Black Canyon Conspiracy Read online

  All this time he’d been so focused on Richard Prentice and his men, he’d forgotten that they weren’t the only enemies he and Lauren had to worry about out here in the wilderness.

  The snake flicked its tongue and coiled tighter, ready to strike. Lauren’s calf was in striking distance. She stared at the viper, mesmerized, her face drained of color. Marco searched the ground for a rock or a stout stick to use as a weapon, but found nothing.

  A memory came to him of a television show he and Rand had watched one evening about snake hunters in the Amazon, who had killed venomous snakes with their bare hands. He and Rand had joked that they preferred using a pistol, but he didn’t have a pistol now. Time to try the snake hunters’ method, but he’d only have one chance.

  He pulled his key ring from his pocket and tossed it so that it landed about a foot to the snake’s right. At the metallic chink on the rocks, the snake swiveled its head away from Lauren. Marco lunged and grabbed the snake by the tail. It was like picking up a heavy garden hose, one pulsing with flowing water. Lauren screamed as he whipped the snake into the trunk of the nearest tree. He released it and jumped back, then stood, breathing hard and staring at the limp body of the predator.

  “Is it dead?” Lauren asked from behind him.

  “It’s not after us anymore,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

  She moved into his arms and rested her head on his shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified,” she said. “It was worse than facing Prentice and his guards, or those men in the parking lot who tried to kidnap me and Sophie.”

  “There’s something about snakes,” he said, rubbing his hand up and down her back. The contact calmed him, too. “I think it’s a primitive fear, hardwired into our DNA.”

  She raised her head to study him. “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

  “I’m a man, not a robot.”

  She smiled. “Good to hear you admit it.”

  He started to ask what she meant by that, then thought better of it. He’d spent years learning to hide his feelings from others. Maybe he’d gotten a little too proficient at that particular skill.

  Cautious, keeping a look out for more predators, they knelt and drank from the muddy water, straining it through Marco’s shirt. It wasn’t very refreshing, but it would keep them going a little while longer.

  They moved on, making a wide berth around the inert snake, and resumed their trek toward the road. The water had revived them, and maybe the promise of safety soon added energy and purpose to their steps. They’d been traveling an hour or so when the sound of a car made them stop once more. Marco listened, then said, “It’s traveling faster. I think we’re near the road.”

  * * *

  LAUREN’S HEARTBEAT SPED up at his words, hope forming a knot in her throat. The road meant safety and eventual rescue. They began walking again, faster. If the rough terrain would have allowed it, she would have broken into a run.

  Another hundred yards along, she saw a bridge up ahead where a paved road crossed over the ravine, which widened and flattened, its sides mostly cleared of vegetation. She started toward this clearing, but Marco pulled her back. “Wait,” he said.

  Forcing herself to keep still, she waited. Half a minute passed, and then she heard a vehicle approaching. When the familiar Jeep appeared, she stifled a groan. She waited for the vehicle to pass before she whispered, “They’re still looking for us.”

  “They won’t give up,” he said. “Not until they have to. There’s too much at stake.”

  There was too much at stake for her and Marco if Prentice’s men found them, too. She started to ask him if he had a plan B when yet another vehicle approached. This proved to also be a Jeep with two burly men in camouflage fatigues. Five minutes later, a third Jeep passed.

  “I didn’t know Prentice had that many guards,” she said, the whine of the third Jeep’s engine fading in the distance.

  “He probably called in extra manpower.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “They’re never all in the same area at once. We can time them, find a window of opportunity when we can evade them.”

  He made it sound so logical. So easy. “We can do that?”

  He nodded. “But it will be better if we wait until dark. That will make it easier.”

  The thought of waiting here, in the heat and dust and cacti, for several more hours until evening made her feel almost too tired to stand. She took his hand again, drawing strength from his calm assurance. “Where do we wait?”

  He led her back down the draw, to a place where erosion had undercut the bank of the ravine to form a shaded hollow. He sat and she settled beside him, his arm around her shoulder. She tried to ignore the rock digging into the small of her back, or the thirst that made her lips feel swollen. “I’m still trying to picture you as a Boy Scout,” she said.

  “We didn’t have uniforms or anything. Not really. I think I had one of those little scarf things.”

  “A kerchief?” She smiled at this image of him as a ragtag little boy in a yellow Scouting neck cloth.

  “Were you a Girl Scout?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. Girl Scouts weren’t cool, and I was always cool.”

  “I’ll bet you were always the most popular girl. And the prettiest one.”

  “I was. Does that sound terribly vain?” She shook her head ruefully. “I was awful. Selfish. I sometimes wonder if all the bad stuff that has happened as an adult is because I was so terrible and insensitive when I was growing up.”

  “You were a kid. Kids act out. Sometimes they’re insensitive. Besides, I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “In what stuff?”

  “Karma, or whatever you want to call it. We don’t get what we deserve in life. If that was true, then little kids would never die of cancer and men like Prentice wouldn’t be rich and powerful.” He squeezed her shoulder. “You can’t change what you did before, so don’t beat yourself up over it.”

  “You’re right. So instead of moaning about the past, let’s think about the future. Do you think there’s anything useful in those papers we took from Richard’s study?”

  “Why don’t we take a look and see?” He shifted and pulled a sheaf of papers from inside his shirt. She withdrew her own collection of documents from her pockets and they spread the papers on the dirt in front of them: a picture, a birth certificate, a passport and what looked like deeds.

  She picked up the picture and studied it. “This looks old,” she said. The photograph was black-and-white, with a narrow white border all around. The man in it stared sternly ahead, his hair slicked to his scalp, his moustache two smudges above his thin upper lip. “Maybe from the 1940s. That could be a military uniform he’s wearing.”

  “There’s writing on the back,” Marco said. “What does it say?”

  She flipped the picture over. The ink was faded to a pale blue, the looping letters indecipherable. “I don’t think it’s English,” she said. “I can’t make it out. Except the name. Bruno Adel.” She frowned. “Bruno was the name Richard asked me to call him, but this clearly isn’t him.”

  “Maybe it’s a relative,” Marco said. He picked up the passport and flipped through it. “He made a lot of trips to Venezuela.”

  “That’s because he was dating a model there. The ambassador’s daughter.”

  “These stamps go back almost ten years. I don’t think they would have been dating that long.”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think she was that old.”

  He tapped the passport against his palm. “So maybe he had another reason for going there so often.”

  “Maybe he has a business there? He supposedly has property all over the world.”

  They turned their attention to the deeds. She shuffled through the half dozen pieces of paper, then handed them to Marco. “Nothing here looks familiar to me,” she said. “And there are just addresses, not names.”

  Marco held out one of the deeds. �
��This one. I think the address is for a house in Denver where a bunch of illegal immigrants were held. I think I remember it from the court documents. And there’s another address in Denver—that could be a house we busted as the center of a sex trafficking ring.”

  “So those are things that could help you make a case against Richard?”

  “Maybe.” He scanned the papers again. “The deeds are in the name of RP Holdings, Inc.”

  “Richard Prentice Holdings?”

  “Or he might say these businesses have nothing to do with him.”

  “Then, why was he keeping these papers in his safe?”

  “We’ve already seen how good he is at explaining away evidence.” Marco laid the papers back on the pile in front of them. “Good enough to persuade the grand jury.”

  “But he never appeared before the grand jury,” she said. “That isn’t allowed.”

  “He didn’t have to testify himself. He used his influence and money behind the scenes to shape the testimonies of the experts who did testify.” Marco looked scornful. “Of course, we’ll never prove it, but I’m sure that’s what happened.”

  “Then, what we need is something that will undermine his credibility,” she said. “The way he’s tried to undermine mine.” If only Prentice had a history of mental illness, or a criminal record, or anything that would make him look like the lowlife he really was.

  Marco folded the papers and tucked them back in his shirt. “Try not to worry about it now. Get some rest. You want to be alert when we make a break for it tonight.”

  “Will you rest, too?” she asked.

  He pulled her down so that she reclined against him, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. “I’ll keep watch,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  It was absurd, she thought as she closed her eyes, to believe that one man could keep a half a dozen or more guards with guns at bay, that he could stop a murderer who wanted them both dead. But Marco made her believe that she could trust him with anything—with her life. Even with her heart.

  * * *

  MARCO HAD BEEN determined not to fall asleep, but as he’d admitted to Lauren, he was a man, not a robot, and the miles they’d walked, coupled with the stress of the day, had produced a weariness that pulled him under. Hidden in the trees, lulled by the vast silence and drugging heat of late afternoon, he’d slept fitfully, troubled by dreams of giant rattlesnakes and an old drill sergeant, who taunted him that he didn’t have what it took to survive.

  He woke with a start, the sergeant’s mocking words still echoing in his ears. Gray light suffused the air around them, turning the distant trees to charcoal smudges against a washed-out paper sky. He checked his watch—almost eight o’clock.

  Lauren rested heavily against his shoulder, her breathing deep and even. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled deeply of her floral and spice scent. She made him feel more vulnerable than he ever had, yet at the same time stronger. A man who had spent his life avoiding complications, he welcomed the challenges she brought to his life. She made him think beyond the next day or the next week, to what the future might look like with her in it.

  She stirred and he pushed away his musings. Time to focus on the plan for right now. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, then smiled. “Does this mean the wonderful dream I was having is real?” she asked.

  “What was the dream?”

  Her smile widened. “It involved a big feather bed and you and me—naked.”

  Arousal stirred at the image her words painted. He indulged himself with a kiss—a long, slow, lingering caress of mouths and tongues that left him painfully erect and fighting the urge to take her there on the hard ground. “We’ll have to see about making that dream come true later,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  He never made promises. If you avoided them, you never had to worry about disappointing others. “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Apart from being hungry, thirsty and tired, I’m okay.”

  He continued to study her, his gaze almost too intense. She shifted, half turning away from him. “What? Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “How long before your medication wears off?” he said. “Before you might begin having problems?”

  The question disappointed her. She’d thought he wasn’t like the rest, thinking she was crazy and unpredictable. “What, are you worried I’m going to flake out on you?”

  “I want to know how best to take care of you.”

  The sincerity in his voice made her ashamed. She stared at the ground. “Don’t worry. I took a pill when we stopped for water. Before we left to talk to Prentice, I put a pill case in my pocket. It’s got enough medication for a few days. I remembered the last time, when Prentice kidnapped me. He didn’t get my refills for me for almost five days.” She shook her head. “Withdrawal was no fun.”

  “I should have known you were smart enough to think ahead like that.”

  The compliment unsettled her almost more than his concern. “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “It’s almost dark,” he said. “Time to make our move.”

  She accepted this nonanswer with good grace, and stood and brushed dry grass and leaves from her clothing. “What is our move, exactly?”

  “We wait for the patrols to drive by and time them. Even if they’re deliberately trying to be random, there will be a pattern of some kind. People think and act in patterns, even if the patterns are irregular.”

  “It would help if we had some way to write all this down,” she said.

  He picked up a stick and handed it to her. “Think of the ground as a big chalkboard.”

  “Why bother? We wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark.”

  Two minutes later, a distant mechanical whine cut the natural silence. Lauren peered from behind the screen of trees they’d chosen as their lookout. “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “They’re still a ways off.”

  “Still, the road is pretty straight here. I’d think we’d see headlights.”

  The droning, mechanical sound grew louder, but the highway stretched empty in either direction. Were they driving without lights? Or did sound carry farther than he’d realized in this emptiness?

  Within seconds, it sounded as if the vehicle was right on them, but still the road remained empty. “This is crazy,” Lauren said. “It’s like they’re invisible. I thought cloaking devices were the stuff of science-fiction novels.”

  Marco closed his eyes and focused on the sound. It was too high-pitched and steady for an automobile. And it wasn’t coming from the road, but from straight overhead.

  He grabbed Lauren and pulled her back beneath the trees. “It’s not a car,” he said.

  “What is it?” She looked around them.

  “It’s a drone.” He held back the branch of a tree and pointed overhead. They could just make out the shadowy shape of the unmanned drone, hovering a hundred feet above them.

  “I heard Prentice had one,” she said. “But I thought the feds confiscated it.”

  “They had to give it back,” Marco said. “It’s not illegal to own one. Private businesses use them for all kinds of things, from mapping terrain to aerial photography. Prentice wanted it for security patrols.”

  “And we’re a risk to his security, so of course he’s going to use it.” She squinted up into the sky. “What’s it doing up there?”

  “Looking for us, probably.”

  “You mean, like, with a camera?”

  “A camera. And probably infrared technology. It can map heat on the ground. Two warm bodies would be easy to spot on the heat map.”

  “So it can track us in the dark.” She squatted on her heels and hugged her arms around her knees. “So we’re toast. All the drone has to do is pinpoint us and the goons can come right to us.”

  “The drone can only find us if we’re in the area where it’s searching.” Marco studied the object, which looked like a cross betwe
en an artist’s rendition of a UFO and one of those radio-controlled planes hobbyists used. It made a right turn and headed back up along the road.

  “But how do we know where it’s going to search?” Lauren asked. “A thing like that can cover a lot of territory.”

  “It uses fuel like anything else, so the operators have to limit it to a defined area,” he said. “I think it’s making a grid pattern, searching within a hundred feet on either side of the road for five miles or so.”

  She stood again, and joined him in watching the craft, which was now moving away from them. “You can tell all that after watching it for a few minutes?”

  “It’s the plan that makes the most sense,” he said. “The one I’d use if I were the operator. Prentice and his men know we have to head to the road to find other people and help. He also probably reasoned that we’d travel at night, when it’s more difficult for his patrols in the Jeeps to find us.”

  “But the drone can find us in the dark,” Lauren said. She frowned. “Is it armed? Can it shoot us?”

  “There have been rumors. At one time he had a Hellfire missile with which he could have armed it, but that supposedly belonged to his Venezuelan girlfriend. She claimed diplomatic immunity and refused to implicate him. But he could have found another missile on the black market.”

  “What? Anyone can buy a missile?”

  “All it takes is enough money and the right connections. Prentice has those.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked. “Make a break for it while it’s gone?”

  He shook his head. “The Jeep patrols are probably still near. And the drone can scan a pretty large area, even when it’s not directly overhead.”

  “We can’t just stand here, waiting to be caught— or killed.”

  “No.” He took her hand and led her out from under the cover of the trees. “We have to turn around and head into the park.”

  “What’s in the park that will help us?”