Carla Cassidy – Mercenary's Perfect Mission (страница 2)
In an instant, he took in everything. Small and petite, her jeans and blouse appeared dirty and her hair was tangled with bits of leaves and brush caught in the curly length. She held a baby in a sling across her chest and a sharp, pointed stick raised in her hand.
If she thought that puny stick might be used as a weapon against him, she was sadly mistaken. Micah could have that stick out of her hand and broken in half before she ever saw him coming.
As he stepped close enough for her to see him, she looked up and gasped, her green eyes widening in abject terror.
“I won’t tell,” she exclaimed fervently. “Please don’t hurt me. I swear I won’t tell anyone what I saw. Just let me have my other son and we’ll go far away from here. I’ll never speak your name again.” Her voice cracked as she focused on his gun and he realized she believed he was Samuel.
Certainly it was dark enough that anyone could mistake him for his brother. When the brothers were together it was easy to see the subtle differences between them. Micah’s face was slightly thinner, his features more chiseled than those of his brother.
At the moment, Micah knew Samuel kept his hair cut neat and tidy while Micah’s long hair was tied back. He reached up and pulled the rawhide strip, allowing his hair to fall from its binds.
The woman gasped once again. “You aren’t him … but you look like him. Who are you?” Her voice still held fear as she dropped the stick and protectively clutched the baby closer to her chest.
“Who are
“I’m Olivia Conner, and this is my son Sam.” Tears filled her eyes. “I have another son, but he’s still in town. I couldn’t get to him before I ran away. I’ve heard rumors that there was a safe house somewhere, but I’ve been in the woods for two days and I can’t find it.” The tears spilled a little faster. “I need to get someplace safe, where Sam can get something to eat and I can go back into town and get my other son.”
Micah was unmoved by her tears and by her story. He knew how devious his brother could be and Micah would do everything possible to protect the location of the safe house. There was only one way to know for sure if she was one of Samuel’s “Devotees.”
“I need to see your right hip,” he said.
Once again her eyes opened wide, but it was obvious she knew why he’d made the demand. The people closest to Samuel, the people who were a part of his “cult” were all tattooed on their right hip with a letter
She pulled the sling over her neck and placed the baby on the ground where he sat up and gazed at Micah with a drooling grin. Olivia stood, dwarfed by Micah’s six feet two and as she looked up at him, he saw the fear that still simmered in the depths of her eyes.
Her slender fingers trembled as they unfastened her jeans and slipped them down low enough to expose one pale hip. Micah pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it on the area, wanting to be absolutely sure that he didn’t miss any tattoo that would mark her as one of Samuel’s closest followers.
Confident that there was nothing there, he motioned her to refasten her jeans. “You never told me who you are,” she said as she fastened the jeans and then pulled on the sling and the child back against her chest.
“And you never told me exactly how you came to be in the middle of the woods in the dead of the night with only one of your two children,” he countered.
In the light of the moon he saw her eyes darken and fear once again shine from the depths. She hesitated, as if unsure what to tell him, then finally released a weary sigh. “I was on my way to the child care center to pick up my three-year-old son Ethan when I saw something that shocked me … something that frightened me so badly I just ran. Please, I need help. We’re hungry. My baby is hungry.”
Micah knew he was a good judge of character and more than once that quality had saved his life. There was a genuine desperation in her eyes, and that, coupled with the absence of the telltale tattoo, allowed him to put away any misgivings about her credibility.
“What was it that you saw that scared you so bad you ran?” he asked.
She lifted her chin a notch and although her lips trembled slightly there was defiance in her stance as she straightened her shoulders and squared off to him. “I’m not saying anything more until I know who you are and what you intend to do with me.”
“I’m Micah Grayson, Samuel’s brother. I’m here to take him down, but right now I’m going to take you to the safe house. Stay close, move fast and keep quiet.” With these words he turned his back to her and began to move.
Samuel’s brother.
Those words were enough to shoot complete terror through Olivia’s heart. She had no idea if she could trust him or not, but she knew with certainty that she and her baby boy couldn’t survive much more time in the woods all alone without food or water. She hadn’t slept for two days and nights, afraid of each and every sound the forest made as she’d tried to find the safe house and stay hidden from danger at the same time.
At the moment she felt as if she had no other choice but to trust him and so she hurried after him, her heart pounding a million miles a minute.
The only thing that gave her comfort was that he was leading her in a direction deeper into the woods rather than back toward the little town she’d recently escaped.
She cuddled Sam to her chest, hoping he’d fall asleep. He’d been fussy off and on throughout the evening and she knew he was hungry and tired of the sling. She’d managed to stave off some of his hunger pangs over the last couple days with the snacks she always kept stored in her backpack, but earlier that evening she’d given him the last of the crackers and the last sip of juice.
Nights on the mountain weren’t kind at this time of year. Although a September day could be warm and pleasant, the nights turned cold and she hadn’t been prepared or equipped with the supplies or the survival skills she’d needed.
She had to trust Micah because she had no other choice. He was a daunting man, tall and with shoulders the size of a small county. In the moonlight his green eyes had looked icy cold—deadly—but she had run out of options.
He kept up a fast pace, moving through the woods like a shadow as she hurried to keep up with him. As he led her to a narrow crevice in the side of the mountain, she realized that if this really was the way to the safe house she would have never been able to find it on her own.
It felt like they had walked for miles in the narrow crevice where only the faint beam of his flashlight lit the way. He paused as they appeared to be at a dead end and once again her heart banged frantically. Had he brought her here to kill her? Was he really working for his brother or had he told the truth and was working against him?
Despite the appearance of a dead end, he twisted his body into a seemingly invisible space and as she followed, she realized they’d entered a cave tunnel. She could feel a faint breeze on her face and knew the end wasn’t far.
He paused once again, this time to pull a radio from his pocket. “It’s Micah. I’m coming in with two.”
“Copy,” a faint voice replied.
Micah dropped the radio back in his pocket and moved forward. Within moments they had left the cave and entered a small valley. The moonlight was brighter now and she could see a man standing in front of a rocky entrance of a half-hidden cave.
He was armed, but greeted Micah by name. “I told June you’re coming in,” he said.
“Thanks, Jesse.” Micah grabbed her by the elbow, his big hand warm on her skin.
They went through another small narrow passage and that opened into a huge cave that had been transformed into living quarters.
Olivia felt her mouth drop open as she took in her surroundings. It was like entering an alien world with huge ceilings and furnished comfortably with wood, bone, animal skins and whatever else the forest could yield.
“Follow me,” Micah said. “June will probably be in the kitchen area and we have questions for you.”
She had plenty of questions for him, too. She’d expected the rumored safe house to be a little cabin in the woods where people were spirited in and out of the area in the middle of the night.
But, as she heard the sound of laughter coming from someplace in the distance and followed Micah through the huge main room where the scent of something cooking wafted in the air, this place felt more like a thriving community than a pit stop on the way to safety.
Micah led her into a kitchen where the focal point of the room was a huge rough-hewn wooden table above which hung a chandelier fashioned from antlers.
A woman stood at a stove stirring what smelled like some sort of stew. She turned at the sight of them and offered Olivia a tentative smile. “Got the news there were two incoming, didn’t realize it was really one and a half.”