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“Where’s the device?” Joshua asked.
“Under the small of my back. He said it was a land mine and that if I moved it would kill me.”
“He?”
“The man who tied me up and left me here. He didn’t tell me anything except about the land mine. I didn’t see much of his face, just that it was scarred. But he stunk like he smoked six packs a day. He had a partner with missing teeth, by the sound of it. They weren’t exactly chatty.”
“Did you happen to see what the device looked like?”
“No, but it’s round and about the size of a bagel. So, like an antipersonnel mine. Too small to be an antitank mine and definitely too flat be a bounding mine. It clicked.”
His jaw dropped. “How do you know so much about mines?”
“I’m a fact-checker. I know a little bit about a whole lot of things.”
He nodded slowly, like he was absorbing everything she was telling him. His lips moved in what looked like silent prayer. The wind was picking up, tossing the ends of her hair and ruffling her clothes.
“It’ll probably take the police over an hour to get here. Even then they might not be able to disarm the explosive, only detonate it.” There was a deeper, stronger timbre to his voice now, like a commanding officer preparing his troops for battle. “So, here’s what we are going to do. First, I’m going to, very slowly and very carefully, cut the ribbons holding both your hands and your feet—”
“Ribbons?” She’d been able to tell her abductor had tied her feet with something red. But still a shiver of horror slid down her spine at the thought of someone tying her up like a Christmas present.
“Ribbons,” Joshua confirmed. “Now, again, I’m going to cut them off and you’re going to help by staying very still and not moving, which might be hard considering your instinct’s going to be to stretch.”
“Got it. I won’t move.”
She felt the knife brush along her calves. She stayed as still as she could, but even so she could feel the pressure in her ankles shift the moment he cut them free. Then he moved up to her hands. His fingers held hers gently as the knife sliced. Then the bonds fell away. The digging pain disappeared from her wrists. Gently he slid both of his hands over hers and rubbed warmth and life back into her fingers. She almost whimpered with relief.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going to slide my hand underneath your back, nice and slowly, until I feel the land mine. Then, I’m going to hold the detonator down. When I do that, I’m going to shout ‘go,’ and then I need you to roll down the stairs as fast as you can. Don’t try to stand up. Just roll.” He slid off his jacket and threw it down into the snow. Then he took off his gloves and tossed them after it. “You can put those on when you get there. You’ll be needing the warmth. Now, you ready?”
She nodded. “As ready as I’m going to be.”
He squeezed the tips of her fingers and whispered another prayer under his breath. Then he slid his hand underneath her torso. She felt his hands feeling their way along the curve of her back. Slowly, gently, he worked his fingers in between her body and the metal casing.
“Okay, I’ve got it. When I say ‘go’, you’re going to roll down those stairs right here, down to the ground. No hesitation. No thinking. Just roll. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Go.”
She rolled down the stairs, her body beating hard on the frozen wood, expecting at any moment to feel the searing heat of an explosion consuming her body.
She landed on her face in the snow, pulled herself up, and looked back at her rescuer.
Joshua was kneeling on the porch, both hands pressed against the small land mine, in a position almost like CPR. Faint morning sun fell from above, onto his head and shoulders. He had a strong nose and a tender mouth. Even through the folds of a dark fleece she could see the broad cut of his shoulders. The faint scruff of day-old shadow brushed the lines of his jaw.
She slid on his jacket and gloves and felt the residual warmth fill her limbs.
“Now run,” he said. “Get as far away from here as you can. You won’t get a cell signal anywhere on this road, but if you turn left you’ll reach civilization eventually. To be totally honest, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to defuse this thing. If I do, I’ll come find you.”
She hesitated. So he’d had no actual plan other than taking her place and substituting her life with his?
An engine roared from beyond the trees. From inside the house, she could hear the dog barking again, and only then realized it had ever stopped. Someone was coming.
“Samantha!” Joshua’s voice sounded clear and commanding. “Get out of here. Now!”
Headlights shone through the trees, then flashed across her face.
She ran.
* * *
The glare of approaching headlights filled Joshua’s view. As much as he hoped it wasn’t a foe, he hated the idea of putting any friend in the situation he’d found himself in. Samantha had disappeared into the shadows and he couldn’t see where she’d gone. He looked down at the small land mine he was now keeping depressed with both hands at once. He’d seen this kind before. Round and beige, his buddies in ordnance disposal said there were thousands of them still littered over the world’s abandoned battlefields. Not that he ever expected to find one in Canada. Or be in the situation he was now.
Whoever Samantha is, she knows her land mines.
A truck pulled down the driveway. The engine cut and doors slammed.
The headlights faded slowly, as a lightly bearded man started down the driveway, with the kind of smooth, confident walk Joshua had secretly spent a good chunk of his teen years trying to copy.
Thank You, God! A prayer filled his heart. Alex and Zoe were back. Alexander Fletcher had been Joshua’s best friend since kindergarten. While Joshua had been overseas serving his country, Alex had tried studying first to be a doctor, then quit to become a paramedic, before dabbling with the idea of a career in law enforcement and spending a few years teaching high school math and gym. He was the smartest man Joshua had ever met, even if Alex had spent years going through life like a boat searching for its anchor. But he’d finally taken up Daniel’s offer of moving to rural Ontario to help him start up Ash Private Security.
Alex was one in a million. And there wasn’t a single person on earth Joshua knew more about, which just might save them now.
“Code yellow jacket,” Joshua shouted. “Big, huge, code yellow jacket.”
It was their own private in joke, which they’d used to warn each other of serious trouble ever since a teenaged Alex crashed Joshua’s first truck when a wasp flew in the window.
Alex froze. “Zoe, stay back.” His arms shot out to keep her from coming any closer, looking like an umpire calling a runner in safe. “Josh? Where are you? What’s going on?”
“On the porch. Holding a live land mine.”
“And you went with ‘code yellow jacket’?”
“Figured you were more scared of wasps than explosives.” Nothing like a friend you could joke with when you were one wrong move away from death. “It’s pressure sensitive. Small blast radius. I’m leaning into the detonator right now, keeping it down. If I let go, it explodes.”
“Okay.” Even in the pale morning light he could tell Alex’s face had gone white. “Zoe, we got a situation.”
“Tell me what you need.” Zoe leaped out of the vehicle. She was tiny, barely four foot eleven, with the kind of sharp, single-minded focus her stepbrother had occasionally lacked. Her chin-length hair was currently black with a few streaks of red. A world-class athlete in both gymnastics and mixed martial arts, Alex’s sister had been Daniel’s second private security recruit. It was her dog, Oz, who’d been barking just moments ago. Couldn’t hear the pup now.
“All right,” Joshua said. “Zoe, open the kitchen door, get Oz out of here, drive until you get a cell phone signal and call the police. Tell them we’ve got a live land mine. If you run into a beautiful blonde woman wearing my leather jacket, her name is Samantha. I think she needs help, but I don’t necessarily trust her and you probably shouldn’t either.”
He could feel his teeth grind at the very thought of warning them against Samantha. But what did he know about her really? Nothing. Except that she’d appeared on his friend’s porch tied up tight with an explosive underneath her. And after witnessing too many foolish men implode both their military careers and personal lives over meaningless war-zone infatuations, Joshua had learned there was a whole lot of truth to Gramps’s warning against trusting any attraction sparked in a moment of crisis.
Zoe didn’t even pause, she just ran for the side of the house. Alex started quickly but carefully toward the steps. “And what do you want me to do?” Alex asked.
“Find something we can replace my weight with. Something big and heavy. It’s a pressure trigger and it’s armed, so if I let go of it something else needs to take my place.”
“Should I ask who this beautiful blonde is and how you got into this mess?”
“I don’t know who Samantha is,” Joshua said. “I just found her here on the porch, freezing cold and tied up on top of a land mine. She said she was a fact-checker. And yeah, she’s staggeringly attractive—unbelievably so—like the kind of woman you don’t just run into in real life. So if there’s any chance I’m dreaming, now would be a really great time to pinch me.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Didn’t think so. Anyway, whoever Samantha is, she’s lost, she’s in trouble and she’s absolutely terrified of whoever left her here.”
Oz shot past. The dog tore down the driveway. Seconds later, Zoe and Samantha came back around the corner of the house, dragging a bag of cement between them.
“I take it that’s her?” Alex’s eyebrow rose.
“Yeah, but I told her to run.”
“Hey, I’m Alex.” He ran toward them and grabbed the middle of the bag, sharing the load. “I see you’ve met my sister, Zoe.”
“I did.” Her voice strained under the weight. “I’m Samantha. Hope you don’t mind but I let the dog out. Sounded pretty frantic. Found this by the garage. Thought you could use it to counter the pressure on the land mine.”
Joshua didn’t know if he was more relieved, impressed or amazed by her plan. Not that he exactly liked the idea of her doing the exact opposite of what he’d just told her to do to save her own life. But she was quick-thinking. And brave. He had to give her that.
Slowly, Samantha, Zoe and Alex hauled the cement up to the bottom of the steps, then started climbing up toward him. They reached the top step and he directed them until they were holding the bag right over his hands. Then they lowered it, inch by inch, until the weight rested on top of his fingers, pressing them deeper into the trigger. He took in a sharp, painful breath.
“Now, you all go. Run. I’m going to inch my fingers out of here and we’ll all pray it doesn’t blow.”
The three of them ran back down the steps. Alex and Zoe made it almost as far as the truck before stopping. But Samantha stopped in a faint pool of light at the bottom of the stairs.
“Samantha, please.” His eyes searched her face.
“You just saved my life. I didn’t hear one quiver of doubt from you when you were doing this for me. Your nerves were rock steady.”
Yeah, but that’s only because I was so totally focused on saving you I blocked out the danger that I was in.
“So, logically you’ll be safer if I stay,” she went on. “Just do what you did with me, only do it in reverse and don’t blow up. I believe in you.”
He inched his fingers out slowly, one by one, feeling the weight of the unmixed concrete sliding in to take their place. First one hand, then the other slid out until the bag of cement lay across the porch in front of him where Samantha’s body had been just moments ago.
He let out a long breath and slid his gun back into his holster. Then he stood up and carefully inched his way around the bag. He could hear Alex clapping but didn’t look at him. Instead, his eyes locked on where Samantha was still standing at the bottom of the stairs. A smile of relief crossed her lips.
“I told you to run,” he said.
“I told you to run first.”
“That’s not exactly the same thing.”
I’m a professional soldier. It’s my job to save people. And you’re just whatever “fact-checker” is.
He took another step. The porch creaked.
The bag of cement shifted behind him.
The land mine detonated.
THREE
An explosion shook the frozen air. Smoke and flame billowed upward, filling Samantha’s view. For a moment she felt rooted in place as if time had frozen around her.
Then she saw Joshua, leaping between her and the flames. He caught her in his arms and pushed her down to the ground. They landed in the snow, his body sheltering hers. Her head tucked into his neck. Debris rained down around them. The world seemed to roar with the sound of glass shattering and wood splintering.
Then the world stopped shaking and all Samantha could hear was the steady beat of Joshua’s heart and his ragged breath inches from her face.
“You okay?” he asked. His voice was gruff, but soft. He slid off her into the snow.
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah.” He stood slowly, reached for her hand and helped her to her feet.
“Everyone okay?” Alex called. He and Zoe were running toward them.
“Yes.” Joshua let go of her hand. “Thankfully the land mine wasn’t that strong. Though I’ll have to have a word with Daniel about reinforcing his windows if he wants to convert this place into a safe house.”
Both men smiled at his weak attempt at a joke, but she could see the worry filling their eyes. A hole lay on the porch in the place where her body had been. Judging by the mass of broken glass, the land mine had launched the cement bag through the front window. A high-pitched alarm was ringing from somewhere inside the house.
“I’ll go sort out the alarm.” Zoe ran toward the back.
“Make sure the police are called, if the alarm doesn’t do that automatically,” Joshua called after her, realizing as he said it she was probably already thinking two steps ahead of him.
Alex’s eyes ran from Joshua to Samantha and back again. “I’m going to go see if I can find something to tape the window up with until we can get some new glass installed.”
He disappeared after his sister. The alarm stopped. Joshua and Samantha walked around the side of the house. Rays of winter sunlight stretched across the snow around them. They stepped through the back door and into a warm welcoming kitchen. Even the shattered window on the other side of the house couldn’t dampen its hominess—and its heat.
The clock over the stove read eight fifteen. The smell of fresh bread and unbrewed coffee grounds filled the room. She slid off his jacket and gloves. “Thank you for these. I hope you’re not frozen.”
“I’m fine. There was enough adrenaline to keep me plenty warm.” Joshua kicked off his boots and brushed the snow from his hair. It was light brown, the color of maple syrup, short on the sides as she’d expect of a soldier, but just long enough on top for someone to run their fingers through. The eyes that now searched her face were the same hazel-green as a forest pond. Muscles rippled through his shirt. But somehow they didn’t make him look hard, only strong. An old-fashioned coffeemaker stood on the counter. He filled it with water. “I was going to make myself coffee. But would you rather have tea or something like that? There’s a whole box of different colored ones around somewhere. Also, there’s fresh banana bread. I threw it in the bread maker last night.”
“Coffee is perfect, thank you.” A slight smile crossed her lips. “Your mother raised you well.”
“Nope.” His smile grew tight. “Grew up in an all-bachelor home with just my gramps and dad. But they taught me well enough.”
Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, like she should apologize. But before she could even start to figure out what to say, he kept talking.
“The closest hospital and police station are over an hour away.” He leaned back against the counter and slid his hands into his pockets. “But Alex used to be a paramedic and Zoe’s probably giving the police directions on how to get here as we speak. Now, you said you have no idea what happened or what you’re doing here?”
“That’s right,” she said. “I’m a journalist from Toronto. My job is researching and fact-checking mostly. Making sure those hotshot Torchlight reporters can actually back up what they’re writing about with cold hard facts. I was heading into work this morning to grab a tablet when I was abducted. But I don’t remember what happened exactly and I don’t know what whoever did this to me wanted.”
Light dawned behind his eyes and with it came an almost reflexive grin that warmed something inside her.
“If you’re a reporter,” he asked, “does that mean you work with Olivia Ash?”
“Yes! Olivia is my editor at Torchlight.”
“This is her country house.” His eyes grew wider. “My friend is her husband.”
No doubt she’d feel terrified later about what that could mean about the motives of the men who’d kidnapped her. Right now, she was just too relieved to discover she was in the home of someone she already knew and trusted.
“They’re staying at their apartment in the city until the baby’s a little bigger and the roads improve,” he added. “Which you probably know given you work together. I’m just thankful that I was here, and the house wasn’t empty.”
She dropped into a chair as the sudden joy she’d been feeling evaporated just as quickly. “Yeah, me too.”
“So, I’m guessing whoever did this to you wanted to get your boss’s attention and didn’t know Olivia wouldn’t be here. Did she have you working on anything dangerous?”
“I see pretty much every story before it goes to the press,” she said, “and I fact-check all the big ones. I’m like the factual safety net for our front-line reporters. It’s my job to comb through each article and circle every fact with a red pen that a reader might question, just to make sure our backs are covered. Of course, our reporters write about everything. But in my job, almost everything I work on involves something criminal. I even built what they call an ‘intranet’ database, called ATHENA, that pulls all of our stories and background research together in one place on our online server, where only Torchlight reporters can see it. It even includes pointers on understanding human behavior, criminal pathology and body language to help reporters figure out whether or not the people they’re interviewing are telling the truth. It’s like a simplified version of the ways police detectives learn to analyze criminal traits.”
But what would police make of her inability to remember how she’d even gotten there? She couldn’t remember a single thing about how or where they’d grabbed her.
It had been the same back in college when that guy from her floor had broken in. She’d barely remembered anything afterwards. And while they’d eventually caught the culprit and he’d admitted to being high at the time, thanks to her faulty memory they’d only given him a slap on the wrist. She’d been forced to switch schools and start over.
Then, the nightmares had started.
Joshua pulled his right hand out of his pocket. There was something gold and glittering between his fingers. It was a ribbon. And with a start she realized it must’ve been the same one that her abductor had gagged her with. He looked at it carefully, holding it by the very edges.
“If you were on your way to work, it’s entirely possible they were after any Torchlight staff they could get their hands on, and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “But it’s also entirely possible this has nothing to do with the newspaper you work for and someone tried to abduct you for a completely different reason. Does this mean anything to you?”
He laid the ribbon over the table in front of her and for the first time she saw blurred streaks of what looked like Magic Marker. Between the snow and the struggle whatever had been written on the ribbon was smudged beyond recognition, except for the last two words:
always,
Magpie.
His eyebrow rose. He didn’t even have to ask the question.
“I have never heard of Magpie.” She could feel her lower lip quivering but it was more from frustration than fear. She should know. If there was someone out there upset enough at Torchlight’s reporting to abduct and threaten one of their journalists, she was exactly the one person who should already have a whole file of stories and research on them in the ATHENA database. “I have no idea who or what that is.”
“Neither have I,” he said. “Someone twisted enough to kidnap a woman and plant a land mine under her doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere. Is there anyone else you can think of who’d want to hurt you? Work situation? Family? Relationships?”
“My parents are retired and live in Montreal. They’re pretty awesome people and I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to hurt them.” Tension pulled along her shoulder blades. She could tell he was probably trying to help but sorting out her own mind was hard enough without having someone firing questions at her. “Work is great, really. I’m probably what some people would call workaholic, but to me that’s a good thing.”
“A land mine is a very specific weapon,” he said, “and using the Christmas ribbon was very specific, as well. Someone was clearly trying to send a message. Any other problematic relationships?”
“No. No relationship problems.” Unless someone counted the fact she got completely tongue-tied every time she tried to explain to Eric that she just wasn’t hotwired to spend that much time with an enthusiastic extrovert. “Really, I’m just a happy, quiet workaholic with no enemies.”
Except the dangerous and unknown Magpie. Why don’t I know who that is?
There was a knock on the door frame. She turned. It was Alex. He glanced down at the ribbon warning lying on the table. “Sorry to interrupt. Zoe got through to the police. They’ve asked us all to stay put and to please try to keep from talking to each other about what happened until we’ve all been interviewed separately by police. I’m guessing they don’t want us colluding on one version of events or getting our stories muddied. Even accidentally.”
Yeah, that was pretty standard for police investigations.
“Thank you,” she said, finding the words totally inadequate for the situation.
“We’ve figured out Samantha’s connection to the Ashes,” Joshua said. “Samantha works for Olivia at Torchlight News. We should call Daniel and Olivia too and let them know what’s going on.”
“Good idea.” Alex sat down beside Samantha. “How are you feeling?”
“Bit shaken, but not bad. Thankfully, I wasn’t out in the cold that long before Joshua found me.”
“Can you hold out your hands for me?” Alex carefully checked her hands for frostbite. Then he slid a small flashlight out of his pocket and checked her eyes. “Any headache? Nausea?”
“No.”
Alex ran one finger slowly back and forth a few inches in front of her eyes. She followed it with her gaze. “Stomach upset? Double vision?”
“No. I’m rattled, obviously, but physically I feel fine.”
“How’s your memory?” Joshua asked. “Any short-term amnesia? Memory gaps?”
Her brain froze as she turned to look at him. Why had he asked that? Those hazel-green eyes were focused intensely onto hers. A dozen thoughts cascaded through her mind that she couldn’t figure out how exactly to turn into words.
Yes, I’m having memory gaps. Everything between the moment I realized I’d forgotten my gloves and almost arriving here in the van is a blur. It’s frustrating. It’s terrifying. The same thing happened years ago, after someone broke into my dorm room, and it was like I could only remember it in the nightmares which plagued me for months.
She broke his gaze and look down at the table. “Yes, and I know we shouldn’t talk about the details of how I was abducted or anything that’s happened until the police have questioned us. But I won’t lie. My memory is really patchy. Like I said, I don’t know how I got here.”