Chapter 5

 

“You’re real.” This wasn’t a bizarre nightmare. The air chilling his skin wasn’t due to a relentless fan in a cold lab it was actually a real, natural breeze. The odd play of shadows was because of a fire behind the woman rather than some manufactured sensory assault. And he was standing outside under a dark sky, bare-assed naked. “I’m not dead and you’re real.” Despite the evidence, the abused part of his brain needed more convincing.

“My name is Hope.” Clearly oblivious to his nudity, she held out a hand to him. “Come in out of the weather. It smells like rain.”

She was—her name was—Hope. Again, she was real and not a cruel manifestation of his nightmares. He wasn’t in that glass and metal hell like an overgrown lab rat. Moving slowly, his knee stinging from a scrape and random tremors quaking through his limbs, he returned to the shelter and warmth she promised. Settling near the small fire, he recalled gentle hands and a soothing voice.

“Hope.”

“That’s right.” She knelt down and gathered up a stack of clothing. “Your clothes are dry now.”

He took his clothes and the fabrics, warm from the fire, felt amazing against his skin. He remembered being wet. And hot. And so damn cold. There had been strange dreams and stranger conversations. “I’m thirsty,” he said. The creek was right there. Despite the hour, the cold, and the looming rain, jumping in and scrubbing off sounded like a fine idea. The unpleasant smell of the fever sweat clung to his skin.

“I’m sure. There’s fresh water here. And a couple of protein bars.”

On cue, his stomach rumbled. Despite the tight space and his uncooperative muscles, he managed to get his pants on before he sat down again. Her smile intrigued him. Not exactly friendly, but patient. As if she had all the time in the world for him to get his head clear and figure out what was going on. Only the wariness in her eyes gave him cause to wonder about the events that must have landed him here.

His mind was a jumble of receding pain and disjointed images that didn’t add up. “You’re a steady one,” he observed as she handed him a canteen. “Are you out here alone?”

“I was.” With a series of crinkles and rattles that bounced off the stone and hurt his ears in the small space, she folded the mylar blanket.

“That was the sound that woke me,” he noted.

“The blanket?” Her hands stilled and the resulting silence was almost worse. “You were under it until a few minutes ago.”

He remembered the crackling heat, feeling stifled as if every breath scorched him from inside out. “In my dream, nightmare, whatever. That sound must have, ah…”

“Scared you?” she finished for him.

He shrugged and dipped his chin. “Guess so.” Why did it matter if she thought he was a coward?

“Makes sense,” she said. “You were really sick and fevers can do strange things to your head.” The blanket folded into a compact rectangle, she tucked it into a pouch not much bigger than an index card. “On top of that you probably have a concussion.”

“Did you tell me you’ve been watching me for two nights or did I dream that?”

She nodded. “That was only a few hours ago,” she said, answering his next question.

When she turned away, stowing the pouch into her pack, he noticed the big-ass knife straight out of a Mercenaries R Us ad sheathed at her waist. If she’d wanted to kill him, she had the right tool, though the black grip looked too big for her hands. His right hand automatically went to his hip and instinct told him that knife was his. He was in over his head, clearly. But how deep and which way to the shallow end?

He had to figure out which of the images in his head were real and how much time he had before the man in the gray suit sent someone to take him out for disobedience. He touched the place near his ear that would activate his connection to the voice that issued his orders when he was in the field. No response, not even static, only a smear of blood on his fingertips.

“You need to tell me what happened,” he said, wiping the blood on his pants. He dragged his shirt over his head and looked around for his boots and the rest of his gear. He should have guns. “Did I have any guns or weapons,” he shot a look at his knife, “when you found me?”

“You don’t need weapons in here tonight,” she said. “What brought you to the Crow Reservation?”

She was smart not to trust him. He didn’t trust himself with the conflicting urges playing bumper cars in his head. He remembered shooting a truck off the road. He remembered being diverted from the planned rendezvous and extraction, but not why. That ex-fil option was surely gone now. But if he got there, and found a way to reestablish communication, he could get back on the right dosage before the next hell of withdrawal hit him.

Except this was his chance to get out, to break the addiction. With the comms offline, the voice in his head silent, he might have a chance to escape the man in the gray suit, unless Hope was another test or trap. “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

“Can you tell me your name?” Her voice soothed his sensitive hearing.

“Owen,” he answered without thinking. Yes! That was his name. He sucked in a breath as the relief rushed through his veins, sweeter than the drug they’d pumped into him. Whatever happened next, he would not let anyone take away his name again.

She tilted her head, the thick, straight fall of dark hair spilling over her shoulder as she studied him. “It suits you. Got a last name?”

He opened his mouth eager to reply, but it just wasn’t there. “You first?”

Her smile was slow, too informed for his comfort. The unease returned. What did she know that he didn’t?

“Hope Small.” She warmed water over the fire in a small pan. “I’m here on tribal land for professional reasons and it’s my tribe.” She dipped a cloth into the warm water and handed it to him. “For the…” She gestured to the side of his face. “That wound isn’t wanting to close.”

He blotted at the tender spot near his hairline. Sure enough, the cloth was bloody. He rinsed it in the warm water and washed his face before tending the wound again. Having his face clean made the rest of him feel more human, but he still couldn’t pin down his last name or what he was doing here.

She watched him, caution underscoring her striking features and demeanor. “All I have are a few meal bars.” She named off flavors, let him choose. “We can hike out tomorrow and you can find real food.”

Better to be forthright, he decided. An opportunity like this might not come around again. If she was some new test, he had size on her, even if she held the weapons. “These head injuries must have scrambled my brain. If I should know you, I don’t.”

“That’s something,” she murmured.

“Meaning?”

“You shouldn’t know me at all.” She broke off a piece of her meal bar, ate it slowly. “You don’t recall anything about how we…met?”

“Not really.” He polished off his meal bar and imagined a steak dinner and a bottle of beer. How long had it been since he and the guys had made a night of it? A long time, he realized. Faces without names drifted through his mind as he tried to fit the pieces into a coherent picture. “You found me out here alone?”

“I’ve heard people with concussions shouldn’t tax themselves,” she said abruptly. “Full recovery relies on time and quiet. Just get some rest,” she suggested. “We can talk in the morning.”

He supposed if she’d been sent to kill him, she would have done it while he was incapacitated. Outside he could hear the leading edge of the rain splashing into the creek, on the trees and stones sheltering them. “Do you have a cell phone?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her gaze narrowed. “Won’t do you any good right now. The reservation is littered with dead zones like this one.”

The people who’d sent him here wouldn’t let that kind of detail stop them. “Is it on or off?”

“Off.” She banked the fire and stretched out, using her pack as a bolster behind her shoulders. “I’ll keep watch. You’re safe here, Owen.”

He wanted to believe her. Needed to, he realized. If she was who she claimed to be then she was his best hope of breaking the drugs, brutal tests, and fog he’d been in for who knew how long. If she was on their side, he’d know soon enough.

“All right.” Her confidence gave him just enough reassurance to give into the fatigue dragging at him. Besides, she looked as if she could use a peaceful night as well. Lying down on the soft blanket she must have provided for him earlier, he pillowed his cheek on his bent arm and watched her through the fire until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.

*

Amelia clicked on yet another crime report listing Owen Harbison as a person of interest. All of them dated within the past forty-eight hours and all of them following a trail north of where he’d first been spotted in conjunction with the dead JAG officer in Arizona.

“The unstoppable one-man crime spree,” she murmured. Amelia continued her search of online news outlets and headlines, scrolling with one hand, the other resting on her rounded belly. Inside, she felt the baby stretch, a tiny miracle growing day by day. Only a few short months to go before she and John brought the baby home to the ranch. Home, she thought with a swell of love and pride, another unexpected miracle.

It was past time to find a potential miracle for Scott. As well as he had adapted to his new situation, he needed some closure, preferably of the positive variety. He and Ben had returned yesterday, utterly disappointed with their lack of progress. Even with the police actively searching for Harbison in and around Fort Huachuca and more law enforcement teams looking for the man, they hadn’t picked up a viable trail.

Not the first setback since they’d started this journey to dismantle UI. It wouldn’t be the last. They just had to be more tenacious than Messenger.

The man in the gray suit had changed up his pattern when he’d recruited Scott and the others and she wasn’t sure what it meant. The three soldiers had been falsely accused and eventually convicted of murder on a military base overseas. Days after the sentencing, the three men had been signed out of prison in the middle of the night. Their escape vehicle had been found later, a charred wreck off a lonely stretch of Texas highway with three dead bodies conveniently identified as the escapees.

Obviously, it was all an impeccable bit of black-ops theater by Messenger to get fresh blood into his pet-project. Scott was alive and well, and he continued to believe his friends could also be found and rescued from UI. She hoped, for everyone, that they wouldn’t be too late.

“You can’t do this on the run,” she murmured. The tracker they’d planted on Messenger a few years ago wasn’t giving reliable feedback anymore. John and Ben continued to evaluate the movements they could confirm and although they narrowed the search areas, they weren’t any closer to locating a new facility.

The baby kicked and she took it as encouragement. “That’s right, sweetheart. We’ll get him.”

Owen Harbison had been sighted among the living, immediately disappeared and unexpectedly reappeared. But only on surveillance feeds. Not a single eyewitness account in any of these articles. She couldn’t let that be the end of it. Messenger had nearly killed John. She refused to allow the bastard to keep up his habit of ruining good men and women.

“Come to bed,” John said. He laid his hands on her shoulders and stroked the tension out of tight muscles. “The answers will be there in the morning.”

“Says you.” He knew evidence pointing to UI had a tendency to disappear. If she stopped searching, all of these articles on Owen might be buried tomorrow.

He short-circuited the argument by simply plucking her out of the chair. Since she’d been feeling less like a woman and more like one of Jaime’s new draft horses lately, she let him. There was something to be said for being handled by a man who knew her, loved her, and was willing to shower her with affection and pleasure until they were both spent, gasping and satisfied.

“Sleep,” John ordered as he pulled the sheet up to cover them. “We have the ultrasound appointment in Bozeman tomorrow.”

“I knew you had an agenda.” Her body content and her heart happy, the worries drifted back into her mind.

“Everyone does.” He nuzzled her neck, laid his palm over her belly, and sighed when she squirmed away and turned on the light.

“That’s right.” How did Messenger advance his agenda by exposing Harbison?

John burrowed his face into the pillow to block the light. “Amelia. This isn’t sleeping.”

“Why did Messenger risk someone recognizing Harbison at the murder scene? We both know it had to be his goons or gadgets that messed with the other camera feeds in the area, why leave the most incriminating camera operational?”

“I’ll sleep on it and let you know in the morning.” John rolled to his back but he kept his hand over his eyes. The sheet slipped down to his waist, distracting her. Tempting her.

“I’m sorry.” She knew she could be obstinate once she sunk her teeth into an issue. But they’d come so close to undoing UI. The idea that Messenger could rebuild was a direct threat to their current peace.

John sat up and reached over her to turn out the light. “Sleep.”

She let him pull her close, his heart beating a soothing lullaby in her ear. In recent years as they alternately pursued UI and evaded Messenger’s pursuit of them, she’d learned not pulling a thread could also be helpful. Timing, she supposed, really was everything. She closed her eyes and though the baby had quieted, her mind kept churning.

The court martial had been in Texas. The escape car torched and three bodies found meant the authorities had no reason to keep searching. An unfortunate blemish on the correctional system, but the case was officially closed.

Unlike John and so many others, Scott had never seen the horrors inside a UI lab. Although he’d been dosed immediately with a tracking device and sent out to complete a mission to earn his freedom, no other alterations had been made. UI had kept Scott’s friends completely off the radar. Searches for tracking signals similar to Scott’s hadn’t turned up anything. And despite Ben’s special skill of being invisible allowed him to lurk in shadows to eavesdrop and gather information, nothing resembling a clue had resulted in actionable intel.

Until now, when Harbison’s name and face were popping up everywhere. It had to mean something. Her eyes popped open as a possible explanation occurred to her. “He lost his new star,” she whispered as the idea took shape, solidified. What better way to find a lost asset than stir up a manhunt?

Connecting him to less violent crimes in addition to the brutal murder of a military officer only ratcheted up the lynch mob mentality.

Find the lost operative had to be the agenda. Harbison was brand new to UI and yet already strong enough to be out in the field. She didn’t like how that added up. They knew Messenger was changing his tactics, in no small part because of what John, Ben, and now Scott were doing. She had to give Messenger points for creativity even if she didn’t approve of his ethics, tactics, or anything else.

She would discuss the theory with John in the morning. It seemed it was time to stretch their thinking to match Messenger’s.

*

“Lost?” John shook his head after Amelia shared her new theory with all of them over a hearty breakfast. He didn’t like the idea of Ben and Scott searching for Harbison, only to get tangled in Messenger’s wide net. “No. Not with the new UI tracking tech. Odds are good it’s another test.”

“We could help Owen fail that kind of test,” Scott said.

John could already see that would get Amelia’s vote.

“What if this is a trap for you?” Jaime gave voice to John’s concerns as her gaze settled on Scott, concern and love shining in her eyes. “Besides, with so many scattered reports where would we start looking?”

Across from him, Ben was indulging the team by staying visible in his entirety through the meal. That factor alone was proof of Ben’s trust in Scott and Jaime and gave John hope for the team as a whole. The family, he amended. It seemed the recent changes of Amelia’s pregnancy, a stable home base and new friends had brought out the best in the man UI had managed to turn into a chameleon. Ben’s ability to wander anywhere unseen was helpful, but the prolonged solitude of his missions had messed with his head. The clear air, big skies, and privacy of the Crazy Mountains suited them all, John realized.

“I think she might be right about Harbison being lost,” Ben said. “We disabled Scott’s tracker almost before it had a chance to settle in his system. Not that it takes long.” He went to the counter for the coffee carafe and refilled everyone’s cup. “More tea?” he asked Amelia.

“No, thank you.”

They all waited, knowing Ben wasn’t done with his thought. “The scans are coming up empty, right?”

John nodded. They had a program running constantly, searching for any pop on the radio frequencies UI used. “It’s possible they tweaked the trackers again.”

“Between dosing Scott and the other two?” Ben shook his head. “I don’t think even a new and improved UI is that good.”

“If we can’t find Harbison, we need to get back out there and find the lab,” Scott said, his voice rough as sandpaper.

Ben shook his head. “Trust me, kid, you don’t really want to see that,” he said, echoing John’s thoughts. “The only way we end this is to end Messenger.”

Scott pushed his hash browns into a perfect square, pensive. “I don’t want my friends to die like lab rats in a cage either.”

“We’re doing all we can to prevent that,” Amelia assured him.

“Yeah.” Ben gulped his coffee. “Last time I was close enough to overhear a Messenger order he was talking about intercepting a shipment of guns coming up from Mexico.”

John stilled, along with everyone at the table. “You never mentioned that, Ben.”

“Why would I? We don’t need to get between UI and a cartel.”

John couldn’t argue with the perfect Ben-logic. “Would’ve been nice to get close to Messenger,” he pointed out.

“Well, sure.” Ben sat back in his chair. “But he was on the other end of the radio at the time. I was only tagging along with the second-stringers.”

John smothered a smile at Ben’s term for the non-enhanced personnel Messenger was forced to use more often since John, Amelia, and Ben had helped one of the top researchers in the program take out the main UI lab and bleed their offshore bank accounts dry. And still the bastard kept rising from the ashes.

If Messenger rebuilt enough operatives before John had all the pieces in place here, they’d be sitting ducks, despite the expertise from Hank Patterson’s team of bodyguards. Worse, that kind of failure would disappoint Amelia.

His wife snagged the last piece of bacon from the platter in the middle of the table. “When did you overhear that conversation, Ben?”

Ben stared into his coffee cup so long, John was sure he’d forgotten they all were hoping for an answer. “That snowstorm down in Clover City, I think.” He started to fade out, his extremities going a little transparent, as he tried to pin down the timing. “Yeah. The second-stringers were griping because the heater in the car wasn’t working. Pansies. Then Messenger called and gave them a highway number and mile marker. Told them when to show up and where to toss the bodies once they hijacked the truck.”

“That was months ago,” John said.

Ben shrugged. “I figured this one,” he lifted his chin toward Scott, “was the priority. Bird in the hand, y’know.”

John wanted to laugh. Amelia was hiding her chuckle behind her mug of tea. “Yeah, Ben. I know.”

“Hey, Ben, do you remember what highway number?” Jaime posed the question far too casually as she started clearing dishes.

Ben gave her the information immediately. “It was mile marker 429, if it helps.”

“It does.” Jaime said, loading the dishwasher. “That highway bisects the Crow Reservation. Not much out there but miles and miles of wilderness.”

“Good place for an ambush?” John asked.

“Definitely,” she replied. “Cell service isn’t exactly reliable.”

“Which means it’s also a good place to get lost,” Amelia said. “I’ll start the research for any accident reports.”

“We have to leave for Bozeman by noon,” John reminded his wife. Today they would find out if they were having a baby boy or girl. When asked, he truthfully said he didn’t care one way or the other, as long as the baby was healthy. Either way, he was going to be a father and that continued to terrify him on a level he could never explain to anyone.

“I’ll be ready.” She pressed her lips to his, then whispered in his ear. “And so will you.”

Sometimes it was scary how well the woman could read him. “Assuming she finds what we’re looking for, how should we gear up for the search?” John asked Jaime.

“You’re staying,” Scott and Ben said in unison.

Now that was eerie. “Don’t ever do that again,” John said.

Scott only shrugged while Ben made it clear John was not invited to handle any part of the search and rescue.

“I didn’t mean me,” John explained. “I want one of Patterson’s men along for this ride and need to know what to ask for.”

“Why bother? Ben faded almost completely, giving John a view of the cabinets behind his friend. “The kid and I are doing fine.”

“I’ll bother because if you get caught on tribal land someone with valid identification should be there to do the talking.”

“Oh.” Ben solidified a bit. “Fair point.”