ChapterThree
Audrey took a step back as she stared at the plastic in Xavier’s hand. He stood hip-deep in the pit. The walls had collapsed after whatever had been stored in plastic had been retrieved, and loose brown soil littered the hard-packed gray till beneath his feet. She spotted the distal end of a long bone sticking out of the sloped wall and thought she might be sick.
This area had been looted in November. They’d seen evidence of the digging on the surface, but, because it was a burial ground, they didn’t excavate or probe to assess the extent of the damage, as that would only further disturb and desecrate the remains.
“So what was done here in November wasn’t looting…” Her words trailed off as her mind raced. She pressed a hand to her belly, thinking of all that had happened since the looting. She’d denied the permit in part because of the looting. Xavier had savaged her reputation because she’d denied the permit. And George had insisted on wintering in the old cabin near the ancestral village because of the looting.
“It was storage,” Xavier finished for her. He spoke into his radio again. “Abort the training. We’ve got company in the woods. And they’re armed.” He tapped his earpiece and cursed. “These are the best field radios the military has. They’re designed for this range and terrain. No way would Cohen have jumped the gun on the signal jammer.”
“Signal jammer?” she asked.
“Yeah. Part of the training. No radios. No cell or sat phones. No communication with the outside world.”
She pulled out her own phone. No bars. Uneasiness trickled down her spine. “We need to check on George.”
He climbed from the pit, the loose wall collapsing under his foot, making her wince as she spotted rib bones in the soil where he’d stepped. “I’ve got to get to the command center. We need to call off the jump. Once the SEALs are in free fall, there’s no turning back.”
“I understand, but George is seventy-two and he’s out here alone. He might’ve seen who cut the lines to the camera. He could be injured, or worse. You go back to your command center and do what you need to do to abort the training, but I need to check on George.”
Xavier closed his eyes and nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He met her gaze. “But George isn’t supposed to be here. All inholding landowners signed the contract.”
“But George wasn’t in your APE. Do you know for a fact he signed?”
Xavier’s entire body radiated with tension. He glanced toward the meadow and said, “Is there any way to get to his cabin without crossing the meadow and footbridge? It’s too exposed. The bridge is an obvious target.”
Her relief was tempered by the answer she had to give. “It’s not much better. It’s part of a loop from here to the falls. We’d have to go back downhill and take the other side of the loop. When we reach the fork we came across on the way here, we’d take the other path, the one that goes up to the falls along the cliffside trail. It’s not very wide in places and has a steep drop, and we’ll be visible from the lake on the switchbacks along the cliff. Once we reach the top, we’ll be in the forest again, where there’s another bridge, but it’s in the trees and not so exposed.”
He studied the meadow, then gave a reluctant nod. “We’ll take the cliff trail.” He ran a hand over his face. “Odds are, weapons were stored in this pit. Whoever is out there is armed and ready to mess up the training. We need to hurry.”
She stared into the pit, her gaze caught on the exposed ribs as she shivered. “Why do you think they stored weapons here?”
“The road was still open in November. It would’ve been easy to hike up here from the lodge in the middle of the night and stage supplies. Once the road closed, anyone planning to disrupt the training would have to hike in from the main road outside the park, carrying all their gear uphill, what, ten to fifteen miles without a trail?”
“As the crow flies from the west, yes. In truth, it would be a lot longer given the terrain and river crossings.” She considered other routes. From the north, there was a trail that would get them within five miles of the lodge, but it was on the other side of the eastern ridge of the lake basin, up the slopes of Mt. Olympus. An easier hike given the maintained trail, but still five miles of overland schlepping down a steep, wet hillside from there to the lodge.
Xavier nodded. “That’s why weapons would be staged here, within easy range of the lodge. A team hiking in would only need camping gear.”
She swallowed hard and told herself George was fine. He had to be. “But how could anyone have known about the training in November? Your proposal landed on my desk days after the looting.”
His jaw set in a hard line. “We informed inholding landowners of the proposed action a little more than a week before we finalized the proposal and submitted it to the park. We needed to start the thirty-day public comment period right away to make our timeline, so the landowners received priority notification.”
That explained how Jeb McCutcheon had known about the proposal before she did. He’d mentioned it when she, Jeb, and George had stood in this very spot, looking at the desecration to the burial ground. She hadn’t believed him at the time, figuring it was another of Jeb’s conspiracy theories. His concerns about the lake community ran the gamut from other inholding landowners running illegal Airbnbs to the federal government seizing his cabin through eminent domain. A secret government training ground fit nicely in between, so she’d dismissed the comment.
He’d gloated after she discovered he’d been right. She had to admit, she’d then wondered if the Baldwins really were renting out their cabin on a dark web vacation rental site.
“It was the day the comment period closed that you came to my office.” And lied in an attempt to get her fired from the job she’d wanted since she was eleven years old.
And he’d done it knowing what her job meant to her.
Xavier gave a sharp nod. Between the face paint and the shadows of the forest, she couldn’t read his expression. Did he regret what he’d done?
Foolish of her to hold on to that pathetic hope. Of course he didn’t. He was here right now thanks to his lie.
But none of that was important in this moment. She needed to focus on what mattered. “You think one of the inholding owners revealed your plans?”
“Right now, it’s the most likely scenario.”
She was having trouble grasping this turn of events. She’d been rattled at meeting Xavier at the lodge. After all, the father of her unborn child had tackled and handcuffed her. And even as she’d reeled from that, she was distracted by the need to tell him about the baby. It wasn’t the sort of thing one blurted while hiking up a hillside to check on potential damage to an archaeological site. Plus, she was worried about George.