Desolation Point (31 page)

Alex nodded, appreciating his consideration. She looked beyond him, trying to think past the tightness in her chest and the gathering fluid that was about to make her cough. Three numbers, there were three numbers she had memorized days ago, numbers this man would undoubtedly need―

The cough exploded out of her, pitching her forward, and she heard someone swear somewhere off to her right. The mask went back on, accompanied by a stern glare from Theo. She sucked in the mist, which initially made her cough even harder before gradually easing the narrowing and congestion in her airways. The numbers on the monitor skipped between ninety-three and ninety-five, and she gave a small smile of recognition.

“Thirty-seven. Fifty-one. Zero ninety-three,” she said, as soon as she was confident she could speak. “There’s a tree all weird and stunted at those coordinates. The keys to whatever Deakin was looking for are hidden under its roots.”

Castillo’s eyes widened; she had obviously pre-empted one of his most pressing concerns. He tapped the small radio on his lapel and spoke rapidly into it.

“Do you know where Deakin was ultimately heading?” he asked her.

“We plotted it on a map when we were at the hut,” she said, having difficulty thinking that far back. “I might be able to remember…” Realizing that was doubtful, she shook her head and tried another approach, working it through slowly as she spoke. “Deakin didn’t trust Merrick not to double-cross him. That’s why he came to the park. His people packed Merrick’s supplies and they included a GPS, so Deakin must have known the location of whatever Merrick had stored for him. All he needed from Merrick was the keys.” She paused to take a couple of rasping breaths, uncertain how long she could continue not only to speak but to make sense. “We have Deakin’s GPS. If it’s anything like Merrick’s, the coordinates to whatever was hidden out here will be programmed into it somewhere.”

She licked her dry lips. The oxygen was making her mouth parched, and it was hard to make herself heard with the mask on. With a conspiratorial wink, Castillo unfastened the mask and handed her the cup of coffee.

“The keys were Merrick’s get-out-of-jail-free card,” he confirmed. “If he’d given those up to Deakin along with the coordinates, he’d still be cooling his heels in a cell.” He waited until she looked at him over the rim of the cup. “So how exactly did you two get involved in all this?”

“Sarah stole Merrick’s bag, ended up with the keys and his GPS.”

“Oh.” Castillo raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that would do it.” He gave a short laugh, but all traces of humor quickly left his face. “We picked Tanner up by the camp. He’s in no condition to talk, and something tells me that even when he is, he won’t be willing to rat out the rest of the organization. These bastards are nothing if not loyal to the cause.”

Alex lowered the cup, relieved for Sarah’s sake that Tanner was still alive. Her hand shook, upending what remained of the coffee into the grass.

“Did you find Merrick’s body?” she asked quietly.

“No, not yet. But one of our teams fished Deakin’s body out the river about two miles from here and a second team apprehended an unidentified male as he approached an abandoned logger’s hut.”

“Aaron,” she said. “His name is Aaron. He’s one of Deakin’s men. I lied, told Deakin I’d hidden the keys at the hut.” The coffee seemed to roil in her guts, and she put her hands out to steady herself. Was that it? Was it really over? Could she and Sarah finally get some rest now?

Castillo seemed to read her mind, since he secured her mask again before standing. The low canopy forced him to stoop awkwardly as he laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Soon as we’re back in civilization and you’re able, I’m going to need a positive ID on Aaron. Somewhat predictably, he is being less than forthcoming.” He sighed. “He claims to be an innocent victim of the bad weather, although the Aryan fist tattoo covering his back would suggest otherwise. I’d have a mug shot to show you now, if this goddamn piece of shit had a signal.”

His colorful language and obvious disdain for his smartphone made her splutter in amusement.

He squeezed her shoulder, careful not to apply too much pressure, obviously mindful of what she had been through. “The agency has been watching Nicholas Deakin and his group for almost ten years now,” he said, going some way toward explaining the sheer scale of the FBI’s involvement in the search and rescue operation. “This is going to break the case against them wide open. You did a great job, Officer Pascal.”

She shook her head. “It’s just Alex now,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.” He shrugged. “Damn shame, if you ask me.”

He walked away then, leaving her to stare into the sleet and snow as it distorted the yellow lettering on his jacket, an effect that reminded her of watching interference on a television set. She looked toward Sarah instead. The medics seemed to have finished whatever they had been doing to her; she lay still and pale beneath a mass of thick blankets.

Theo noticed Alex watching them. “She’s just sleeping, Alex,” he said, wadding up a pair of soiled gloves and drying his hands so that he could put on a fresh pair. “She’ll need surgery to clean the bullet wound out properly, but she’ll start to feel better as soon as that’s done and the antibiotics kick in.”

“Did I…” Alex felt sick again. “With the sutures. Did I cause that?”

“I don’t think so,” he said gently. He pressed a button on Alex’s monitor, and the blood pressure cuff on her upper arm began to inflate. “Bullet wounds carry a massive risk of infection. If you hadn’t helped her, she would probably have bled out long before she ended up septic.” Whatever he saw on the monitor was reflected in his troubled expression. He quickly exchanged her IV for a new bag and adjusted its flow. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like hammered shit.” There didn’t seem to be any reason to lie to him. She was aware that her breathing was too shallow; her lungs felt like they were filling up with glue, and she couldn’t seem to do a thing to stop it.

His reply was cut off by a sudden draft of air that made the canvas above their heads billow upward and shook its supporting poles. It took Alex another few seconds to distinguish the repetitive thrum of the helicopter from the turmoil it had created on the ground.

“Just in time,” Theo yelled, a smile brightening his face.

Alex turned to Sarah, who, disturbed by the commotion, was blinking in confusion. She relaxed visibly when she saw Alex and wriggled a hand free from her blanket for Alex to grip hold of. The noise lessened as the helicopter regained altitude, a flash of red against the gray sky indicating it was circling for another approach.

Sarah watched its retreat apprehensively. “Did I ever tell you how much I hate flying?” she asked, her voice muffled by her oxygen mask.

Alex stroked her thumb across the back of Sarah’s hand. “Even if there’s a warm bed and a bath at the end of it?”

Sarah tilted her head to one side, giving the question careful consideration despite being half-doped on morphine. “Will you be there?” she said at length.

“Hell yes.” Alex’s heart rate skipped faster on the monitor as she smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Nothing smelled like pine. That was Alex’s first indication that she might somehow have missed a fairly significant development. The constant white noise of the river had been replaced by the hiss of gas tickling her nose. The bed she lay on no longer squelched beneath her, and her feet were warm. Breathing didn’t seem to be too much of an ordeal, and Sarah was holding her hand.

Sarah was holding her hand
. Even in her semi-conscious state, that conclusion seemed so natural to Alex. She knew the touch of Sarah’s fingers, the way Sarah would curl them around her own, and the gentle back and forth of Sarah’s thumb skimming across her skin. She felt herself relaxing, giving in to the pull of sedative-soaked sleep, and then realized there was one thing that she didn’t know: what the hell Sarah was doing out of bed.

Alex opened her eyes to the muted light of a hospital room. At first, she couldn’t distinguish much beyond the drapes that surrounded her bed and the lumps in the blankets where her feet were sticking up. As soon as her vision sharpened, she turned her head to look at Sarah. Her neck felt stiff and tender, but the smile Sarah gave her was more than worth the discomfort.

“Welcome back,” Sarah said. She raised Alex’s hand and pressed her lips against it.

“Where’d I go?” Confused, Alex coughed dryly, shocked by the croak to which her voice had been reduced and by the pain that reverberated through her throat.

“Ouch.” Sarah winced sympathetically. “Here, try this.” She held a glass of water close enough for Alex to catch its straw. Ice rattled as their combined efforts made the glass shake. Alex restricted herself to a couple of sips as an unwelcome yet familiar queasiness told her that she had recently been given an anesthetic.

“What happened?” she whispered when Sarah lowered the glass. Sarah looked terrible. Her face was ashen beneath the layers of bruising, and she seemed to be keeping herself in the chair by force of will alone. All Alex could remember was a strange sensation of floating in midair, swiftly followed by a crushing darkness. With hindsight, she suspected the crushing darkness had not been a positive sign.

“You got too lazy to breathe for yourself.” Sarah tried to keep her voice light, but gave herself away by shivering and pulling her blanket more tightly around her shoulders. “They had to put you on a ventilator. I slept through it all and sort of hit the roof when I found out.”

“Oh,” Alex said. “Shit.” That went a long way toward explaining the haunted look in Sarah’s eyes. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“You really did. We’d managed to get through everything and then to see you like that—” She squeezed Alex’s hand. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Naw, no way.” Alex smiled. “I’ve seen you in action. You don’t scare that easily.”

“I might have yelled at my doctor a little bit,” Sarah said sheepishly.

“And now you’ve gone and gotten yourself out of bed.” Alex could see a plastic tube leading from the bullet wound on Sarah’s side, which strongly suggested she should not have been keeping her impromptu vigil.

“Yeah, I don’t think she’ll approve, somehow.” Sarah didn’t sound overly concerned. “But I’m not worrying about you so much, now I’m sitting here, so surely that’s better for my recovery.”

“Not sure your doc is going to see it quite like that.”

“No, probably not.”

Alex studied her carefully, mentally cataloging the injuries that seemed to stand out all the more for having been cleaned and dressed. Sarah sat patiently and made no comment despite obviously being conscious of Alex’s scrutiny.

“How you doing?” Alex asked at length.

“I’m okay.” Sarah’s standard response came quickly, but she seemed to sense Alex’s desire for honesty. She met and held her gaze. “I’m better than I was,” she said. “I had surgery to get rid of all the gunk in here.” Her hand hovered just above the tube in her abdomen. “And I seem to have acquired a new fashion accessory.”

Alex nodded in appreciation. “Very bling.”

Tilting her head to one side, Sarah considered the fluid the drain had collected. She grimaced. “I’m not convinced it’s going to be a hit on the catwalks.”

“No, possibly not. It is kinda gross, Sarah.”

Sarah stuck her tongue out and Alex smiled hugely. She felt as if someone had just lifted a ton weight from her shoulders. She could barely believe that they were sitting safely in the hospital, undoubtedly scathed but already healing, having survived an ordeal that most people would have difficulty comprehending.

“I can’t…” She shook her head, unable to articulate the thought.

“I know,” Sarah said simply, and something in her tone made Alex certain she had been thinking along the same lines. “We’re going to be fine, Alex.”

“Yes, we are,” Alex murmured. The words seemed to run together as tiredness finally began to overwhelm her. Apparently, with the release from days of tension came a need to catch up on days of lost sleep. She yawned, struggling to keep her eyes open. The yawn quickly morphed into a cough, but it didn’t hurt nearly as badly as it had before their rescue.

“You going back to sleep, sweetheart?” Sarah smoothed Alex’s blanket down and tucked in a loose corner.

“Mm, I think so. You should too.”

“I will. Have sweet dreams.”

Alex smiled, wanting to reply, but the soft sounds of the room were already fading out.

*

Agent Castillo had used Alex’s overbed table to lay out two FBI case files and his laptop. One of the files was dog-eared and straining at the seams, the second thinner and looking as if it pertained to a more recent investigation. Reading upside down, Sarah could only make out the title of the larger file:
Church of the Aryan Resistance, 2003—

Castillo took the cap from his pen and then seemed to change his mind and put it back on. He cleared his throat again, something that seemed to be an unconscious habit when he thought what he was about to tell them would be distressing. Sarah felt Alex inch closer to her.

“Following the directions you’d given, a team recovered the body of the missing prison guard early this morning,” he said.

Sarah shuddered, goose bumps rising on her arms as if someone had walked over her grave. “Do his family know?” The question seemed to stick in her throat. She took a sip from Alex’s glass of water.

“They were informed shortly afterward.” Castillo looked directly at her. “They were relieved to be able to bring him home, Sarah. His wife asked the agency to pass on her thanks to you.”

There was nothing Sarah could say to that, so she nodded dumbly instead. She didn’t feel deserving of gratitude, not when a small part of her still believed she should have been able to prevent the man’s death, no matter how illogical that belief was.

“Stop it,” Alex said in an undertone. “Stop blaming yourself.”

“I’m with Alex on this one.” Castillo opened the slim file and took out the first page. “The guard died instantly from a point-blank head shot. You said in your statement that you’d”―he used his finger to skim through Sarah’s account―“‘picked up a rock to throw, hoping to cause a distraction.’ Knowing Merrick’s history of shooting first and asking questions later, he wouldn’t have wasted time looking for you before making that shot. The guard’s fate was sealed the minute Merrick forced him to kneel at the edge of that cliff.”