Into the Fire (24 page)

Something of. “Dave’s going to tell you about an…incident that happened, something that we never told anyone. Tommy didn’t even get the full story. It was kept private among the team that went to Kazbekistan a few years back.”

“Was this the same op where Murphy injured his leg?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She sifted through her notes. “Where you first met Sophia.” She looked up at him. “Met and rescued her.”

Rescued. Right.

“Just say it,” the doctor urged him. “What is Dave going to tell me?”

“That I raped her.”

T
HE MOUNTAINS EAST OF
S
ACRAMENTO
, C
ALIFORNIA

Murphy touched Hannah, his fingers warm against her arm.

“This is where I would’ve set up,” he said, after she’d turned to look at him in the growing morning light. He pointed to a particularly dense cluster of brush that had a relatively unrestricted view of the outpost cabin where Tim Ebersole’s body had been found.

They’d scaled the perimeter fences—there were three of them—shortly after midnight, after an uncomfortable nap in too close quarters.

Hannah had been right. There was an entire segment of the electric fence that was current-free. Their first clue in finding it had been the sentries posted nearby. She and Murph had watched and waited until first one and then—jackpot—the other had fallen asleep. At which point they’d made the impromptu decision to go in.

Murphy had given her a boost, helping her up the first of the three fences—a rather dauntingly high chain-link affair, with barbed wire at the top. She’d carefully swung herself over and tried to land as silently as possible—no easy task since she was also trying to keep her weight off her bad ankle.

The second fence was the electric one—it consisted of a series of wire strung from metal pole to metal pole. Warning signs posted both nearby and on the first fence declared it capable of delivering a lethal shock.

Murphy had pissed her off by his carelessness in testing that fence. He’d reached out to verify that the thing was indeed touchable by, how else? Touching it. She’d gritted her teeth in the darkness, silently cursing him for his recklessness.

But when he hadn’t recoiled with mega-volts of electricity surging through him, he’d lifted the bottom wires and they’d slid beneath.

Then came another chain-link fence and another boost from Murphy, another landing—ow—this one far closer to the snoozing guards. Hannah had no real clue as to whether or not she’d succeeded in being noiseless. There was no movement from the guards, though, so that was good. And then Murph was right behind her, touching her lightly on the back, and together they’d faded into forest.

He’d stopped her, though, almost immediately, squeezing her hand twice.

Back at their camp, they’d set up a rudimentary communications system through touch. One squeeze meant yes, two meant no. A touch to Hannah’s ear meant it was safe for her to talk softly.

They’d reviewed some hand signals, too—much easier to see in low light. Stop, get down, quiet, go back, quick, someone’s coming. That, with the little bit of ASL that they both understood, allowed for basic quick communications. If Murphy had anything complicated to say, they’d decided, he would spell out words with ASL letters. It wasn’t exactly efficient, but it was better than nothing.

Maybe.

Because in the middle of the dense forest, inside the Freedom Network compound, Murphy had squeezed her hand twice, telling her
no.

No what?

It probably wasn’t any darker here than it had been on the other side of the fences, but it sure seemed that way.

Murphy put his finger on her lips—a classic signal for “shh!” And then he brought her hand to his mouth and panted, three quick breaths. He brought his hand back to her mouth, covered it, and used it to shake her own head, no.

And Hannah understood. She was breathing too loudly. Oh, God. She’d had no idea. She tried to slow herself down, tried to breathe through her nose. Inhale. Exhale. But her heart was pounding. Being in here was scaring the crap out of her.

She moved Murphy’s hand to her ear, hoping he’d recognize her question, and sure enough, he squeezed her hand once. Yes, she could speak.

“Tell me when it’s better,” she whispered, willing herself to breathe slowly, steadily. Silently.

Calm. Stay calm. No one was going to see them. Murphy would act as her ears, and they would stay well out of sight. Breathe…

He finally squeezed her arm. Once.

“This sucks,” she whispered.

He squeezed.

“If you hear someone coming,” Hannah whispered, “don’t rely on hand signals. Grab me and hold on, okay? So I don’t misunderstand.”

Murphy squeezed once and let her go.

And with that, they were on their way.

It took them a while, since they had to watch for booby traps. There weren’t a lot of them, but they were out there, so they had to move slowly and carefully.

Another time waster had been their lengthy argument about which way they should go, Murphy spelling out his opinion in ASL letters, some of which she had to identify by touching his hand, which seemed too intimate and even faintly, disturbingly erotic.

But as dawn lit the sky, they’d finally found the cabin where Ebersole’s body had been discovered. It was still festooned with drooping yellow crime scene tape.

It was also annoyingly close to the part of the fence that they’d jumped. They’d taken a circuitous route—made only slightly less annoying by the fact that neither of them could say “I told you so.” They’d both been spectacularly wrong with their choices.

Of course, finding it at all without maps or directions or a GPS device was a huge triumph.

As was finding that it was completely deserted.

They sat and watched for quite some time, to be certain there was no one there. And then they’d done a search pattern, in circles, outward from it—to make doubly sure there were no Freedom Network patrols—other than the napping boys at the gate—camping nearby.

Despite the definite lack of immediate danger, Hannah was crazy on edge.

Murphy touched her and regardless of the fact that he’d had his hands all over her nearly all night, she practically shot up into the nearby trees. But he was only trying to get her attention. It wasn’t a warning that someone was coming.

“You all right?” He let her read his lips, touching her ear to let her know it was safe for her to talk, too.

She shook her head yes, then no. “I keep straining to listen,” she said. “Which freaks me out and is making me jumpy as hell. I’m also pissed as shit that we didn’t find this cabin before now.” The delay meant they were going to have to hide here in the compound until nightfall, because there’d be no sneaking past those guards and back over that fence in broad daylight. “I’m also scared that you’re not going to hear ’em coming, or that you won’t be able to warn me. That’s why I’m glued to your side by the way. It’s not your incredible sex appeal. It’s fear that I’ll be stupidly clomping along and I won’t notice that you’re trying to tell me to zip it.”

“You were in here all by yourself three months ago,” he pointed out.

“That was different,” Hannah said. “I was alone. If I got caught…” It was no big deal. “I had a story.”

“A story.”

She nodded. “I was going to pretend to be a Tim Ebersole groupie,” she said. “You know, all breathless and big-eyed and hoping to meet him.” She fanned herself with both hands.
“I’m sorry to be such a pain, but I was only trying to get a glimpse of him. I really wasn’t going to bother him. Hey, is it okay if I take that pebble home with me? Because he probably walked along this path and stepped on it and…are you
sure
I can’t see him for just a few minutes…?”

The look Murphy gave her was a mix of horror and disbelief. “What if they took you to him?”

“Chill, bwee,” Hannah said. “I was ready for that, too.
I hope it’s okay that Reverend Tim takes a few extra minutes to lay hands on me and heal me? I just
cannot
shake this current outbreak of herpes.”

Murph laughed, but he was clearly exasperated and not at all comfortable with the fact that Hannah had put herself at risk.

“I knew I could sell it if I had to,” she told him. “You, my extremely non-Wonderbread friend, are not going to be able to get away with that. And right under
don’t get caught,
add another rule: Don’t touch anything.” Man, they should’ve thought to bring gloves. “Last thing we want is your prints at this crime scene. Try not to shed any hair, while you’re at it. Leave no fibers or DNA behind.”

He nodded and she followed him over to the area he’d pointed out. It
was
a good location for an assassin’s sniper blind. It was back far enough from the building, but close enough so that a shooter would have options.

The best thing about it, though, at least in Hannah’s mind, was that the ground around it was only mildly trampled. As the authorities had searched for the point from which the killer had fired the murder weapon, they’d obviously done only a cursory check before rejecting this particular spot.

There was another good location, but it was much farther back, where—sure enough—there was a marker flag on a tree.

Murphy touched her again, and when she met his eyes, he shook his head
no,
and she nodded. No kidding. He was a decent enough marksman—within a certain range. Add in years without practice plus copious amounts of alcohol…No way could he have made that shot from way back there.

“You didn’t kill him,” she said, mostly to see how it would feel coming out of her mouth. It felt…not as absolute as she would have wished.

The muscle jumped in his jaw, and his mouth was tight—Murphy, too, was not convinced. “Maybe I shot from up there,” he pointed to the area he’d first selected, “and planted the shell casing back here. Will the forensic evidence be able to show exactly where the bullet was fired from?”

“I believe yes, usually,” Hannah said. “But we can check that.” She hadn’t been in touch with Norma and K.C. over at the state forensics lab in years, but they’d once been friends. She’d let lots of friendships slip away over the past few years. “What I don’t know for sure is what extensive decomposition does to forensic evidence. Four months is a long time for a body to lie around.” She suspected that even the FBI’s forensic team was going to be challenged by that. “Whatever they found up by that tree—probably a shell casing—is going to be deemed major evidence.”

“Even though it could have been planted there,” Murphy said.

“Criminal investigations use KISS thinking. Keep it simple, stupid,” Hannah said. “Why would the killer move the shell casing? If he’s going to find it and touch it, why not sanitize the area—take it with him? Or her. Let’s not be sexist.”

Murphy shook his head. Unhappiness was radiating from him as he looked back toward that first site he’d identified.

“Why would
you
move the shell casing?” she asked.

He met her eyes. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It just…feels like something I would’ve done.”

Leaving a shell casing behind could, indeed, be a message. Usually a two-word memo:
Fuck you.

Or it could be a taunt.
Even with this casing as evidence, you won’t catch me.

Or it could be the sign of an amateur.
What shell casing?
Except, considering the shooter had killed Ebersole with a single shot to the head, they could probably cross any amateurs off the murder suspects list.

“I don’t believe you were capable of this,” Hannah finally said. “I’m not talking about killing Ebersole, that’s…a different conversation entirely. I’m talking about pulling this off without getting caught. If you came in here, so drunk and drugged up that you don’t remember where you were or what you were doing…How could you
not
have been caught and hung from the nearest tree?”

“I don’t know,” he said again, his frustration evident in the way his words were clipped and short. “I just…I hoped I’d come out here and…know that I hadn’t been here before, but…I think I might’ve been here, Han.”

Oh, God. “Are you starting to remember—”

“I don’t remember shit,” Murphy said. “It’s just a feeling. It’s…familiar.”

She looked around at the trees and the leaves and needles that covered the soft loam. Years ago, they’d spent a lot of time camping, both in the mountains near Dalton, as well as outside Seattle, and up in Alaska. Angelina, Murphy, Hannah, and their mutual friend Mike, whom Angelina and Murphy had both thought was Hannah’s boyfriend. Truth was, Mike had a crazy crush on Murphy. Which kind of made three of them, didn’t it? Still, they’d had fun, and Mike, an enthusiastic hunter, had taught them all a thing or two about wildlife, both in the Sierra Nevadas and the Pacific Northwest.

Hannah took a deep breath, inhaling the rich, damp scent of the earth. “It’s familiar to me, too,” she told Murphy. Familiar yet alien, the same way everything was in this strange world she now lived in, a world with the mute button permanently engaged. “Remember the time Mike took us on that hike, and it took longer than we thought to get to the place where he wanted to make camp?”

Murphy nodded. He remembered.

Angelina, even more of a city girl than Hannah, had mocked them endlessly about it. For years. Hannah didn’t doubt that she’d be mocking them still, if her life hadn’t been tragically cut short.

The hike had been grueling, and halfway there it had started to rain, which had really slowed them down. It had been dark when they finally stopped, and they’d made camp and crawled into their tents, exhausted, wet and hungry, unable to start a fire in the deluge. The next day, Hannah awoke to the sound of Angelina laughing. In the early morning fog, the patch of forest upon which they’d set up camp looked exactly the same as the one they’d left, the day before.

Angelina first merrily accused Mike of leading them in a circle. Then, when he’d convinced her that he hadn’t, she made Hannah take her photo as she stood next to a tree that looked exactly the same as every other tree in that part of California. She’d teased Mike mercilessly, telling him it was worth all of the past day’s Herculean effort to get a chance to see that particular tree.