Deadly Mountain Rescue by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-12-14T14:58:55+00:00

* * *

Mac and Stacy were in the safe house by late afternoon. They’d driven a department-owned unmarked tan sedan with a private vehicle escort in front of and behind them.

Mac took the front bedroom, wanting to be between the only entrance and Stacy. He tested all four of the window locks, making certain that, if necessary, he and Stacy could exit through them. And tested the electric wire around the casings that would alert them if anyone tried to breach the openings, making sure all of them were on and working properly.

He didn’t unpack.

Stacy had set up a portable whiteboard. Was filling it in based on a picture of the original she’d shot with her phone before leaving the conference room.

Right after they’d had confirmation that there were signs of someone having been up in the paloverde tree Stacy had shot at late that morning. Not only had officers found her bullet wedged lower in the trunk, there’d also been broken twigs right where she’d said she’d seen the glint. And a partial toe print in a clod of loose dirt on the hard, rock-strewn desert ground at the base of the tree.

Didn’t mean it was Manning, or anyone working for him. But it did validate her response.

They’d heard on the drive out to the house that the white van had been pulled up the mountain. The entire front end had been smashed like a pancake to the back seat, making any kind of sticker discovery in the strewn shards of glass like looking for a needle in a haystack. There’d been no sign of a body inside. No blood. And no discernible fingerprints. It was being sent to the Sierra’s Web lab for further testing.

The drone hadn’t been caught on any radar, or security cameras—which wasn’t a surprise. But Mac had hoped they’d be able to at least figure out its launch site. Something to give them a starting place. He wasn’t about to just sit around and wait for Manning to come to them—though he agreed that it was a good backup plan.

The Sierra’s Web forensics team had been able to narrow down the methane canisters to having been sold in two-packs by a chain of national stores. Sierra’s Web was in the process of contacting the store’s East Coast headquarters to get hundreds of stores with surveillance footage.

Baby steps. He needed leaps and bounds.

As he came out to join Stacy in what they’d set up as their conference room—by moving the kitchen table into the middle of the living space and shoving couch and chairs up against walls—he noticed her cupping her forearm as she brought it down from the board.

“You should have let them stitch you up,” he told her. Other than the first glimpse, he hadn’t seen the wound she’d sustained that morning. She’d been tended to by paramedics called to the scene of the drone-induced explosion, and by the time she’d been back in the vehicle with him, she’d had her stained uniform sleeve back down to her wrist.

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