Mountain Investigation Read Free

and focused on tracking down more of al-Jihad’s terror cells.
    All that had changed the previous fall, though, when Mawadi, Feyd and al-Jihad had escaped from the ARX Supermax with the help of fellow prisoner Jonah Fairfax. Fairfax had proven to be a deep undercover Fed who’d been charged with flushing out al-Jihad’s contacts within U.S. law enforcement, and had planned to do so by facilitating the escape and then netting all the conspirators when they made their move. But the setup had backfired badly when it turned out that Fairfax’s superior, who had progressively isolated him over the previous two years, had turned, becoming one of al-Jihad’s assets.
    In the end, Fairfax had helped al-Jihad escape, and the only conspirator he’d flushed out was his own boss, code-named Jane Doe, who had vanished in the aftermath of a foiled attack on a local stadium. The Feds and local cops had managed to recapture Muhammad Feyd,but so far he had refused to talk, which left the authorities pretty much chasing their own tails.
    Worse, in the immediate aftermath of the thwarted stadium attack, Gray himself had wound up as a suspect in the conspiracy. Which was just plain stupid.
    Yes, he’d failed to pass along a potentially crucial message, but that wasn’t because he’d been working for al-Jihad. He’d made the decision in a split second of distraction, a moment when his version of justice and the law had clashed and he’d gotten caught up in his own head, stuck in memories. And yeah, maybe there’d been other factors, too, but they were nothing he couldn’t handle. He could—and would—bring the bastards down. No way he was letting the Santa Bombers go free. Not now, not ever. Not after what they’d done.
    The thought brought a flash of memory, of concussion and screams, and the rapid flutter of a dying child’s chest in the sterile confines of an ICU.
    Shaking off the image, Gray forced his mind to focus on the task at hand. Moving silently he worked his way through the thick forest, headed for Mariah Shore’s cabin. He had no orders, no official sanction. Hell, he was on probation. He was supposed to be riding a desk, monitoring transcribed chatter and helping with the tip lines.
    “I’m just out for a hike,” he murmured, keeping his voice very low, even though he hadn’t seen or heard anything to indicate that he had company. “Is it my fault I just happened to wander out of the state park and stumble on her cabin?”
    It wasn’t much as plausible deniability went, but hewas done with waiting around for a break that wasn’t coming. He’d helped jail Lee Mawadi, Muhammad Feyd and al-Jihad in the first place, using slightly less than orthodox methods in his zeal to gain some measure of justice for the victims of the Santa Bombings. He’d do the same thing again, even if it meant the end of his career.
    “Well, well. Will you look at that?” he said, whistling quietly under his breath as the ex-wife’s isolated cabin came into view. He stopped amid the cover of a thick stand of trees and scrubby underbrush, and peered through, scoping out the scene.
    It looked like Mariah had been doing some landscaping.
    Originally, the cabin had been tucked into the woods, with trees very near the structure, shielding it even from satellite view. Now there was a clear-cut swath a good fifty feet in all directions, with raw stumps giving mute testimony to where trees had once stood. In one corner of the lot, a huge pile of cut and split logs sat beside a gas-powered wood splitter. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the cabin’s central chimney, indicating that someone was home, as did the vehicles parked in the side yard. One was the banged-up Jeep Mariah had registered in her name. The other was unfamiliar, a nondescript, dark-blue four-by-four SUV.
    Two cars. Two people, maybe more? Gray thought, tensing further as a quiver of instinct ran through him.
    When he’d asked Mariah Shore point-blank why she’d bought the