Morgan Read online

  While Elvis played on Abel’s aging truck stereo, she shook one of the cloudy, dark bottles. “You keep talking about bears. Are there many around here?”

  “Some.” He dry swallowed four of the Tylenol pills, then regarded the phone she’d propped up on the dash. “Amber, that’s not…”

  “It’s the quickest,” she interrupted. “The route I’m sure you’d prefer takes twice as long.”

  “Better roads to the north.”

  “Not the way you drive.”

  “Pot, kettle, Judy Blue.”

  She grinned. “Your third girlfriend, senior year sounds a lot crazier than me.”

  “I doubt that. But she did drive a little red Corvette.” Gage shrugged. “Her daddy had a thing for Prince.”

  “Like you have a thing for Elvis?”

  “The King rules. Always has, always will. What’s your musical era?”

  “Everything. Except Tanya Tucker, and that’s not her fault.”

  “What about Rachel?”

  The first drops of rain splashed on the windshield. “Katy Perry.”

  “Yeah, I probably could’ve guessed that.”

  Amber ran her palms along the legs of her jeans. Every nerve in her body was jumping. For Rachel more than herself at that point. “She’s not a bad person, really. Just spoiled, and reckless because of it. Youngest kids sometimes are.”

  “Often are.”

  She slid him a shrewd look. “There’s an intriguing statement. Do you have siblings, half siblings, anything?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Or want to know of?”

  “That, too.”

  “So you’re a lone wolf.”

  “I’m good with my own company.”

  “Yet you grew up in a commune.”

  “Think monks and meditation. Plenty of ‘me’ time. My childhood wasn’t fascinating or even particularly interesting. And your knowing about it won’t help us locate your sister. I heard a train whistle in the background when she called.”

  “A distant one,” Amber agreed.

  Rain began to fall harder. Gage flipped on the wipers and studied the sky. “How did Rachel seem to you?”

  “A little scared, but overall pissed off. Impatient.”

  “Odd reaction, don’t you think, considering her situation?”

  Was it odd? Amber rolled her head to relieve the tension in her neck muscles. “You’re thinking she should have been terrified, or at least fearful.”

  “She called one of the kidnappers an asshole.”

  Which wasn’t at all out of character. However… Doubt and a different kind of fear snaked through Amber’s belly. “She’s not part of this, Gage. She wouldn’t do that to me.” Would she? No. Absolutely not. “She’s not unfeeling—only a little selfish.”

  Gage checked his phone again, and made his way along a winding road that might have been a highway fifty years ago. “You can stop dredging up reasons to hate me. I don’t believe Rachel’s working with Fixx or his men. What I’m suggesting is that she might know one or more of them.”

  The tension in Amber’s neck grew to mammoth proportions. “Know.” She closed her eyes to blot out the streaming rain. “As in someone on Fixx’s staff?”

  “Did Rachel have a personal guard, an assistant, even a maid, when she was married to Fixx?”

  “Yes.” Two faces appeared in Amber’s head. “Lauren Crowe and Helmut. Helmut was her personal trainer. Lauren was her stylist and sometimes her general assistant.”

  “Tough?”

  “Yes. Lauren climbed rock walls and did triathlons when she was young. Helmut was, well, buff.”

  “What about Fixx’s nephew, his son, his brother? What’s their deal?”

  “Gareth’s not involved in that end of the business—not the coercion or the roughing-people-up stuff. Neither is Fixx’s brother, Tony, not really, but I imagine he’d do whatever needed doing for the right amount of money. Tony’s an acquirer. Get a thing, toss it aside, move to the newer and better thing. Luka likes watching people squirm.”

  “He’ll climb fast in Mockerie’s world, given the chance.”

  “He’d have to climb over his uncle to do it. Fixx isn’t stupid, and he won’t be easily displaced. But Luka could be holding Rachel. Any of them could be, though I’d put Lauren low on the list. And Gareth…” She shook her head. “I don’t see that, either. Uh…” She pointed at a weird cluster of vehicles that included an old streetcar, a moldy Winnebago, a school bus wearing a coat of camo, a tractor, and a rickety shack made of dented metal. Most were topped with leaning towers and satellite dishes. Amazed, she could only stare. “What and why?”

  Gage arched a brow at her. “You said we’d need magic, Snowbird. Well, here it is.” When something moved behind the shack, he lowered the window, whipped out his gun, and fired three shots at it. Without taking his eyes off the shack, he murmured, “Welcome to Grizzly Adams’s hideout.”

  …

  Gage sensed he was losing her. Or she was losing whatever small amount of faith she might have possessed in him. Unfortunately, normal had never been his style, and while Amber might just have been starting to understand that, McCabe had known it for a very long time.

  “Stay behind me,” he said as they climbed from the truck. He checked his side, saw no blood, and flexed a careful shoulder. Despite the Tylenol he’d taken, pain still radiated from chest to hip. “Bear’s not the most hospitable of men.”

  “So shooting at his house—I assume that shack’s his house—was what? Some form of intimidation tactic?”

  He took her hand to hold her where he wanted her. “I rang the doorbell. If he’s home, he’ll see us.”

  “He’ll see two rain-soaked people slogging toward his front door. One has his gun out in full sight. The other has hers in her pocket. Sorry to tell you, I’m not getting the magic here.”

  Three shots whizzed past, and she immediately stopped trying to walk abreast of him.

  “Good start.” Amusement laced Gage’s voice. “Bear says, ‘Come in.’”

  Chapter Eight

  It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t much, but Amber had seen worse. Bear’s furniture ranged from old and worn to sleek and modern. Broken in most cases and probably someone’s castoffs; however, everything appeared to function. The clutter came in the form of electronic equipment. Cables, wires, and computers crowded around no fewer than forty monitors. Amber recognized about half of what she saw. The rest? No idea.

  Then, of course, there was Bear himself. He weighed somewhere in the region of two hundred and fifty pounds and had to stand at least six foot seven. He towered over her by close to a foot, yet, oddly enough, he didn’t diminish Gage at all. Interesting. And not a thing she wanted to notice right then.

  All hair, beard, tattoos, and body piercings, Bear lounged at a round table surrounded by four computers. He had a bowie knife in one hand and his other resting on the barrel of a .30-30. The scowl on his face appeared perpetual.

  “I don’t like women,” he stated flatly. “The prettier they are, the more trouble they cause. I can tell by looking at yours, you just brought a passel of it into my home.”

  Gage wandered around the room, checked out the vast collection of modems and screens. “You want us gone, we’ll leave. The lady’s got a problem.”

  “They always do, and I reckon this lady’s got more than most.” He turned his shark-like stare on her. “You made Mockerie mad.”

  Surprised, Amber snapped her gaze to Gage, who kept his own on a flashing monitor. “Bear likes to know people’s business. Gets him in deep sometimes.”

  “Word’s out on you, Amber Kelly.” In a move much faster than she would have anticipated, he sat up and stabbed his knife into the top of the table. “Mockerie’s pissed and Fixx is on the hunt.”

  “Mockerie’s also got at least one person on retainer at or connected to a government agency. Possibly the FBI and/or the US Marshals office.” Gage tapped on a keyboard, found an Elvis
song, and started him singing about suspicious minds. “That someone has access to a whole lot of information. Names have surfaced, but so far we have no proof. In my experience, it tends to be the devil you don’t know who’s doing the damage. I’m thinking high level with major clearance. Any ideas on that score?”

  Bear settled back in his hard chair. “Lizzie Barton’s a high-level bitch. Drives a spiffy little Alfa Romeo and owns a tidy collection of diamonds.”

  “Where does she live?” Gage asked.

  “Depends on the season. She’ll be heading to Florida in the next week or so. For the moment, it’s D.C.”

  “What’s her clearance?”

  Bear snorted out a laugh. “Better than yours or mine. Not many doors between her and the oval office.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Gage continued to scroll through Bear’s computer. “Who else?”

  “Your man McCabe’s close to the top whether he should be or not. And there’s Ichabod Drake. He was a US Marshal. Now he’s FBI. Used to be WPP before Amber’s guy took over. Flipside of that, Amber’s guy was FBI before he became a US Marshal. And we all know old connections never really die.”

  Amber’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You know about Tom Vigor?”

  Bear yanked his knife free, toyed with it. “Know about lots of people, lady. Your Tom’s son worked with our Gage. Me, as well, in passing. We called him Tommy Two-step. I’m referring to the son here. He danced around any rules didn’t suit him. No harm in it, we were told. He’s a PI these days.”

  Amber ran her hands through her hair, held it briefly off her face. “So you’re telling me that my WPP contact’s son is a private investigator. As in, he finds people.”

  “Not always people, but yeah, he could. If it eases your mind any, young Tommy never two-stepped over any serious lines that I know of.”

  “That you know of.” Amber sat down on a wooden stool. “I wish Tom would have told me his son was a cop turned PI.”

  “You already knew the cop part,” Gage pointed out.

  “But not the nickname or the PI thing.”

  “Tom’s your contact, Amber. For emergencies only, I might add. His wayward son’s a separate deal.”

  She dropped her hand, gave a half laugh. “Great. Now Tommy’s wayward. This just gets better and better.”

  Strolling over to crouch in front of her, Gage caught her chin and drew her head up until it was level with his. “Tommy’s not connected to the federal government, and he’s not materialistic.”

  “He likes horses,” Bear said.

  Gage grinned. “So do you.”

  “And you.”

  “Not my own doing. I was just dating a woman who had a thing for horses.”

  “Right, blame it on a female captain who liked race tracks and your pretty face.”

  Amber rolled her eyes. “Excuse me, but as fascinating as this conversation is, can we go back to who in a position of authority might be slipping information to James Mockerie and/or Owen Fixx? All I know is that the information I collected and passed to the FBI vanished.”

  Bear spun his knife like a top. “Who’d you pass it to? Give me a name.”

  “I don’t have one. They used a courier.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Five ten, white male, athletic build, sandy hair, cut really short. Arctic blue eyes…” At Bear’s grunt, she paused. “You know him?”

  The big man studied the tip of his knife. “Well enough to know he’s clean.”

  “And you think that because?”

  “He shot and killed two of Mockerie’s people. That places him squarely on Mockerie’s blacklist. Guy lives with his granny, Chrissakes, and volunteers at a soup kitchen every Wednesday night. He’s straight.”

  Unable to sit, Amber stood and paced.

  “Don’t go too close to the window,” Bear warned. “You, either,” he said to Gage, who merely grinned at him.

  “Yeah, I do remember a thing or two from basic training. “I want to know Fixx’s status, Bear. And Mockerie’s, if you can access it.”

  “You want me to try and hack one or both of them?”

  “Them, or someone close who might possess information that’ll help us. My gut tells me we’re not more than a few steps ahead of Fixx’s men.”

  “Your gut’s been wrong before, Gage.”

  “Many times. I still want you to check it out. Amber and I can take a walk while you dig.”

  “Walk in the pissing rain? Pretty lady here might melt.”

  Rather than take offense, Amber smiled. “Wicked witches melt. I haven’t descended to that level yet. I want my sister back, Bear. Then I’ll happily—well, not happily, but I’ll disappear again and hope the second attempt works better than the first.”

  “First was working just fine until your sister took off with her hillbilly lover.” Gage removed a yellow slicker from the wall and held it out. “Says to me that Mockerie’s inside man or woman hasn’t accessed the WPP site. See what you can unearth,” Gage said. “I’ve got two bottles of Mississippi whiskey in my truck and a jar of sweet pickles, if you’re interested.”

  Bear laughed for the first time and revealed three gaps where teeth should have been. “This life of lonely ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.” He moved a massive shoulder. “Best woman in Elbow only has two working brain cells.” Standing, he handed his bowie knife to Amber. “Gift from me to you. Go on out and take a look at my Ram-erado. I custom built her this past summer. Got systems on board and a mother of a powerful engine. Sounds like a locomotive.” He tossed Gage the keys. “You don’t feel like driving, just sit in there and make out or something. I don’t like people watching me work. Give me two hours and the whiskey.”

  Amber waited under an overhang while Gage retrieved the moonshine. Part of her wanted to risk calling Rachel’s cell phone, but what good would it do, even if by some miracle the call went through.

  “Probably lead Fixx’s assholes to Bear’s door,” she murmured. A sudden thought hit and stalled her breath. She brought her gaze up to Gage’s when he returned. “My phone has GPS. Fixx’s men could be tracking.”

  “They’d need your password to do that.”

  “Rachel knows it.”

  “Yeah, I figured that. That’s why I disabled your GPS after we left the amusement park.”

  “You… How?”

  “You zoned out for half an hour. Took a nap,” he clarified when she huffed out a breath.

  “I don’t take naps.” She regarded her phone. “How did you get in?”

  “I was a cop, Snowbird. That’s a standard issue phone. Meant to be used for emergencies only. You have the passwords they gave you.” He grinned. “I have McCabe.”

  Although it probably shouldn’t have, amusement tickled her throat. “So, not a mind reader then.”

  “It’s all about resourceful thinking.”

  “And connections.”

  “Those, too.” He held up the bottles. “I’ll take these to Bear, find out where his truck shed is. We can hang out or make out while we’re there. Choice is yours.”

  “Okay, banging my head against a wall now,” she murmured. Her heart had no business tripping over itself just because the idea, God help her, had a marginal amount of appeal. Or, yes, fine, maybe more than marginal. Maybe full-blown, in fact. Gage was gorgeous, as far as men who were jaded ex-cops went. And what self-respecting woman didn’t like bad boys with issues?

  Of course, strictly speaking, she could probably classify Bear as a bad boy, and she certainly wasn’t attracted to him. But making out in trucks was for hormonal teenagers… And dammit, the thought of doing it had her heart beating even faster now.

  She breathed in and deliberately out. This had to stop. Now. Before Gage came back and read her.

  “He’s good.” Shoving the door open, Gage joined her. He regarded the forbidding sky. “This should be a fun walk. Truck shed’s a quarter mile away.”

  Amber pushed her hands inside the pockets of her bo
rrowed slicker. “Are you sure Bear doesn’t mind doing this?”

  “Are you kidding?” Gage took her arm. “This is Christmas for him.”

  “How do you two know each other?” Rain bounced off the yellow rubber and slithered into the neck. “Was he a cop, too?”

  “Nope, CIA.”

  Surprised, she stared up at him. “Why did he leave?”

  “He didn’t like his boss.” Gage grinned. “You want details, I’ll give you what I can. The grin sparkled in his eyes. “Right after we make out.”

  …

  By the time they reached the shed, he was soaked but not really unhappy about it. The cold and wet put a damper on his libido. No way did he want to complicate his life by getting involved with a beautiful fugitive. Mary Ellen was the way to go. No commitment, no expectations, no morning after, nothing but sex and a beer.

  Gage considered as he shoved the shed door open and let Amber precede him inside. It was Mary Ellen, right? Mary Ellen? Mary Ann. “Shit.”

  Amber glanced back. “Problem?”

  “Only if we can’t find a light switch.”

  “I hear a generator. I also smell oil, gasoline, and grease. This is Bear’s workshop. I’m guessing there’ll be light. Maybe even a small still.”

  “No still,” Gage said. “Smell gives it away, and Bear doesn’t care for company.”

  “Yes, I figured that when you rang his doorbell.” Amber located a chain and tugged on it. “There. See? Light. Forty whole watts of it. He must have a master switch somewhere.”

  “Maybe, but since I don’t plan to work on his truck, this’ll do. I can see his Ram-erado just fine.” Gage circled the odd-looking vehicle. “It’s a Dodge Ram crossed with a Chevy Silverado. Guy has way too much time on his hands.”

  “At the moment, I wouldn’t mind some of that.”

  Amber felt Gage watching her as she wandered through the shed. “You’re tired of running.”

  She picked up a wrench, examined it. “I was tired of running back in Black Creek. This?” She waved the wrench. “This is insanity. How many people do you think are after us?”

  “Twenty, thirty.”

  “And two of them found us. Lucky them.”