“Chief?” Sampson whispered. “You okay?”
“Fine. Where’s the shooter?”
“Hit,” Mahoney croaked.
The fear fled her. Bree flicked on her flashlight and belly-crawled across the kitchen tiles, calling, “How bad, Ned?”
Mahoney gasped. “Gut. You tell me.”
Somewhere a generator coughed and hummed. Dim light returned. Agents upstairs were shouting, but Bree ignored them.
“Where’s the shooter, Ned?” she called, louder.
“Behind me. Cabinets.”
Bree turned her flashlight off, inched forward, and peered around the bottom corner of the kitchen cabinets. She could see well enough to tell Mahoney was sitting upright on the floor by one of the leather couches, but there was no sign of the shooter.
“We have to get him out, Chief,” Sampson said behind her. “Now!”
“Not until I know where that shooter is. I won’t get us all killed.”
She thumbed on her flashlight again, peeked around the corner, and let the beam play over Mahoney about forty feet away. He was hunched over and squinting. Bree focused on the large patch of dark blood showing on his white shirt, just below his armored vest.
Low liver hit, she thought, and fought to swallow down the panic creeping in the back of her throat. They did have to get him out fast. But the shooter …
Bree shifted her light toward the stone fireplace and the cabinets and shelves to either side. The beam flickered over doors far too small for a child, much less a man, and then over rows of books before stopping cold on a small open cabinet.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
CHAPTER
106
THE ATV WAS equipped with a heavy-duty muffler, so the engine barely made any noise as I drove on the two-track deeper and deeper into the estate.
Edgars’s side-by-side was no more than three or four minutes in front of me. I couldn’t see tracks in the frozen mud, but the leaves were broken and shiny where it had passed.
Snowflakes hit my face. With my free hand, I tugged out the radio and turned it up. There was no longer screeching coming over it, just a dense hiss.
“This is Alex Cross,” I said. “Copy?”
Out of the static, I heard clicking and fragments of an unfamiliar voice. I turned it off, stuffed it back in my coat, tried my cell. No service.
The snow flurries turned to thick heavy flakes.
They’re going to get away, I thought. The sadistic bastards are going to get away.
There was an intersection ahead, and I stopped. The snow covered the leaves, making it impossible for me to say which way Edgars had taken Gretchen Lindel.
I tried to recall the satellite view of the property. The shed and the wounded HRT agent were somewhere to my left. The knoll at the rear of the property—where Mahoney had sent four agents—was somewhere straight ahead of me. That unidentified smudge on the satellite picture was down the right fork in the trail.
I went with my instincts, twisted the ATV throttle, and went right. The snow slapped my face, got in my eyes, and forced me to drive at a crawl.
Ten minutes later, the snow squall ended as abruptly as it had started. I rolled downhill to a wide, shallow, iced-over creek, seeing where Edgars’s machine had broken up the ice. My instincts were dead-on. I drove across the creek, noticing the sky brightening in the east.
How far ahead were they? Were those four people back in that booby-trapped building all dead? The HRT guys said they hadn’t moved when the booby trap went off. Or was Edgars taking Gretchen to where he had the other blondes stashed?
One hundred yards beyond the creek crossing, I lost the tracks and drove on through virgin snow to a turnabout walled in by pines. A dead end.