Cal held up a closed fist when the cabin came into view, and they all stopped. Cal, Lucas and Selina dropped into a crouch, but she and Mack both had foot drop and couldn’t do that. He lowered himself to the ground and sat, so she followed his lead. One light was burning from within the structure, which was clearly someone’s old hunting cabin. She doubted there were more than two rooms inside, but that didn’t matter if it was just a place to hide out until their gigantic payday sent them off to the tropics, never to be seen again. A car was parked to her right, and Cal motioned for Lucas to check it out.
He approached it silently, popping his head up to peer into the windows several times before he ran his hand across his neck as though to say,no go. It was empty.
Cal whispered. “Let’s approach as though whoever is behind those doors is alive and well.”
The three men walked toward the structure while Selina pulled her and Haven behind the car, her gun aimed at the dirt road they’d crept up. She planned to take Cal literally when he said to shoot anything that moves.
She heard the squeak of a doorknob and then silence.The longer there were no voices, the more her heart sank. If Bec was in there, she would have said something by now, right? But then it hit her that there were no voices, not even those of the Secure One guys.
“Secure One, Charlie,” Cal said as he came around the car and picked Iris up by her waist. He ran up the road, everyone falling into place behind them.
“Put me down, I can walk,” she said, confused about what was happening.
“We have four minutes to get the hell out of here before that cabin blows,” he said tightly. “This is a run, not walk, kind of situation.”
Before she could reply, she was shoved in the back of the SUV as everyone piled in behind her. She tried to right herself as Cal whipped the SUV and slammed the accelerator. She had no sooner buckled her seat belt than a loud blast blew her back in her seat.
Chapter Twenty
“What the hell happened back there?” Selina asked, turning to take Iris’s hand. “How are you doing?”
“I’m worried about Bec,” she admitted. “I have to assume she wasn’t in the cabin.”
“She wasn’t,” Cal said tightly.
Selina dug into the bag at her feet and sat up with a bottle of water and a pill.
“What’s that?” Iris asked, her head cocked in confusion.
“Another dose of your anti-anxiety medication.”
“I don’t need it but thank you.” She did take the bottle and cracked the lid, gulping some of the water. “Thanks. I haven’t had anything since lunch.”
“You’re handling this very well. I’m proud of you.”
She held her head high and made eye contact with her friend. “Thank you,” she said.
“Was anyone in the cabin?” Selina asked, turning back in her seat.
“Walter,” Cal said with a nod. “Another person I can only assume was Zafar. Both died relatively recently, but there were no guns, so they weren’t self-inflicted or murder-suicide. It looked like they’d been surprised anddropped where they were standing. The door was still unlocked, which was how we got in.”
“Anything else of interest?” Selina asked.
“You mean other than enough C-4 to blow three cabins that size?” Mack asked, to which she snorted.
“Yeah, other than that.”
“There was a computer on the desk,” Cal said. “It had the message up that Ace sent to the computers at the research facility. That confused me because how was there internet way out there?”
“There was coverage, though,” Iris said. “Mina called me as we turned down the road.”
“Maybe that’s why Walter bought that cabin,” Selina mused. “He knew they’d need to use a hotspot to send the message through.”
“The bomb is confusing,” Lucas said. “It was attached to the door, so if it was opened again, it would blow, but five minutes on a timer gives someone plenty of time to leave. Case in point, us.”
“It does,” Cal agreed, “but if the cabin and the bodies get blown sky-high, there’s no evidence to collect even if someone does report it.”
“But wait,” Iris said, her mind trying to link together everything she knew so far. “The guys who took Bec said that Walter missed their call. If he’s been dead this whole time, that means they didn’t kill him.”
