Cover Me - By Catherine Mann Page 0,47
uniform. The firefighter must have been having breakfast before or after her shift. Either way, the gangly teenage driver—who ironically didn’t appear to have a scratch on him—was being taken care of.
Now that the pressing need for action had passed, he wondered. Why had Chewie run toward this guy? Wade stared closer at the face and while something tugged at him, he couldn’t place where he’d seen the guy before.
Sunny’s hand fell to rest on his shoulder, jolting him. He clasped her hand before turning.
He stared up, into her horrified eyes. “Sunny?”
“The deputy who shot at us”—she pointed toward the lifeless body on the road—“on the mountain. It’s him.”
The deputy? What the hell? They were hundreds of miles away—and an airplane ride to boot—from where they’d seen him last on the mountain. Why would he be here, across the street from where Sunny just happened to be staying, unless he was tracking her?
Wade’s gaze zipped to the lifeless man who shouldn’t even be in this region at all, much less hanging out a few yards away from Sunny. “We need to get to base and talk to the OSI, now. Remember the thing I said you needed to know?”
He certainly couldn’t tell her about the newly discovered icy graveyard now, in public. Soon though. Because something bad was going on, something big and far-reaching, for this guy to come all the way here after them.
“Of course”—she clasped his hand—“you’re right. Let’s get Chewie and go.” She paused, then shot to her feet again. “Chewie? What’s the matter boy? Chewie!”
The rising panic in her voice alerted him a second before he looked back over his shoulder to find the massive dog limping toward Sunny with determined, loyal—painful steps.
With a killing field of faces to identify, a dead body in front of them, and now an injured pet to care for, Sunny wouldn’t be leaving for the Aleutian Islands anytime soon.
***
This day had gone from bad to insane.
An untasted mug of coffee clutched in her hands, Sunny sat in a sterile interrogation room at the military base’s Office of Special Investigation with her interrogator—Special Agent Steve Lasky. In his fifties, the agent had a shaved bald head, piercing eyes, and nicotine-stained fingertips. As best she could tell, the Office of Special Investigations—OSI—was an air force branch of military intelligence. Since Wade had become involved in the incident on the mountain, the OSI entered the ongoing investigation.
Along with how many other law enforcement branches?
Jotting notes on an old-school steno pad, he sat across the table from her, his black suit coat sliding open to reveal his gun in a shoulder harness. From what she’d seen, it seemed to be a fifty-fifty split in the OSI of uniforms and civilian clothes.
He caught her shift in attention to his weapon and eased his jacket back over the gleaming silver gun. “And you were chosen to escort the couple”—he referred to his notes on the steel table—“Ted and Madison for what reason?”
“I’m the town’s guide. I also offer survival and fitness training.” This tiny room with no windows and recycled air threatened to choke her. “Hiking, trekking, mountain climbing, riding snow machines… It’s what I do.”
“Right…” He made a note, absently patting his jacket as if looking for a pack of cigarettes. “And all of the other people, you were their trail guide as well?”
“Some, not all. Depends on the weather. I do the walking and snow machine escorts. When the weather permits, the Everett brothers drive their snowplow down the trail.”
“Everett brothers?” He glanced up.
“Twins. Flynn and Ryker.” Big blond lugs with smiles as wide as the Alaska landscape. “Their father heads the town council.” With every word she felt like a Judas sharing all their names, exposing their town, but good God, who could ever have imagined such a large-scale horror?
Lasky nodded toward the TV screen bolted to the ceiling. The screen, now blank, had scrolled morgue shot after morgue shot earlier, each one a horrifyingly familiar face. “I need to know exactly which ones you escorted and which ones they drove out.”
She weighed his request and decided that much she could do. Hopefully, the more she complied, the less he would delve into other areas of their lives.
Image after image of frozen, lifeless faces reappeared on the screen until all eleven plus Ted and Madison were lined up together like a page in a tragic school yearbook. “Ted, Madison, Cheryl, Gregory, Lee, Hope went with me. June, Rose, Marvin, George, and the three