Wild Ways

“You’ve been alive all this time,” Engler said quietly, as though not quite believing it. “Why all the secrecy?”

“It was a cover story of some sort, wasn’t it?” Carlson put in with sudden understanding. “And you’ve been working for O’Dell all this time. So that’s why you turned up here, helping Meg.” He grinned with relief.

Engler was still staring at Rafe. “That true? You still on the payroll?”

“Wish I’d known that beforehand, because I don’t mind telling you, I was a little scared of what we were going to find.” Carlson scrubbed his fingers through his short, brown hair. “Ruffio and Stepino have both got their soldiers out looking for Dawes. I was sure you were dead.”

“You’re hell bent on seeing someone dead, aren’t you?” Rafe muttered. “And I’m not working undercover. Agent Kavanagh and I just sort of ran into each other, is all. I quit the Agency cold two years ago.”

“But you were taking care of her.” Engler just stared at him.

Rafe glanced at Meg. His gaze held hers for a long moment. “She was taking care of herself just fine. I was ready to pull out when you guys showed up.”

“But…” Carlson looked from one to the other of them, clearly puzzled.

“Mr. Blackhorse is a…private investigator,” Meg put in smoothly, ignoring Rafe’s raised eyebrow. “He…um…became embroiled in the situation when Pagliano tried to kill Reggie this afternoon, and he kindly offered to…assist me.”

Reggie was looking shell-shocked. “I don’t understand any of this,” he whispered. “You mean she isn’t an agent at all?”

“She’s an Agency employee, just not a field agent,” Engler said with a disapproving look at Meg. “She had no authority to bring you in, and no business being out here without proper training.”

“I had the training,” Meg repeated heatedly. “Okay, so I didn’t complete it, exactly, but I didn’t need the underwater demolition stuff or the advanced military armament stuff or all that pilot or parachute training stuff, either. And, okay, I didn’t spend two years as an intern, playing second banana to the agent in charge. But I found Reggie when no one else could. And I convinced him to come in. And I was bringing him in just fine.”

“But…why?” Carlson shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand, Meg. You’ve never said anything to me about wanting to be a field agent. And you know how O’Dell feels about women in the field.”

“I wanted to prove he’s wrong,” she said flatly. “The man’s twenty years behind the times! If I can prove I can do the job, he can’t keep me out. I’d been following Reggie’s case from the beginning, and when he disappeared with O’Dell’s money and no one was able to find him, I decided it was the perfect opportunity. It only took me a couple of days to track him down with our computers, and I…” She shrugged and looked at Reggie. “Reg, I’m sorry. I’ve been lying to you, but it really was for your own good.”

“So does this mean I’m not really in custody?”

“No!” Carlson and Engler exclaimed in unison, and Reggie sat down, looking gloomy.

“It was crazy,” Carlson muttered. “You could have been killed, Meg. Why not just put your application in and see if—” Abruptly, he stopped. Frowning, he blew his cheeks out, looking at her sadly. “Oh. Bobby.”

“My brother died in the field,” Meg said with quiet intensity, “and I want to know why.”

“Meg…” Engler lifted his hand, then let it fall to his side again. “Damn it, Meg, we’ve been over this a hundred times.”

She lifted her chin slightly. “And like I’ve said a hundred times, Adam, I don’t believe that Bobby got sloppy. That he lost his edge and it got him killed. Something happened out there that night.”

“I was on Bobby’s team,” Engler reminded her gently. “Nothing happened that night that wasn’t in my report. And I’ve been over it and over it with you.”

“Except you weren’t with him the night it happened.” Meg looked at him evenly. “He was set up, Adam. I know that as certainly as I know you don’t want to believe it. Bobby was a good field agent. He told me that he suspected someone on the team was dirty and you’ve admitted he talked to you about it!”

“And I told him he was wrong,” Engler said gently. “Meg, your brother had been working deep under cover for almost six months. Things…happen to a man who’s been out of touch with the real world for that long. He’s so used to suspecting everyone he’s working with that he starts to see conspiracies and threats around every corner.”

“Bobby was the most grounded, real person I’ve ever known. He was not imagining things!”

“Meg, I don’t know what happened to Bobby that night, but it was no double cross. No one blew his cover. I’m sorry he’s dead—he was a good agent and a friend of mine. But O’Dell’s closed the case down because there’s no evidence to keep it open. Good men die stupid deaths, Meg. I’m sorry, but it happens.”

“Not to my brother, it didn’t,” she said with quiet intensity.

Engler started to say something, then thought better of it and subsided, frowning.

“He was double-crossed,” Meg said savagely. “By one of our agents. Then he was murdered to keep him quiet. O’Dell won’t investigate because he doesn’t believe me, but I darn well intend to find out who killed Bobby if it’s the last thing I ever do. And if O’Dell won’t make me a full field agent, then I’ll quit and do it on my own!”

Engler exchanged a quick look with Carlson, and Meg bit back an angry oath, knowing they were thinking the same thing everyone else at the Agency thought. Word had it that Bobby had slipped up and gotten himself and another agent killed, and that she couldn’t accept the truth. That she’d come up with this preposterous idea that it had been another agent who had double-crossed and ambushed Bobby and his partner. Conspiracy plot, they called it behind her back, smiling knowingly amongst themselves. Even O’Dell was tired of listening to her.

She shook her head angrily and stalked across to the bed, starting to shove her things willy-nilly into her small suitcase. “Reg, saddle up! We’re leaving.” She shot Engler a cool look. “I presume you two are here to escort Reg and me back to Washington.”

“Well, actually, Matt’s going to take Reg to Washington.” Engler managed to look mildly embarrassed. “My orders are to escort you back to Virginia ASAP. From this room to O’Dell’s office, no stops between.”

“I’m not going back to Virginia until I know Reg is safe. I gave my word.”

“No problem. There’s an Agency jet sitting on the tarmac out at the airport with its engines hot and two more agents aboard for backup. I’ll let you walk on and buckle him in, if you like.”

“How are you and I getting back?”

“Military chopper.” Engler smiled slightly. “O’Dell’s private stock. You’re getting the royal treatment.”

“O’Dell’s little joke, giving me the royal treatment to my own firing squad.” Meg mustered up a rough smile. She looked at Rafe for a moment, then walked across and held out her hand. “Well, Mr. Blackhorse, it’s been…instructional. I won’t say it’s been a pleasure, exactly, but I appreciate your help. And I’m sorry about your…arrangement with the other party. Give him my regrets, will you?”

To her surprise, Rafe actually smiled. His hand folded around hers, warm and incredibly gentle. “It has been a pleasure, Special Agent Mary Margaret Kavanagh. Like I said, you’re one of a kind.”

“CIR Specialist Mary Margaret Kavanagh,” Meg said with a sigh. “And I meant what I said about appreciating your help, even if it wasn’t exactly what you intended. I’ll keep all your advice in mind. In case I ever need it again. You ought to think about billing O’Dell for your in-field training services.”

His fingers tightened slightly, encasing hers in gentle warmth. “You take care of yourself, Agent Kavanagh.”

Then he drew his hand from hers slowly, letting his fingers linger on hers for a moment before releasing them completely.

She nodded again, then just smiled and gathered up her suitcase, glancing around the room to make sure she had everything. Carlson was helping Reggie get his things together in the other room, and she could hear them squabbling already.

She walked outside with Engler, taking a deep breath of night air.

“Hey. You. Engler.”

Rafe’s voice caught Engler just as he was opening the door of his rental car for Meg. He stiffened and Meg saw his hand move fractionally toward his weapon.

She looked around sharply. Rafe was just standing there, tall and calm-eyed in the moonlight, hands loose at his sides.

Engler turned slowly. “What?”

“Tell O’Dell she did just fine out here. Handled herself better than most men I’ve seen with twice the training.”

Engler looked as surprised as Meg felt. She stared at Rafe in amazement.

“She stayed one step ahead of me for almost a week, and when I did catch up to her, she drew down on me like an old-timer, cool as water. Tell him that.”

“Yeah, okay.” Engler looked at Meg with renewed respect. “I’ll tell him that.”

Rafe nodded, then touched his forehead in a lazy salute, his eyes holding Meg’s. “S’long, Irish.”

“I…yeah…” she stammered, feeling suddenly flustered for no reason. His gaze was as warmly intimate as a caress, as though they’d been sharing a lot more than barbed threats half the night, and she sensed more than saw Engler look at her curiously. “I, um…so…long.”

“Well, if that doesn’t beat everything.” Carlson had joined them in time to hear the whole exchange and was standing there with his mouth open, watching Rafe stride away. “Meg, you just got a five-star recommendation from a legend! Man, wait’ll O’Dell hears about this!”

Chapter 4

Mary Margaret Kavanagh was still on his mind three weeks later.

And Rafe was not happy about it.

It was irritating as hell to be thinking about her at all, for a start. But to have her on his mind here, up on Bear Mountain, really ticked him off.

Until now, he’d managed to keep the outside world from intruding up here. His fortress from reality, his sister had called it. She’d used a lot of phrases like that once, shouting them at him as though trying to pierce armorplate with words. But it wasn’t a fortress, just a quiet retreat from the clamor and clang of a world that seemed increasingly irrelevant.

Up here there was nothing but him and the sky and the wind and the mountain itself, its granite roots planted deep in the planet’s heart. It was silent, save for the moan of the wind and the occasional scream of an eagle, and as clean as bone, scoured by that ever-present wind.

Everything was reduced to its simplest form, all softness and artifice and weakness gone until only the core remained. Even the stunted trees had been stripped of nonessentials until they were more like polished stone than living things, gray and hard and elemental, all but unkillable. Tree-thing at its most fundamental level, like the rock and the sky.

Like him.

It had saved him, this mountain. Like the rocks and the twisted trees, he’d been scoured down to his most elemental self until all that was left was hard and pure. He’d come up here almost two years ago intending to kill himself. Eight months before, he’d drunk himself into a stupor and had stayed that way, trying to blot out the memories. But it had never worked. And finally, too exhausted by guilt and pain to go on, he’d decided to stop even trying.

He’d had some plan, he supposed, although he’d never been able to remember it. Later, he’d found the unloaded pistol where it had dropped from his bourbon-numbed fingers, so maybe that had been it. Whatever he’d planned, he’d managed to screw it up, too drunk to put thought into action. Instead, he’d fallen into a pile of boulders near the summit and had lain there for days, drifting in and out of consciousness, soaked by rain and heavy dew at night, burned dry by an unforgiving sun during the day.

He still had no idea how long he’d lain there. Long enough to kill most men, he suspected. Long enough to kill him had he not been so pickled in bourbon. He remembered licking dew from stone, the taste bitter in his mouth. Remembered waking once and seeing clumps of blueberries hanging just above him, growing where no blueberries grew. Knowing they were nothing more than a hallucination, he reached up with fingers that seemed unattached to his body and picked them and ate them, the juice as sweet as wine. Remembered finding apples. Like the blueberries, they were out of place and out of time—it was spring, not fall, and there wasn’t an apple tree for a hundred miles in any direction. But, hallucination or not, he ate them and they were sweet.

He remembered watching the slow spiral of an eagle as it hung in an updraft a hundred feet above him, giant wings unmoving. He talked to it; he remembered that, too. Babbling things he’d never spoken aloud before, shouting his rage to the sky. He remembered screaming threats to God and man alike. Remembered retching dryly for hour after hour, stomach cramping so painfully he could hardly breathe as the wind and sun worked eight months of cheap booze from his system. Remembered weeping finally, exhausted and empty and at the end.

He’d simply let go then, he remembered. Content to lie there and drift into a final sleep, relinquishing control to whatever forces had kept him alive that far. Something had been there, with him, at the end. Real but not real, just a presence half-seen, a Spirit Warrior keeping silent, still watch. And thus watched, he’d slept finally, slipping down into that kind of deep, dreamless renewing sleep that had eluded him for the better part of a year.

He’d awakened just before dawn, chilled to the bone, and had sat up slowly, sober for the first time in months. Everything was still, the crystalline air so pure and cold it hurt to breathe. The sky was the color of skim milk, still dotted by stars and streaked with peach in the east, and he had sat there, shivering uncontrollably, and had realized with surprise that he was alive. Purified inside and out by wind and rain and sun, as smoothed and polished and hard as an obsidian blade.

The sun had risen, warming him a little, and he’d gotten unsteadily to his feet, feeling as delicate and untethered as a cloud, and had stumbled light-headed and shivering down to the trailer. He had no idea where the key was—he’d locked it up after Stephanie had been killed and had never been back—so he just pried the door open and rummaged around until he found some clean, dry clothes. Then he’d gone up to the spring, stripped naked and dived into the icy water, coming up sputtering and breathless and shocked fully awake.

He’d gathered his old clothes up into a pile and burned them, then had cut his hair and burned that, too. He’d made it a ceremony of sorts, tossing a little tobacco into the flames to thank whatever spirits had held him back from dying, smiling at his own whimsy.

His pickup truck was still in a ditch about a mile down the trail where he’d run it into a tree. He’d winched it out, driven it up to the small meadow where the trailer was and cleaned it up, tossing out the empty bottles and then scrubbing out the stink of vomit and stale sweat and despair.

He’d started running the next day. It had nearly killed him at first. He would run twenty feet and stagger the next twenty, pouring with sweat and cursing with the pain as every muscle in his body knotted. But after a week or two the twenty feet stretched to fifty, then a hundred, and then he suddenly broke through and was running like a deer. He ran without thought or purpose those first few months, just pounding down the miles like someone trying to outrun his own demons, and maybe that was what he had been doing.

The healing started sometime during those months. His mind became as lean and healthy as his body, and soon he’d found himself thinking of the future again. Not long-range. Just a day or two at first. But, as with his physical endurance, that got stronger with time and practice, as well. Soon he was planning a whole week ahead, then the week stretched to a month, and somewhere along the line, without even realizing when it had happened, he was thinking in terms of years.

But until now, those thoughts had been solitary ones. Simple things, mostly, like what kind of water pump to buy when he realized the old one was finally beyond repair, and the best direction to angle the woodshed to keep the snow from blowing straight in, things like that. Now and again he would take on a retrieval job, adding his fee to the pile of fifty-dollar bills hidden behind the paneling in his bedroom closet, but mostly he stayed to himself up here.

There was always something to do. Repairing leaks in the trailer’s sunbaked hide alone was almost a full-time job, the generator needed regular tune-ups, and there were books to read and wood to chop. It was a simple life, physical and free of the complexities and confusions and complications of the outside world, and he liked it just fine that way.

Until Mary Margaret Kavanagh had starting turning up in his thoughts for no reason he could figure, and suddenly things weren’t the same at all.

Swearing under his breath, Rafe turned the key in the truck’s ignition. The engine caught instantly and he gunned it a few times, listening carefully. He’d spent the better part of the morning tuning it up and was finally pleased with the way it sounded, although there had been nothing much wrong with it in the first place. He’d blown out the fuel line, replaced a couple of hoses and put in new spark plugs, and short of stripping the thing down to basics and starting all over again, there wasn’t much more he could do.

Filling time. Trying not to think of her.

He refused to let his mind wrap itself around the syllables of her name. He’d been doing that a little too often, too. Her name was like a line of poetry or a bit of music he couldn’t get out of his head, and now and again he would realize he’d been running it over and over in his thoughts like some tribal chant, the rhythm of the words almost hypnotic.

Mary Margaret Kavanagh.

Hell of a mouthful. Maybe her parents had hoped she would grow into it.

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