Army of Two (8 page)

“I was thinking the same thing about you.” He picked up a lock of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “But if I mention any more of the changes I’ve noticed, you might get offended and start talking to me with your mother’s perfect diction again and tell me to drop the subject.”

Her budding smile dissolved. “Would I need to?”

He released her hair and lowered his hand. “No. I got the message the first time.” He glanced past her to the lake. “It’s dark enough. We’d better go while we can still see the path.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

Chantal wasn’t often in the boathouse after sunset. The space seemed functional and efficient when sunlight streamed through the big doors and the lake glistened in invitation, yet in the dark it seemed cavernous. Gloomy. The stars that shone beyond the windows were obliterated by the looming outlines of stored canoes. The smell of damp wood reminded her of dead fish. The
tsking
sound the water made as it lapped against the pilings was as nerve racking as a dripping tap.

A strange voice crackled behind her. “Everything’s quiet on this side.”

She jumped, an involuntary cry escaping her lips, before she realized the voice had come from the walkie-talkie on Mitch’s belt.

“Didn’t you hear that wolf?” another voice asked.

“That’s a bird, Dodson.”

“You sure?”

“Nothing to worry about. I’ll meet you on the deck.”

That was all. The voices were replaced by the faint hum of dead air.

Mitch squeezed her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, but he probably couldn’t see her well enough to make it out. “The walkie-talkie startled me.”

“I want to leave it on until we’re out of here.”

Mitch had been switching the walkie-talkie off at regular periods during the day to conserve the battery. There hadn’t been much to hear before. Now it sounded as if the men had organized patrols. At least two of them were out in the darkness somewhere.

But they had no reason to climb down to the lakeshore, she told herself. Those men wouldn’t need a boat. They had a helicopter. They’d be patrolling around the main lodge, wouldn’t they?

Mitch moved his hand beneath her hair and rubbed the back of her neck. “Relax,” he said softly. “Another few minutes and we’ll be out of here.”

She closed her eyes to soak in his touch. When she opened them again, her vision had adjusted enough for her to make out more shapes in the gloom. “Wait where you are. I’ll get a flashlight.” She kept to the lighter wood of the walkway and made her way along it to the tall, rectangular storage cabinet in the corner.

Like everything else here, it wasn’t locked. She opened the cabinet doors and felt around on the shelves until she grasped the long cylinder of a Maglight.

Mitch’s cane thunked quietly as he followed. “Keep the beam down,” he said.

She took his advice, holding the light close to her body to help shield it from the windows. She turned toward the center of the boathouse.

The space was empty, nothing but blackness where the thirty-foot-long expanse of gleaming mahogany should have been floating on the water.

Her brain couldn’t process it at first. No. This wasn’t possible. No one would have taken the launch on a tour today. No one could have. And the boat couldn’t have drifted away by accident, because the doors were closed.

She started to tremble. There was only one explanation for the empty slip, but she didn’t think she had the strength to absorb it. Not after what she’d already gone through. Not when the boat was her only chance of getting help to end this nightmare.

“Chantal,” Mitch said. That was all. Just her name. Yet she could hear the regret in his voice. In her mind she heard the echo of how he’d sounded the last time he’d snuffed out her hopes.

She knelt on the edge of the walkway. The flashlight beam wobbled wildly around the interior before she managed to steady her grip and direct it downward.

The light reflected in flat, rainbow swirls. There was a film of oil on the surface of the water, and the scent of diesel fuel tainted the air. Chantal’s stomach rolled. She leaned to the side to see past the oil slick.

The rocks at the lakeshore gave way to a fissured ledge that dropped off steeply here. The water beneath the boathouse was ten feet deep. The depth swallowed most of the light that wasn’t reflected by the oil slick, yet some penetrated the blackness enough to throw back a glint of metal.

A narrow triangle took shape directly beneath her. It was the brass cap on the bow. It spread into curving sides. The shadows between them were spanned by wide, pale strips. Those would be the seats. The far end was lost in the darkness, but in her mind she could see the flag that had always fluttered from the stern.

The boat was here. It was on the bottom.

Mitch moved to stand beside her. He muttered a short, pungent oath. “We won’t be going anywhere tonight.”

The film of colors on the surface blurred. “They sank it.”

“I should have anticipated this.”

“But why?” She looked at him over her shoulder. “Why would they do this if they think we’re dead?”

“So far, I’ve heard seven names mentioned over the air, which means Knox and his people could be outnumbered by the hostages. It would be smart to eliminate any potential transportation in case someone else managed to slip away. They probably would have done the same in the garage if I hadn’t beat them to it.”

Her gaze went past him to the canoes. They were ranged overturned along the wall in stacks of two, with the lowest one only a few feet off the floor and another one at shoulder height above it. Though she kept the beam of her light directed into the water, there was enough reflected illumination in the boathouse for her to notice what she hadn’t before.

The sabotage hadn’t been confined to the motorboat. Every canoe had at least one jagged hole in its hull. The canvas skins were shredded, the cedar strip ribs exposed like broken kindling. It looked as if someone had methodically taken an ax to each of them.

A sob came out of nowhere, ripping past her throat. She fought to keep the rest inside. She wasn’t conscious of crossing the floor, yet somehow she stood in front of a ruined hull. Her fingers trembled as she traced the edges of a hole. Each craft had been lovingly fashioned by hand in the classic, voluptuous shape that was as much a pleasure to look at as to ride in. In total, they were almost as valuable as the seventy-year-old launch had been.

The financial loss would be significant. Though the resort was profitable, she didn’t carry enough insurance to cover all of this. It would take years to replace what had likely taken only minutes to ruin. But it wasn’t her balance sheet that made her feel like crying. It was the wanton destruction of something so beautiful.

The people they were up against had no qualms about killing. The events of this morning had proven that. The violence that had been done here had been cold-blooded and calculated. If the boathouse looked like this, what was happening at the Aerie?

Mitch cupped her elbow to turn her away from the canoes. “It’ll be all right, Chantal.”

There was so much confidence in his voice, she wanted to believe him. How she wished he really was the hero of her teenage fantasies.

He moved his thumb over her elbow. Even through her jacket she could feel the caress.

But neither of them was going to acknowledge it for what it was. She stepped back.

He dropped his hand.

She’d lost track of the number of times they’d acted out that same pattern today.

Suddenly, she found it frustrating. They had plenty of more important things to worry about than their personal history. She hated the way her thoughts kept returning to him, as if he were still the center of her world. She tapped the flashlight against her arm. “It’s not all right. We can’t swim all the way to Waterfalls.”

“We’ve had another setback.” He eased the flashlight from her grip and covered the head with his hand, dimming the light to a weak glow. “That just means we need to come up with another plan.”

“A setback? You called my truck blowing up a setback, too. And I’d thought
I’d
had a problem with reality.”

“You have every reason to be upset,” he began.

“And of course, you don’t get tired or hungry or scared because you’re a tough-as-nails Delta Force commando. It’s not allowed.”

“Chantal…”

“You’re like any other army man. You don’t have feelings unless they’re assigned as part of your duties.”

He stiffened. “There’s no room for sentiment on a mission. That’s how people get killed.”

Her outburst made her feel petty. Again. Yet another pattern to frustrate her. She hugged her arms. “You were right. I’m upset, but I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“Don’t stop speaking your mind. I prefer your honesty to your über-polite mode.”

“My what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, I don’t have the energy left to be polite now. I don’t know whether my friends are alive or dead. My home has been violated. My business is being destroyed before my eyes. We’ve wasted a day coming back here. I could have been halfway to the other end of the lake by now if you hadn’t stopped me.”

“Maybe. Or you could have had a dizzy spell, fallen down a cliff and broken your neck.”

“My headache wasn’t that bad.”

“Yes, as it turned out your concussion appeared to be mild, but Knox has been thorough so far. We should consider the possibility that he might have gotten to your neighbors, too.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“They’re as isolated as you are, and just as vulnerable. We don’t have any guarantee that we’d find help there.”

“Are you saying there’s nothing we can do?”

“Hardly. I told you before, Chantal, I don’t give up.”

“Then you have another plan?”

“I’m working on one. The first order of business is finding a place to spend the night. We both need rest or we’re not going to be any good to anyone. This place is too close to the main lodge. Do you have any other outbuildings?”

She tried to push her emotions aside and think rationally, the way he was. It wasn’t easy to do when her feelings were as jumbled as they were now. “Besides the garage, only the woodshed, but that’s even closer.”

“Too risky.”

“There were some housekeeping cabins in the next cove but we stopped using them when I took over the resort. They were too rough to fit into my vision for the place.”

“I didn’t see any cabins on the map in the lobby.”

“No, they wouldn’t be on it, but—”

“Quiet,” he whispered, snapping off the flashlight. The boathouse was plunged into darkness. “Listen.”

Men’s voices drifted through the air. They were faint, yet in the absence of any other noise, it wasn’t hard to distinguish the words.

“Don’t know why we have to check it again. Knox’s just being paranoid.”

“Sure, Taddeo, but he pays good.”

“Yeah. I think we should be getting a bigger share, seeing as how Benny’s not pulling his weight.”

“Huh, not a bad idea.”

A pair of lights appeared beyond the window on the far side of the boathouse. They moved along the shore, as if following the path from the staircase.

Chantal’s blood turned to ice. The voices weren’t coming from the walkie-talkie this time. They were coming from outside.

Mitch gripped her arm and spun her toward the nearest canoe. “Get underneath,” he whispered.

She had no problem obeying that order. Without giving a thought to the layer of dust or the deck spiders that could be on the floor, she dropped to her stomach and slid into the hollow beneath the center of the overturned hull. An instant later, she felt Mitch’s weight on her back.

He shifted to one side in order to switch off the walkie-talkie at his belt, then aligned his head with hers. His breath touched her ear. “Don’t move.”

She nodded. The voices were more distinct and approaching fast.

Mitch eased farther up her body. He brought his elbows beside her shoulders, laid the gun on the floor in front of her face and pointed the barrel toward the door. “No sound.”

She nodded again.

“And if all hell breaks loose, roll into the water,” he whispered, fitting his finger on the trigger. “I’ll meet up with you where the trail curved to the lake.”

There was no time to ask him what he meant by that or to tell him she had no intention of going anywhere without him. Before she could draw another breath, the door swung open and the big overhead lights were switched on.

Chapter 6

T
he boards beneath Chantal’s cheek reverberated with heavy footsteps. Through the curving gap between the floor and the canoe gunwales, she could see two pairs of military-style boots. They were almost beside her. She couldn’t see the men’s faces. That meant the men couldn’t see her, didn’t it?

Or so she hoped. But her heart was beating so loudly, they must be able to hear it.

How big was the hole in the canoe’s hull? She was facedown so she wouldn’t be able see it without turning her head. What if the hole was right above them? What if the shadows weren’t dark enough to hide them? What if the men could—

Mitch lifted one hand from the gun and squeezed her fingers.

Chantal clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Nothing.” It was the one who’d been called Taddeo. “Just like I thought.”

One set of boots, the larger ones, moved past her. She followed them with her eyes as far as she could but didn’t dare to move her head.

“What’s in there?”

“Geez, Dodson, relax. It’s just a bunch of boat stuff.”

Chantal tensed. She felt Mitch do the same. They’d left the storage cupboard open.

But neither of the men remarked on it. There was a clatter as something fell to the floor. Paddles, by the sound of it. She started as an object thumped against the back of their hiding place. From the corner of her eye, she could see the flash of a red life jacket. Mitch returned his hand to the gun.

The man with the large boots came back. He picked up the life jacket. The canoe creaked, as if he was sitting against it. There was a rustle of cellophane and a metallic click. A lighter. A few seconds later, the smell of cigarette smoke wafted past her nose.