But she had also sensed something else. Afterward, as she lay in his arms, she felt a wariness in him that saddened her, a watchfulness as part of him sealed itself off. He still didn’t entirely trust her.
Back in his kitchen she’d made herself a thermos of tea, then, having dressed warmly, grabbed one of the headlamps along with a few other items, switched all the garden tools Mark had selected from his Jeep to her station wagon, and fishtailed out his driveway onto the road.
And here she trudged, having decided to prove herself to him once and for all.
Her frosty breath rose straight up, weaving among the tumbling flakes in the windless night, and the squeaky crunch of her boots on the frozen snow carried in the frosty air. The sound was audible for a long way, which meant she would just as easily hear anyone sneaking around the woods. It reminded her of similar nights in Bosnia, when her medical team had to go out on emergencies, and they knew for sure men with guns were everywhere. Now that had been scary. This felt like a walk in the park. The last thing Braden would expect was for anyone to show up at this hour.
She walked into the clearing and saw the hulking, gray building looming at its center as if waiting for her. It looked exactly the way Mark had described. At least she didn’t have to go inside.
She picked her way through the shrub growth until she reached where it bordered spindly stalks of dormant grass. The perimeter of the lawn he’d talked about, she figured. Walking a few dozen yards farther in, she proceeded to tramp down a twelve-foot square. She then selected a half-moon garden edger from the tools she’d carried with her and sliced the area into six-foot lengths of sod. As she’d expected this time of year, the ground hadn’t frozen yet. Using the blade to pry up the end of one piece, she gave herself a handhold and pulled. It took some additional cutting and slicing, along with a lot of heavy tugging, but she ripped it out more or less intact. Rolling it up and laying it aside, she got to work on the rest. Within half an hour she’d lifted two dozen rolls of turf, exposing moist black earth underneath. Luckily the flakes dissolved on contact with the wet surface.
She fished a rolled-up newspaper from an inside pocket of her jacket and spread it out where she’d first be working, anchoring the corners with clumps of sod. Using the shovel she turned over a strip of soil, then took a garden variety trowel, got down on her knees, and sifted through the dirt, picking up a small trowelful at time, then feeling through it with her fingers over the paper. She figured she wouldn’t have to dig too deep, a couple of feet at most. But it was slow going, and the sweat she’d worked up earlier congealed to her skin, making her all the colder.
She didn’t count on finding anything right away. That would be pressing the laws of chance. But if there were anywhere near 180 tiny corpses buried here, odds were she’d eventually come across at least one set of bones. Not that she needed to find even that these days. In Bosnia they’d been able to detect traces of human DNA in soil samples. And if she wasn’t successful this time, she and Mark could do a little each night, covering up their work with snow so Braden need never know.
Her world narrowed down to the circle of light in which she worked, the tiny sound of her trowel biting into the dirt, and the patter of soil bits falling onto the newspaper as she filtered them through her fingers. She kept her back to the building, preferring to face the forest and the dark opening where the road led off toward the highway. That’d be where anyone following her tracks would appear. She raised her head and sent the beam of her headlamp sweeping through the gloom along the forest’s edge, breathing through her mouth to achieve total silence. Nothing caught her eye in the quiet swirl of the storm, and not a sound reached her ears.
Every fifteen minutes she got up, stamped her feet, and swung her arms in an effort to warm up. The tea helped as well. The first hour passed, and she covered a third of the area she had set out for herself. Not bad, she thought, having no illusions about how long and tedious this kind of work could be.
Then the cold and damp seeped into her marrow, and she took more frequent breaks. By four-thirty she’d covered only half the exposed area. Finishing the last of the tea, she imagined Mark back in bed, cozy and warm. “Bugger,” she muttered, smiling to herself, half-hoping he’d wake up, realize where she’d gone, and come join her. He seemed to be a light sleeper, like herself – the legacy of taking night calls.
She went back down on her knees, but her hands shivered so much she couldn’t grip the trowel properly. As much as she wanted to keep going, she’d have to return to her station wagon and warm up.
She rose to her feet and started to walk briskly away from the building.
After no more than a dozen steps, she heard boots crunching on snow behind her. She spun around and saw four men in gaily colored ski outfits charging toward her. They must have come out of the building. “Hold it right there, asshole!” yelled the one closest to her.
Lucy turned and ran, figuring she had a twenty-yard start. More than enough.
“I said stop!”
She accelerated, high-stepping along the trail she’d made coming in.
A stuttering, dry, coughing noise ripped through the air from behind her, and spurts of snow flew into the air farther up the trail.
Oh, shit!
She pulled up, turned, and raised her arms.
“One shout out of you, and I’ll blow your head off,” said the man in the lead, striding up to her and pointing a gun with the stubby cylinder of a silencer right at her forehead. “You’ve been ambushed, sister!”
The others closed in around her, and she could feel their breath on the back of her neck. She recognized one of them from Braden’s party, where he’d served drinks. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, as if a show of outrage would stop the attack.
A punch from behind hit her right in the kidney. She bellowed and arched backward, only to have someone grab her by the hair. She managed to stay on her feet, watching for an opening to karate kick the one with the gun.
“We told you to keep quiet,” repeated a voice in her ear.
“Search her; find her keys,” said the armed man, stepping back out of reach but keeping the muzzle pointed for a shot between her eyes.
The one holding her hair threw her forward to the ground, shoving her face into the snow. He then knelt on her legs and held her arms as the other two roughly groped in her pockets.
“You’ve been played like a violin, sister,” he said. “All so you and Roper would show up here, looking for baby bones that don’t exist. People will just think you two were off on a wild-goose chase and had a horrible accident!”
What the hell! thought Lucy, looking up to see the muzzle still directed at her head.
“I found her keys,” one of the searchers called out, standing up and dangling them in front of the others. “Remember, when you haul her up to remove the chains, cut off every trace of the tape before you dump her back in, and don’t leave any pieces on the ground.”
He sounded as nonchalant as if he were organizing the cleanup after a picnic. What the hell did he mean?
“Where are you going?” the man with the gun asked. “I thought we were still waiting for Roper.”
“You and I might as well take her car and go get him. He must be asleep back at his house. No way he’d have knowingly let her come here on her own.” They started to walk off together, and he gestured at the other two. “Don’t forget to break the board so it looks as if they went through by accident.”
Oh, God, what did they plan to do?
One of the men holding her produced a gun from inside his coat and grinned as he pointed it at her. “You’re going to get cold, real cold now.” With his free hand he pulled a roll of duct tape out of his pocket and handed it to his partner, who still had her pinned from behind with his knees. She heard him rip off a piece, and he slapped it over her mouth. Night before last he’d handed her a glass of champagne.