Going Dark Read online

His mouth was clenched hard enough for the muscle below his jaw to tic. “That bastard is the least of my worries. You are wrong. It is very serious, and you can’t conceive the type of trouble this could bring. I never should have gotten involved. But I—” He stopped suddenly and stared at her. It was almost as if he blamed her. But then the flash of anger cleared, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Annie. But I can’t risk it. As soon as we are somewhere safe, I will do what I can.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Her frustration was getting the better of her. She couldn’t believe he was being so stubborn. Whatever he was involved in must be worse than she realized. First ecoterrorism and murder, and now God knew whatever he was caught up in.

  She didn’t want to be involved with any of it. “Fine. You don’t need to come with me. Just drop me off and go wherever it is you are planning.”

  He gave her that grim sidelong glance she was getting used to. “I can’t take the chance that someone will see us.”

  Seeing his resolve, Annie felt her panic become desperate. “I thought you were joking about Bonnie and Clyde—I don’t want to be on the lam. Running will only make us look guilty.”

  “I suspect you already do.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Think about it,” he explained. “This is an experienced, professional terror organization. They usually operate in cells, which makes them even harder to penetrate. My bet is that all three of them were using false identities, and that they covered their trail in the event something went wrong.” He paused long enough to give her a pointed look. “The charter rental was in your name, wasn’t it?”

  Annie paled, having just had the same thought. She nodded. “As was the room. Julien always paid cash. I noticed it but didn’t think anything of it.”

  She knew a number of students who tried to use mostly cash to keep costs down. It was far easier to charge on a card than hand over big wads of cash. She had actually liked that about him. It made him seem responsible, prudent, and careful.

  “Did Julien ever use your computer?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not that I can think of.”

  “Did he have access to it when you weren’t around?”

  She thought a minute. “When I was in the shower or sleeping. A few times I left for class before he did.”

  “Did he know your password?”

  She bit her lip, embarrassed. “I don’t have a password. It’s my home computer—a desktop. You just have to hit Enter.”

  Every word she said made her feel more like an idiot. She could practically hear him thinking “naive.” But it wasn’t as if there were state secrets on her computer. It was mostly just research backed up to a cloud account. She’d never had any . . . Oh no.

  He read her expression. “What?”

  “I had to cancel a credit card a few weeks before I left. There were a bunch of random Internet charges on it that I didn’t recognize. I assumed my number had been stolen.”

  “Does your computer automatically remember your card number?”

  She nodded, feeling like such a fool. Such a naive fool. “But he would have needed the three-digit code.”

  “Which would take him a few minutes to find on the back of your card when you left your purse around.”

  Oh God, he was right.

  “I suspect some bomb-making supplies were purchased with your card,” Dan said.

  She’d reached the same conclusion on her own. “I was the patsy,” she said, her voice hollow with humiliation.

  “Julien probably hoped it would never come to that.”

  He was obviously trying to make her feel better. Which only made her feel worse.

  Now she didn’t just feel sick; she felt like crying again. What a mess. It was bad enough being tangled up with an ecoterrorist plot, but a murder investigation? “What am I going to do?”

  She hadn’t been expecting Dan to answer, but he did. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it straightened out. But not from jail.”

  “How?”

  He paused. “I have someone who I think can help. As soon as we get somewhere safe, I’ll call. They also may be able to get the police on the right track with Jean Paul.”

  “Is it a lawyer? My stepfather is an attorney. He doesn’t practice law anymore, but he has tons of contacts.”

  Dan gave one of those rare curves of the mouth that she took to be a smile. “It’s not a lawyer. If we need your stepfather, I’ll let you know, all right?”

  She nodded. “Where are we going?”

  He pointed to an island on the map just off the west coast of North Uist. “Here, to wait it out until dark. We are sitting ducks in the daylight like this. We’ll look for a cave or someplace else where we can hide the boat. At least it’s gray and not orange or red.”

  “And then?”

  “As soon as it’s dark we’ll make our way around here”—his finger traced a path around an island called Mingulay at the southern end of the Lewis chain of islands—“to one of the islands in the Inner Hebrides as far south as we can go. We should have enough fuel to reach Tiree.”

  He pointed at a roughly triangular-shaped island due west of the Port of Oban on the mainland. He had great hands. Big and strong with blunted fingertips and enough scars to make her think he probably worked in a shop of some kind. Although a couple of the scars looked like burn marks.

  “Won’t they search there?”

  “Eventually. But there are hundreds of islands in the Hebrides. We could spend months hopping between them, getting lost. It will take a while to check them all, and being this far south should give us some time.”

  He’d obviously given this some thought. “Sounds like you have it all planned out.” She looked down at the bag he had by his feet. “I just hope you have a few more protein bars in there or it’s going to be a long day. I get cranky when I’m hungry.”

  He winced. “I hope you aren’t one of those vegetarians who won’t eat fish.”

  “You’re in luck.” She smiled, which seemed crazy under the circumstances. “I love fish.”

  “Sushi?”

  “My favorite.”

  “Then I guess I know what I’m doing when we get there.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “I guess that means I get to make camp.”

  He grinned and she felt that bump in her heart getting bigger.

  “If it won’t offend your feminist sensibilities.”

  “I think I can manage this once. But if you call me Bambi again, all bets are off.”

  “I didn’t think you heard that,” he said with a laugh, and then gave her a nonapologetic shrug. “It’s your fault for looking at me that way.”

  “Like a stripper?”

  He thought that was hilarious and laughed. “More like I just killed your mother.”

  “You were going to leave me!”

  He sobered, and their eyes met. “I’m glad I didn’t.”

  She knew he was talking about what might have happened to her, but the intensity of his gaze made her wonder if he meant something more.

  “Me, too,” she said softly.

  From the way her chest tightened, she suspected she did.

  Only when his gaze flickered behind her and he swore was the moment lost.

  Sixteen

  Old habits died hard, Colt thought. Rain or shine, the first thing Sunday morning—before coffee or breakfast—Kate went for a long run. With her multimillion-dollar town house in McLean overlooking the Potomac, it wasn’t hard to anticipate her route.

  Colt sat on a bench overlooking the river path and waited. He was tired. His red-eye flight from Los Angeles had landed at Reagan National at six, and he’d come straight here so as not to miss her. She was always out the door by eight. On the rare Sunday that he’d been around to sleep in, he’d grumbled a