Czytaj książkę: «Identity Unknown»

ONE

“Two guards at the south entrance.” Canada Border Services Agency officer Nathanial Longhorn spoke into the microphone attached to his flak vest.

On the cold December morning, Nathanial stared through the scope on his C7 assault sniper rifle from his perch on the southeast corner of a warehouse overlooking the commercial shipping port of Saint John Harbour, New Brunswick. The overcast sky shadowed the world in a gray haze.

His breath condensed into a white cloud, obscuring his vision in the threatening chill of an impending snowstorm. A whiteout was the last thing his team needed. He prayed the bad weather held off for a few more hours.

“Copy that.” Through Nathanial’s earpiece came the reply from his friend and fellow Integrated Border Enforcement Taskforce team member, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Blake Fallon.

Blake motioned and two members of the team below split off to subdue the guards.

Nathanial kept an alert eye for anything that would impede or jeopardize the IBETs members on the ground as they stealthily made their way down the street to another warehouse a block away.

They were determined to bring down an arms dealer and his network of smugglers who illegally brought small and large weapons across the border between the two countries. The latest intelligence reported a shipment of handguns would be brought into Canada tonight.

The men who made up the IBETs team were from various law enforcement agencies on both sides of the international boundary line between Canada and the United States. Nathanial was proud to be a part of the team and would give his life for each and every one of the other team members regardless of their nationality.

The successful completion of this mission would be a welcome Christmas present, indeed.

He intended to head home to Saskatchewan for a much-needed respite with his family. Though he doubted the visit would be very relaxing. His mother and grandmother would be on him about fulfilling his destiny and settling down to provide grandchildren.

An old sorrow stirred, but he quickly tamped it down.

Despite his grandmother’s certainty that there was a soul mate out there for him, Nathanial was skeptical about love and marriage. He’d come close once with his high school sweetheart, but that relationship had ended in tragedy and heartbreak. He’d decided then going it alone was better than opening himself up to that kind of pain again.

Besides, he liked his bachelor life too much to tie the knot like some of his friends and coworkers. Though Nathanial never lacked for female company, the thought of hearth and home made him want to run screaming into the night.

Being domesticated wasn’t on his agenda. He was over thirty and set in his ways. He liked the freedom of taking off on an assignment at a moment’s notice. He enjoyed the variety of dating different women, always careful to make sure any woman he spent time with knew he wasn’t interested in anything serious or long-term.

Some ladies took that as a challenge to change his mind, and others walked away before they became too attached.

He tolerated the former until he couldn’t and appreciated the latter.

He’d yet to meet a woman who made him want to change his mind. And frankly, he doubted he ever would.

A chill skated over the nape of his neck, drawing his attention to the current assignment. Once the two guards were out of commission, Nathanial did another visual sweep. All appeared clear. Good. He was cold and ready to wrap this up so he could have a cup of hot coffee and warm himself by a roaring fire.

He was about to give the go-ahead to the team when his attention snagged on a gold luxury sedan turning onto the street a few blocks away.

The arms dealer? Or someone in the wrong place at the wrong time? “Hold up.”

He prayed the car kept driving, because if it didn’t, this op was going to become more complicated.

Behind him, the scuff of a shoe on the concrete roof sent his heart hammering. He rolled onto his back, bringing the rifle up, his finger hovering over the trigger. A man loomed over him. Confusion and panic vied for dominance. Then the butt of an automatic submachine gun rammed into his skull.

And the world went dark.

* * *

Deputy Sheriff Audrey Martin sang along with the Christmas carol playing on the patrol car radio. The first fingers of dawn rose over the horizon. From her spot parked on a rise overlooking the small fishing village she’d been born in, she surveyed the streets and buildings of the township of Calico Bay, Maine, dusted in white.

This early-morning patrol was her favorite time, especially in winter. Gone were the summer windjammers and tour boats from the harbor. Now only the commercial fishing vessels and tugboats remained, most of which were already out to sea, while everyone else stayed snug in their beds. The population of the town receded to those whose lives began and ended here. Fishermen who made their living off the ocean, always hunting for a good day’s catch, and those who supported the fishing industry.

She’d been on the job for less than a year and already she wanted to run for sheriff when the office’s current occupant retired. There would be those who would cry nepotism, because Sheriff David Crump was her mother’s aunt’s husband. And there would be those who would oppose her for the simple fact she was female. Two strikes against her.

But she’d win them over with her capabilities. She had to. Failure wasn’t an option. Too many people expected her to fail. She wanted to disappoint them. She wanted to make her family proud. Especially her mother and father, rest his soul.

He’d been gone since she was a child, but she still wanted to honor his memory by doing well and serving her community.

Having grown up with a doctor for a mother and a fisherman for a father, she knew hard work and commitment were the keys to succeeding. Not that she needed much beyond her studio apartment and the respect of the town.

Though her mother constantly warned her if she didn’t take another chance on love, she’d end up old and alone.

Better that than having her heart trampled on all over again. Those were three years of her life she’d never get back. Three years wasted on a man who had cheated on her and then called her a fool for believing in love.

Well, she wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

She warmed her hands in front of the car’s heater vents and sang beneath her breath, not really in tune but enjoying singing anyway. Outside the confines of the patrol car, snow flurries swirled in the gray morning light and danced on the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing on the shores of Calico Bay, a sweeping inlet that formed a perfect half-moon with a picturesque view of their friends across the waterway in New Brunswick.

The radio attached to her uniform jacket crackled and buzzed before the sheriff’s department dispatcher, Ophelia Leighton, came on the line. “Unit one, do you copy?”

Thumbing the answer button, Audrey replied, “Yes, dispatch, I copy.”

“Uh, there’s a reported sighting of a—”

The radio crackled and popped. In the background, Audrey heard Ophelia talking, then the deep timbre of the sheriff’s voice. “Uh, sorry about that.” Ophelia came back on the line. “We’re getting mixed reports, but bottom line there’s something washed up on the shore of the Pine Street beach.”

“Something?” Audrey buckled her seat belt, shifted the car into Drive and took off toward the north side of town. “What kind of something?”

“Well, one report said a beached whale,” Ophelia came back with. “Another said dead shark. But a couple people called in to say a drowned fisherman.”

Audrey’s gut clenched. All sorts of things found their way into the inlet from the ocean’s current. None of those scenarios sounded good. Especially the last one. The town didn’t need the heartache of losing one of their own so close to Christmas. Not that any time was a good time.

Her heart cramped with sorrow for the father she’d lost so many years ago to the sea.

She prayed that whoever was on the beach wasn’t someone she knew. It would be sad enough for a stranger to die on their shore.

Pine Street ended at a public beach, which in the summer would be teeming with tourists and locals alike. She brought her vehicle to a halt in the cul-de-sac next to an early-model pickup truck where a small group of gawkers stood on the road side of the concrete barrier. Obviously the ones who’d called the sheriff’s department.

Bracing herself for the biting cold, she climbed out and plopped her brimmed hat on her head to prevent her body heat from escaping through her scalp. With shoulders squared and head up, she approached the break in the seawall.

“Audrey.” Clem Previs rushed forward to grip her sleeve, his veined hand nearly blue from the cold. The retired fisherman ran the bait shop on the pier with his two sons. “Shouldn’t you wait for the sheriff?”

Others crowded around her. Mary Fleischer from the dime store. Pat Garvey from the hardware store and the librarian, Lucy Concord. All stared at her with expectant and skeptical gazes. These men and women had watched her grow up from a wee babe to the woman she was today. She held affection for each one, and their lack of confidence in her hurt.

Pressing her lips together, she covered Clem’s hand with hers. He felt like a Popsicle. “Clem, I can handle this,” she assured him and the others.

Her breath came out in little puffs. The ground beneath their feet crunched with a top layer of ice. “You all need to get inside somewhere warm. I can’t deal with more than one crisis at a time, and I sure don’t want to be having to give you mouth to mouth out here in the cold.”

Clem clucked. “Don’t get lippy with me, young lady.”

She smiled and patted his hand. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Now I’ve got to do my job.”

“Seems someone is already taking care of it,” Lucy said, pointing.

About ten yards down the beach, a man dressed from head to toe in black and wearing a mask that obscured his face struggled to drag something toward the water’s edge.

Audrey narrowed her gaze. Her pulse raced. Amid a tangle of seaweed and debris, she could make out the dark outline of a large body. She shivered with dread. That certainly wasn’t a fish, whale or shark. Definitely human. And from the size, she judged the body to be male.

And someone was intent on returning the man to the ocean.

Heart thrumming and adrenaline flooding her body, she took off at a fast clip, but the thirty-two pounds of gear she carried on her person, plus her bulky boots, made maneuvering in the sand difficult. Careful to keep from tripping over clumps of kelp and driftwood that had settled on the beach from the wind and ocean tide, she narrowed the gap.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Stop where you are! Sheriff’s department.”

The suspect froze, then dropped the prone man’s feet in the surf. The perpetrator whipped toward her with a large-caliber gun aimed in her direction.

Her breath caught. She faced her worst fear as an officer.

He fired. And missed.

The sound of the gun blast echoed through the morning air, scattering a flock of seagulls from the water’s edge. Fragments of sand pelted her uniform.

Stunned, Audrey dropped to her belly, knocking the wind momentarily out of her. Sand clung to her, getting in her mouth, her nose, as she drew in a breath. She fought through the panic and called on her training. She drew her sidearm. “Halt!”

He ignored her and ran across the sand, heading for the berm separating the road from the beach. She shot at him, the sound exploding in her brain and muffling the world.

He hunkered inward, protecting his head, but kept running. With her ears ringing, she jumped to her feet, torn between giving chase and checking on the man in the sand and making sure Clem and the others weren’t hit by the assault.

But the man with the gun posed a threat she needed to neutralize. Now, before he hurt anyone else.

She sprinted after him, kicking up sand with each step while radioing for help. “Shots fired! Officer needs backup.”

“Sheriff’s on his way!” came Ophelia’s barely audible reply through the fuzzy haze inside Audrey’s ears.

“Suspect heading toward Prescott Road,” Audrey relayed to the dispatcher, praying Ophelia could hear her, since she couldn’t be sure how loud or soft she was yelling because her hearing was muffled from the gunfire.

The deep drifts of sand hindered her progress but also the perpetrator’s.

Audrey gained on him while trying to aim her weapon. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

Before she could pull the trigger, the suspect reached the berm and disappeared over the top. Tall sea grass obscured him from view. Deep grooves in the sand from his boots were the only sign he’d even been there.

Breathing heavily, Audrey reached the berm and crawled up the sandy embankment in a crouch. She crested the top in time to see a black Suburban peel away from the edge of the road and speed down the street. Before she could get off a shot, the vehicle careened around the corner and disappeared from view.

Frustrated, Audrey pounded the hard-packed sand with a fist. She thumbed her mic while sliding down the sandy berm. “I lost the suspect on Prescott. Black Suburban with missing plates and tinted windows.”

She didn’t wait to hear Ophelia’s answer as she scrambled to the sandy shore and hurried back toward the seawall. “Clem! Mary!”

The four popped up from behind the concrete barrier. “Here!”

Relief nearly made Audrey’s knees buckle. “Anyone hit?”

“No, Audrey,” Pat yelled back. “You?”

“You okay, Deputy Martin?” Lucy called out.

“I’m good.” She did an about-face and ran back to the man lying motionless on the shore. The water lapped at his feet. If she’d arrived any later, the man would be fish bait once again. How had the masked man known where he’d washed ashore?

Keeping her gaze alert, in case the assailant returned, she knelt down next to the supine body, noting with a frown that he was dressed in what could only be categorized as tactical attire, minus the hardware.

Definitely not a fisherman.

And definitely not from around here.

She pressed her fingers against the side of the man’s neck, fully expecting to find no pulse, as no one could survive for long in the frigid Atlantic Ocean, not to mention being exposed to the elements onshore. The skin on his neck was like ice, but beneath her cold fingers a pulse beat. Slow, but there!

With a renewed spike of adrenaline, she grabbed the mic on her shoulder. “Send the ambulance to the beach. We have a live one here. Hurry, though!”

“Copy that.” Ophelia’s surprise matched Audrey’s.

Audrey slipped her arms under the man’s torso and dragged him to the dry sand. Then she unzipped her jacket, thankful she’d worn her thick, cable-knit sweater over her thermals today, and shrugged out of the outerwear. She laid it over the man on the beach.

Turning to the group of town elders still gawking like she were the main act at the circus, she called out, “Clem, is that your truck parked out there?”

“Sure is,” he yelled back.

“Do you have any blankets or jackets? I need them!”

Clem and Pat hustled away, leaving the two older ladies huddled together, staring in her direction. Audrey turned her attention back to the man lying on the sand. Dark hair hung in chunks covering his face. Dried blood matted some of the hair near his temple. He had on black jackboots, similar to the ones she wore, black cargo pants, a black turtleneck and gloves.

She made a quick check for identification. None. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Lord, I don’t know why this man has washed ashore here or what purpose You have, but I pray that he lives. Have mercy and grace on this man. And let us find the masked man without any lives lost. Amen.”

The man stirred and moaned as he thrashed on the sand, giving Audrey her first real glimpse of his face as his hair dropped away. Dark lashes splayed over high cheekbones. A well-formed mouth with lips nearly blue from the cold. He had handsome features. Curiosity bubbled inside her. Who was he and what was his story? Why was someone trying to kill him?

“Sir.” Audrey gave his shoulder a gentle shake.

A word slipped out of his mouth.

“What?” Audrey bent closer, turning her ear toward his mouth.

“Betrayed...” He stilled and slipped back into unconsciousness.

A sense of urgency trembled through her. What did he mean? Had he betrayed someone? Or had someone betrayed him?

She still didn’t hear the siren. Where was the ambulance? It wasn’t like the medical center where Sean James kept the bus parked was that far away. Calico Bay was barely the length of a football field. Keeping her gun ready, she stayed alert for any signs of the masked man returning.

Clem and Pat picked their way to her side, their arms loaded with a plethora of blankets and jackets. She quickly packed them around her charge. Whatever this man’s story, whether good or bad, she had a sworn duty to serve and protect the community of Calico Bay, and for now that included this man.

The shrill siren filled the air. Good. About time. Within minutes Sean, his intern and the sheriff were hustling across the beach with a stretcher. Sean ambled toward her on an unsteady gait. He carried his medical bag in one gloved hand. A yellow beanie was pulled low over his auburn hair and covered his ears.

His intense brown gaze swept the area as if looking for insurgents. He’d been a medic in the military before losing a leg at the knee when an IUD exploded. The town had been heartbroken at his loss but thankful their star high school quarterback had returned to Calico Bay alive.

Though Sean had slipped into a depression when he’d first come home, the town’s people wouldn’t let that continue and had pooled their resources to buy the ambulance and make him the town’s official EMT.

Audrey moved out of the way to allow Sean and his intern, a kid named Wes, to work on the unconscious man.

“I’ve got all deputies out looking for the SUV. What do we have here?” Sheriff David Crump asked. He was a big, brawny man with a shock of white hair that had once been as dark as night and a ready grin that had captured her great-aunt’s heart back when they were in high school. Now if only Audrey could capture his respect as easily.

She related what she knew.

Sean and Wes rolled the man onto the stretcher. She reached for the edge of the litter along with the sheriff and helped Sean and Wes carry the man to the waiting ambulance. The older folks, still congregating near Clem’s truck, watched with avid expressions.

Once the bay doors were closed, the ambulance drove away. The sheriff climbed into his car and took off with his lights flashing. This was going to be big news in town. Audrey moved toward her vehicle, intent on following the ambulance to the medical center. For some reason she felt an urge to stick close to the unconscious man. Probably because he was helpless and at their mercy.

There was something about him that made her think he wasn’t going to like being in that state long once he came to. Maybe it was the strength in his chin or the boldness of his cheeks or the width of his shoulders. Or possibly woman’s intuition mingled with her cop sense.

“Do you know who he is?” Mary asked, trying to waylay her.

“No, ma’am,” Audrey replied and popped open the driver’s side door. “You all go home now before you catch a chill. We still have an armed man loose in the township. Be careful and call the station if you see anyone or anything suspicious.”

Without waiting for their reactions, she drove through the center of town toward the medical center that served as the town’s hospital without turning on her lights. Up ahead the ambulance stopped for a red light at one of only two traffic lights in the town. She stacked up behind the sheriff’s car.

When the light turned green, Sean stepped on the gas. The ambulance was in the middle of the intersection when the same dark SUV with a huge brush guard on the front end ran the red light and plowed into the back of the ambulance.

Audrey’s mind scrambled to make sense of what she was seeing even as she rammed the gearshift into Park, unbuckled her seat belt and jumped out of her car while once again palming her sidearm. Twice in one day was a new record.

The SUV’s tires screeched as it backed up, spun in a half circle and sped off in the direction it had come from. The sheriff’s car jolted forward, jumped the curb and took off after the hit-and-run vehicle. Audrey radioed for more backup, then raced to the front of the ambulance. Smoke billowed from the engine block. “Sean! Wes!”

* * *

The world tipped and jostled. Pain exploded everywhere. He tried to force his eyelids open, but nothing cooperated. His arms were strapped down. So were his legs.

Where was he? Why was he trapped in some sort of roller coaster? His head pounded. He tried to recall what had led him to this place in time, but a dark void sucked him in. The last thing he heard before the blackness took him back was a woman’s panicked voice. He wished he could help her, but he couldn’t even help himself.

* * *

Audrey reached the ambulance driver’s door just as Sean swung it open. She helped him to the curb. A gash on his forehead bled. Then she ran back for Wes. Thankfully the passenger side door opened easily. The kid was slumped sideways, the white air bag in his lap.

“Let me get the door,” a male voice said from behind her.

She nodded gratefully at a local man who’d been passing by on the sidewalk. Once the passenger door was open, Audrey and the Good Samaritan, Jordon, got Wes out. He came with a groan, too, as they sat him beside Sean.

“Jordon, help me with the guy in back,” Audrey instructed. The brunt of the impact had been aimed at the back bay. The double doors were crumpled. She let out a growl of frustration and ran to her car’s trunk, where she kept a set of Jaws of Life. She’d never needed the equipment before and had hoped never to use it, but she hefted them into her hands, feeling their unfamiliar weight.

The sound of the Calico Bay fire engine rent the air. Momentary relief renewed her energy. Help was on the way. But she had to get inside the bay and make sure the man she’d rescued from the beach hadn’t died in the crash, which was no doubt the guy in the SUV’s intent.

Before she and Jordon could get into the back bay, the fire truck pulled up. Three men and two women hustled over. Audrey let two of the biggest fire crew members take over with the door.

As soon as the doors on the bay allowed access, she climbed inside. The stretcher had tipped but was wedged between the two benches, providing some protection for the man strapped to the gurney. Thankfully the impact of the SUV crashing into the ambulance didn’t seem to have caused the patient any more damage. She checked his pulse and let out a relieved breath.

But someone was determined to kill this man.

And it was her job to keep him alive.