Close Your Eyes Read online

  Nothing.

  But there was something else of interest up ahead.

  They had already passed several large boulders. Two hundred yards away, there was an opening carved into the mountainside. It was too clean, too precise, to be a natural formation.

  Lynch caught her look and turned toward the opening. “It’s not the only one. Look.”

  She glanced around and saw half a dozen other round openings, each about ten feet in diameter, now within her line of sight. “Mine shafts?”

  “Looks like it. There was a lot of granite mining in this entire area in the thirties. Let’s get a closer look.”

  They worked their way down the trail and approached the shaft nearest them. Just beyond the shadows of the opening, she could see that the shaft was sealed off by rubble.

  “The mining company might have closed this off when they abandoned it,” Lynch said.

  Kendra studied the rubble. “Or an earthquake might have done the job sometime since. Either way, I’d like to go look at these other—”

  She stopped.

  It was that metallic sound again. What in the hell…?

  A gunshot!

  A bullet whistled past and disintegrated a rock between them.

  Kendra’s first instinct was to jump back, but Lynch grabbed her arm and yanked her into the mine-shaft opening.

  He grabbed the gun from his holster. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “Slightly to the right, from behind three dark boulders near a clump of scrub brush.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  He nodded, raised his gun, and pressed himself against the inner rock wall of the mine entrance. He inched forward.

  Kendra cocked her head. That metallic sound again. But not from where the gunshot was fired, it had to be—

  “Stop!” she whispered.

  Lynch froze.

  “There’s another one out there. A few yards to the left. Probably behind the rock pile.”

  Lynch cursed. “They’ve got us pinned down.”

  A barrage of bullets exploded against the rocks near Lynch’s head. A roar erupted from behind the rock pile.

  A motorcycle, Kendra realized. Blazing away to the left.

  Another barrage of bullets rained on them.

  Lynch threw himself back against the wall, paused, then fired toward the boulders. The shooter cut loose with another hail of gunfire.

  Kendra listened. The motorcycle had turned and was racing back toward them. Shit.

  It would be back in another few seconds, and after that, she and Lynch would be—

  Wait. At her feet, almost entirely buried in the sand, was the severed end of a rope trail marker. She looked up. How far out did it go?

  Hard to tell.

  “Get back!” Lynch shouted.

  She ignored him and crouched over the rope. Please, please, please let this work …

  The motorcycle sped closer. She gripped the edge of the rope in her trembling hands and yanked it upward. Sand flew along the rope’s length, revealing that it was anchored to a spike at the edge of the clearing.

  The motorcycle’s roar filled her ears, blending with the staccato rhythms of more gunfire …

  The rope whipped through her fingers.

  Pain. Horrible, searing pain.

  She looked up from her bloody hands to see the rope catch the motorcycle rider at his chest and catapult him from the seat.

  The motorcycle slid into the rock wall of the mountainside, its engine still racing. The motorcycle rider, outfitted in heavy black leather from head to toe, landed with a sickening crack just ten feet in front of them. His gun, a short-stalked automatic weapon, landed several yards behind.

  The man moaned.

  Kendra crouched next to Lynch and wiped her bleeding hands against her shirt.

  “Are you okay?” Lynch asked.

  She pointed to the motorcycle rider. “Watch him.”

  “He’s not going anywhere.”

  The rider, a man in his early twenties with an acne-scarred face, coughed up a mouthful of blood. “Tommy! Tommy…!”

  “Shut the hell up!” The voice called out from behind the boulders.

  “I need help!”

  Lynch aimed his gun in the rider’s direction.

  The man pulled off his helmet. “Please, Tommy. I can’t feel my legs…”

  “Be quiet!”

  “I’m really messed up here. Help me!”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Please…”

  Lynch squeezed off a shot near the injured man, who recoiled.

  “What was that for?” Kendra whispered.

  “Just tightening the screws.”

  The voice from behind the boulders called out again. “I can’t come out there, buddy.”

  “I’m gonna die, man.”

  “Stop talking. You know you can’t talk. Just hang tight!”

  The motorcyclist turned toward Kendra and Lynch. His eyes pleaded with them as two thin lines of blood ran from his nostrils.

  Lynch took aim with his gun.

  “Don’t do it,” she whispered.

  Lynch shook his head. “I won’t need to.”

  The motorcyclist’s head exploded.

  The gunshot had come from behind the boulders, she realized. The man’s own partner had killed him, she realized, sick.

  Seconds later, she heard the familiar metallic sound again. This time she knew what it was. Zippers on a leather jacket jangling as he walked.

  The next moment, the ATV started up and roared away.

  “Shit!” Lynch bolted from the opening with his gun extended before him. He ran around the other side of the boulders.

  Kendra ran after him.

  The ATV was already halfway down to the desert floor.

  Lynch pulled out his mobile phone and cursed again. “No signal up here. I was afraid of that.” He walked back to the motorcyclist’s corpse and rolled him over.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Searching his pockets. I want to know who he is.”

  His expression was completely without feeling. Lynch might as well have been searching an old pair of his jeans for bus fare, she thought. Cold. Very cold. “You knew that other man would kill him. What was his name? Tommy.”

  “I didn’t know. I hoped. From the point of view of a total scumbag, it was the smartest thing to do.”

  “The scumbag mentality comes awful easily to you.”

  “With his partner down, he just wanted to get the hell out of here. But he couldn’t leave the other guy alive to possibly ID him.”

  She looked down at what was left of the man’s head. She felt sick. She had to get out of there. She turned and walked away.

  Lynch’s voice stopped her before she’d gone more than a few yards. “Stop running away. I need another one of those parlor tricks you’re so good at.”

  She stared out at the desert. “What do you mean?”

  “This guy has absolutely no ID on him. No receipts, no ATM statements, nothing. What can you tell me about him?”

  Kendra still did not turn. “Besides the fact that he’s now missing half his skull?”

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  You don’t have to look back at that monstrosity that had once been a man. Use your memory. Close your eyes. Focus.

  “Kendra?”

  “He’s a smoker. Cigarettes.”

  Lynch looked at the dead man’s hands. “Nicotine stains.”

  “It’s actually from the tar. You can also see it in the corners of his mouth. And he’s probably been taking tetracycline or minocycline recently. Check with dermatologists in the area. He might be a patient.”

  Lynch looked down at the man’s pockmarked face. “It’s obvious he needed it, but how do you know?”

  “His teeth. They have a slight grayish blue tint. That’s a giveaway, and it probably tilts the scales in favor of minocycline.”

  “I’ll check i
t out.”

  “We didn’t hear him say much, but I can tell he’s probably lived on the West Coast for most of his life. Possibly some time in the Northwest, but I can’t be sure of that. He’s also had whiskey today, but there’s no telling where he drank it.”

  Okay, she was better now. She had control. She turned and slowly walked back toward the corpse and knelt beside it. Now that she was in the zone, she was no longer bothered by the horrible sight in front of her. It was just a collection of stimuli to be cataloged and analyzed. She lifted the lapel of the dead man’s leather jacket and placed her nose next to it.

  Lynch knelt beside her. “What are you doing?”

  She leaned back. “Smelling that white stuff on his jacket.”

  “We have forensic tests for that.”

  “McDonald’s vanilla shake.”

  Lynch smiled. “Not Burger King?”

  “No. Not Burger King, not Wendy’s. It was McDonald’s. It’s still very sweet-smelling, so I’m betting he had it today. There was a McDonald’s about twenty-five miles back on Highway 78. It might be a good place to start. If he was with his partner, there might be a security camera feed with both of their faces.”

  He nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Let’s look at his bike.”

  They stood and walked over toward the still-rumbling motorcycle. Lynch cut the ignition and lifted it upright. “A BMW GS. Good piece of machinery.”

  Kendra stepped around it. “The owner brought this here from somewhere else. It hasn’t been ridden much in this country yet.”

  “It has a California plate.”

  “But there’s much more wear on the front tire’s right side. In the U.S. and other countries where we drive on the right side of the road, there’s always more wear on the front tire’s left side.”

  Lynch thought about it for a moment. “That makes sense. Wider turn radius, more of a lean angle…”

  “… and faster speed. You leave more rubber on the pavement with a wide turn. This motorcycle has been mostly ridden someplace where they drive on the left side of the road.” Kendra looked at it a moment longer, then shook her head. “It’s not telling me anything else.”

  Lynch hit the kickstand and left the bike upright. “Okay. Good. Anything else you want to see? Last chance…”

  “No, I’ve seen enough.”

  Too much. Death. Betrayal. Murder.

  All of the horrors that she had wanted to leave behind when she had told Jeff that she was through with working with him. Now that this problem had been faced, addressed, and identified, she was once more enveloped in the sheer terrible reality of it.

  Stop shaking.

  Don’t break down.

  “I’d better call and get the police and the Bureau out here. You were very helpful. I think that we—” Lynch broke off, his gaze on her expression. “Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

  “Wonderful. Just wonderful.”

  “The hell you are.” He took a step closer and reached out to touch her. “I didn’t think that you’d react—”

  She jerked back away from him. “But you didn’t stop to ask how I felt about it before you got what you wanted, did you? You just used me. Well, I gave you what you needed, and now you have time to be the good guy. It’s all very familiar.” Too familiar. All the bitterness and sickness she had felt when she’d broken with Jeff was flooding back to her. She turned her back to him. “I don’t need your sympathy, Lynch. I’m fine.” As she walked away from him, she added, “So go to hell.”

  * * *

  THE FIRST POLICE OFFICERS arrived in thirty-five minutes, and Griffin, Santini, and Deever arrived with an army of FBI agents an hour after that. After Kendra and Lynch had told their story and conveyed Kendra’s observations no less than four times, Griffin finally pulled them both aside.

  “What in the hell is going on here?”

  “You don’t really want to hear it again, do you?” Lynch asked.

  “I thought you were working with us, Lynch.”

  “You don’t find our information useful?”

  “I find her information useful. It’s your bullshit I don’t appreciate.”

  “Basic investigative work, that’s all. We’re trying to find your missing agent.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming out here?”

  “I don’t see the need to keep you apprised of my every move. You have access to Stedler’s computer and search history. Didn’t you already think to come out here?”

  He was silent a moment. “It was on the list. We didn’t deem it relevant.”

  “And it may not be. I don’t know who these guys are. Anything on his license plate yet?”

  “It’s registered to a motorcycle in Mission Valley.”

  “This motorcycle?” Kendra asked.

  “Nope. It’s registered to a Kawasaki. The plate’s probably stolen, and the owner just hasn’t reported it yet. The cops are checking it out now.” Griffin gestured to the other mine-shaft openings dotting the mountainside. “We’re checking out each of those. For all we know, they were running a meth lab out of one.”

  “Miserably hot place to try and run a lab,” Lynch said. “It’s about 110 here today.”

  “I’ve seen crazier things.” Griffin turned back toward them. “So tell me, why in the hell would Stedler have been interested in this place?”

  “Question of the day,” Lynch said. “As you say, this doesn’t seem relevant to anything else he was working on.”

  “It’s time, Lynch,” Griffin said harshly.

  “Time for what?”

  “It’s time for you to be straight with me. I need to know why the Justice Department sent you here.”

  “I was hired.” Lynch spoke as if reading from a well-worn script. “Any questions or concerns can be directed to U.S. Associate Attorney General Frederick Jamerson. He or a member of his staff would be happy to—”

  Griffin cut him off. “You know I’ve already spoken with Jamerson. We’re as concerned about Agent Stedler’s well-being as he is, but we’re still at a loss as to why he sent you. If we’re being kept in the dark about something, I need to know what it is.”

  “I don’t have time to nurse bruised egos.”

  “This isn’t about ego!” Griffin’s face flushed red. “We need to know what we’re dealing with here. The safety of my people depends on it. Can’t you get that into your head? Jeff Stedler is the best agent I have. If something happened to him, it can happen to any one of those men and women out there.”

  Lynch shook his head. “I don’t know any more than you do, Griffin. Sorry.”

  Griffin cursed and walked away.

  Kendra stared at Lynch for a long moment. “If you really came without knowing why you’re here, then I misjudged you.”

  “How so?”

  “You didn’t strike me as someone who would allow himself to be used like that.” Her lips curled bitterly. “No, you’d be the one who’d be on the offensive. You wouldn’t be sent out here by some bureaucrat without really knowing why. I don’t think you’re a chump, Lynch.”

  “If that’s what I was, I’d still be working for Griffin.”

  “Then I guess that just makes you a liar.”

  Lynch laughed and stepped away, putting some distance between him and the police officers working the scene. “You’re forgetting another possibility.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Maybe I want to know what’s going on here. Maybe I want to know why one of the three highest-ranking officials in the U.S. Department of Justice has taken such a personal interest in this case. I can understand why it’s driving Griffin crazy because it’s making me a bit crazy. Especially if I’m somehow being used as a pawn—or a chump, as you might say—in this game. I will find out what’s going on here, but I’ll do it on my own terms. That’s why I came to you.”

  She studied him. It was the only thing he could have said that would inspire any kind of approval from her. He, of co
urse, knew that; manipulation was his stock-in-trade. But there was something in his manner, a steely determination tinged with frustration that made her believe him.

  “I need your help,” he said quietly. “You may feel you’ve already gotten more than you bargained for, and you most definitely have. But I want to work with someone outside the Bureau on this. And not with just anyone. I want it to be you.”

  She shook her head. “Haven’t you been listening? This isn’t what I do. I’ve helped out on a few cases, but I’m not an investigator.”

  “You’re better at it than almost anyone I know.” He paused. “And you want to do this. You have a motivation. I’ll try not to pry any more into your private affairs; but, in spite of what you went through this afternoon, you thought finding Stedler was worthwhile, or you wouldn’t have done it.”

  He’s right, damn him.

  Kendra turned and stared at the mass of law-enforcement personnel swarming over the mountainside. And Olivia had also been right. There was no way Kendra couldn’t help, not as long as Jeff might still be out there. He had been her friend, her lover. She might want to put a period to their relationship, but she would hate herself if she didn’t at least try to help find him.

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said slowly.

  “You’re in?”

  “Yes, as long as I think it’s worthwhile working with you. But I want to keep following Jeff’s trail. If I get the sense that you and your Associate Attorney General have other priorities, I’m done. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “For a master manipulator, you didn’t handle Griffin well just now. Please do your best not to piss off Griffin and the other FBI agents.”

  His brows rose in surprise. “Says the pot to the kettle.”

  “I don’t have to be polite to them. If I stopped being rude, they’d get suspicious. But we might need them, and you might as well be the one to bite the bullet. This case could turn on the toxicology angle, and we’re going to need their expertise and resources.”

  “I can be a team player. But I doubt if you can.”

  Kendra doubted it, too. She had always been a loner, and sometimes her tongue was too quick. “Then you’d better work twice as hard to make up for my lack of cooperation. It will be a challenge for you.”