found the cabin easily enough—it was just where he suspected it would be, high on the end of the old forest road, the last of a couple of run-down vacation cabins.
The car sitting out front of the cabin bore the familiar logo of a rental agency—it was a predictably high-end car and too nice for this particular area. It stuck out like a sore thumb. But Juan Carlo was the sort of guy who liked top of the line so that he could flash his wealth at every opportunity, even when he was in the hunt to kill a man. Stupid bastard.
Michael parked his Jeep at the bottom of the long road up, beneath a stand of spruce trees on an abandoned mining road. He tried to call out on his cell phone, but couldn’t get a signal, and pitched it inside his Jeep. He’d already called Rex from town and told him what he knew. Once again, Rex had urged him to sit tight, that he’d have someone out from D.C. as soon as possible.
“D.C.?” Michael asked. “I thought you said Seattle.”
“I did. But the FBI prefers we keep this below the radar. The president doesn’t want any bad press over a known terrorist slipping undetected past our borders. If the media got hold of that, the administration would have to explain it. So just sit tight. I’ve got a plane—we’ll be there in a matter of hours.”
“Right,” Michael said, but he and Rex both knew that he wouldn’t wait. “Whatever you do, just be cool, man,” Rex said before Michael hung up. Easier asked than done, Michael thought.
Outside of the Jeep, he took the lug wrench to carry with him for protection. He had never, in all the years he’d worked for the CIA, carried a gun. He had a deep cover, a businessman selling packing materials to people like Juan Carlo. He’d had no need of a gun. There was only one time he’d even wanted one—back when he was sleeping with Juan Carlo’s wife and spent each night wondering if it would be his last. That, and today. He would have liked the feel of cold steel in his hand, would have liked to find Juan Carlo’s fat face in its sites.
Unfortunately, there was no gun. There was a tire jack and a lug wrench. The lug wrench was almost useless as a weapon—Juan Carlo would kill him before he could do much damage—but he might be able to get one good lick in before Juan Carlo had that chance.
He started his trek up the slope of the mountain, tracking behind the cabin through a forest thick with spruce and pine trees. As he picked his way over fallen trees and rocks, which aggravated him by wasting his time, his fear of what was happening to Leah grew exponentially, and it occurred to Michael that he had, at last, formed a deep attachment.
It was weird to realize something that profound in this situation. But having spent years convinced he was incapable of forming an attachment, it felt huge—deep and inseverable. Thinking that Leah might be in any sort of danger—especially danger he had caused—felt as if someone or something had reached inside of him and wrung his heart clean of blood. He felt ill, unsettled, like his skin didn’t exactly fit his body, like he needed to be doing something other than trekking through the woods.