“I’m not wrong?”
Kendra tried to tamp down the excitement and be objective about it. She didn’t want to be objective. “Similar. But the picture on the mug is so small it’s hard to…” Kendra was pulling her phone from her pocket. The next moment, she was accessing the sketch Jane had sent her. “It’s damn close.”
“I think we’re there,” Margaret said softly. “Bless Bill Johnson and his souvenir mugs.” She took back the mug and compared it to Jane’s sketch. “You’re right, it’s very small. We need bigger.” She smiled. “And I’d bet we’ve got bigger. This mug must have been taken from some artist’s rendering. What did Johnson say about that mural?” She was already half running toward the picnic area to get a better view of the mural on the side of the souvenir shop. She stopped short, gazing at the huge mural. “Oh, yes.”
Kendra had caught up with her. “Incredible. It’s the same, or so close it doesn’t matter. The stream, the boulders, the mountainside, the cliff.” She held up the phone to compare it to Jane’s drawing. “Unreal.”
“The angle is even the same.” Margaret shook her head. “Are we sure Jane’s never been there? Are we positive she didn’t just subconsciously remember this?”
“I don’t think so.” Kendra took several photos of the mural, then punched in Jane’s phone number and turned on the speaker. “How the hell do I know? But there’s a way we can try to find out.”
“Kendra. Anything happening?” Jane said when she answered. “Our interview with the forestry guru was a bust. We’ve left Denver, and we’re heading your way. If I knew exactly where that was. You said you’d be moving around.”
“And we have,” Kendra said. “And right now we’re in a tourist town called Drakebury Springs. We found something interesting.” Hell, mind-blowing, but she was trying to keep her excitement on simmer. “I’m going to send you a photo. Okay?”
“Of course, but what—” Jane inhaled sharply. “Dear God, Kendra.” She was silent a moment, and her voice was shaky when she spoke again. “There have been times in the last couple days when I thought trying to find this place was crazy. Maybe it is crazy, but it exists. It exists. It’s everything that I—every detail.” She cleared her throat. “It’s obviously a painting. Can you track down the artist? Find out the exact location?”
“Are you sure this isn’t a latent memory? That you haven’t been there before? It’s so close, Jane.”
“If it’s in Colorado, I’ve never been in the state before I landed in Denver. I know that I said I thought I might be a little crazy concerning my sketch, but I have to run with it. Now find me that artist.”
“No problem. The artists painted this mural on the side of a souvenir shop, and I’ll get in touch with them. I’ve already found the approximate location.” She briefly filled Jane in on the history Bill Johnson had given them. “So that landscape is somewhere in the mountains in the vicinity of that ghost town. And there was a coin factory in that general area, too. Not in the town itself but somewhere up in the mountains close to the mines. Johnson was very vague about the exact location.”
“We’ll find out,” Jane said. “You and Margaret have got us this far, we’ll work on it from here. I’ll call Venable and we’ll—” She stopped, then said, “We have a chance. We can find her. I want to zoom up to those mountains and—” She drew a shaky breath. “But I know we can’t do that. That’s a good way to get Eve killed. We have to be careful. Doane can’t know that we may be close to finding them.”
“I’m glad you realize that,” Kendra said gently. “We have to have an exact location and know what our best chance is to get her away from him before we move. No blundering around and showing our hand before we have a firm plan.”
“Just listen to us,” Jane said. “We haven’t even found her yet. I’m hanging up and getting to work. You do the same.” She paused. “Thank you, Kendra. Tell Margaret that there are no words to tell you both how much I appreciate what you’ve done.”
“She hears you. You’re on speaker. There’s no way I’d shut her out.” She chuckled. “There’s no way she’d let me shut her out. We’ll get back to you.” She hung up.
“She was happy,” Margaret said. “That’s good.” She grinned. “And I’m glad you realize that I’m far too valuable not to be in the center of any important dealings and decisions that are taking place.” Her smile suddenly vanished as she turned to look up at the mountains. “Is that where Eve is?”
“I think so. We won’t know until we check maps.”
“You were very serious when you were talking to Jane about moving too fast. It’s happened before to you?”
She nodded. “An FBI kidnapping case. We tried to do everything right, but we still lost two children. You never know what a murderer will do when he’s cornered. They panic and they kill.”
“That can’t happen to Eve. We can’t let it.” Her gaze never left the mountains. “It looks forbidding from here, doesn’t it? The picture on my mug is so pretty but there’s a kind of darkness…”
Kendra could see what she meant. Psychological? Perhaps. But she wouldn’t deny the chill she was experiencing. “Then we need to get up there and chase all those shadows away.” She turned back to the souvenir store. “And we can start by talking to your friend Bill Johnson and getting him to set up a meeting with his daughter and her artist friends.”
CHAPTER
15
“TEARS?” TREVOR GLANCED at Jane from the driver’s seat. “But, from what I caught of the conversation, not bad tears.”
“I’m not crying.” She touched her cheek. “Or maybe I am. But definitely not bad tears.” She handed him her phone. “Kendra and Margaret struck it rich in the best possible way at that gold camp.”
Trevor gazed at the photo and gave a low whistle. “If that mural weren’t so crude, I’d think that you painted it from your sketch.”
“May I?” Caleb reached over from the backseat and took the phone. He studied it for a moment, then returned the phone to Jane. “Okay, how do we follow up?”
“Kendra and Margaret are going to find out as much as possible about the area where the mural was painted. But they do know that a coin factory is located somewhere near the played-out mines in those mountains.”
“Any recognizable point of reference?” Caleb asked.
“An abandoned ghost town. The original Drakebury Springs. It’s in a valley that can be difficult to reach, and the coinery was some distance away in the mountains. But we may be able to locate it on the map and check roads going out of it into the mountains. The miners would have had a direct route from the mines and the coinery to the town.”
Caleb opened his computer. “I’ll start on that.”
Jane nodded. “And I’ll call Joe and Venable and tell them that we may be getting close to an answer.” She closed her eyes for an instant. “God, that sounds wonderful. Now that we can give Venable a general direction, he’s got to zero in on that coin factory.”
“Anything I can do?” Trevor asked. “Or am I just a chauffeur? I admit I’m a little impatient with the role. I’m finding it less demanding than I’d like.”
“It’s a very important job. Just get us to Mineral County. Get us to those mountains.”
Trevor glanced at her face, then slowly nodded. “Okay, I’ll play any game you want me to play. It doesn’t matter what I want to do. There’s no way I’d let ego get in the way when there’s a chance of getting this close to Eve.” He added quietly, “Let me know if I can do anything else.”
She smiled. “I will.”
Caleb made a sound somewhere between a groan and a chuckle.
Trevor’s brows rose. “You said something, Caleb?”
“No, just expressing my appreciation. You’re really exceptional, Trevor.”
“I wasn’t trying to be. You just don’t recognize sincerity.”
“I recognize it. That’s what’s so difficult. Many times you do mean exactly what you say even when it sounds
all noble and self-sacrificing.”
Trevor grimaced. “Good God, I’m not noble. Are you being sarcastic?”
“I don’t think I am. You irritate the hell out of me, but I’m beginning to understand you. That doesn’t mean I won’t try to undermine you if I get a chance. I don’t have the same sterling qualities you seem to possess.”
“And I understand you, Caleb. Much to my dismay,” Jane said as she started dialing the phone. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d get to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled as he bent over the keyboard. “No nobility, but I’ll slave nonstop.”
“Which might be termed nobility,” Trevor murmured as he stepped on the accelerator. “If one wasn’t picky about definitions.”
* * *
KENDRA STARED DOWN AT THE map spread out on the picnic table next to the gift shop, anchored by Margaret’s coffee mug and Kendra’s rolled-up jacket. Bill Johnson, the shop’s proprietor, was on the phone with his artist daughter.
“Are you sure, hon? Your mural is showing us the valley just west of the old town, not east?” Johnson took the thick Sharpie pen from Kendra’s hand and drew a large circle over a hilltop. He glanced at Kendra and nodded.
Kendra studied the map, trying to establish the location in relation to the town they now occupied. She turned to speak to Margaret, but the young woman had suddenly vanished. Where had she gone? she wondered impatiently.
Johnson finished the call and pocketed his phone. “That’s the spot. It’s several miles from the old town, up in the mountains. The ghost town sits in a sort of bowl surrounded by mountains.” His finger traced a line on the ridge of the mountain slope. “Coming in from this direction, you can use this road above the old town to get to the area where she made the mural.”
“Can we drive through the town itself?”
“Depends. The roads aren’t the best up there, and with the storm we just had, some could be impassable right now. That’s why we don’t get a lot of tourists up that way. The town itself was always a muddy swamp after a heavy downpour.” His finger traced a line on the map on the ridge of the mountain slope. “Coming in from here, you can use this road above the old town that bypasses the town and connects to the road that leads to that area my daughter painted.”
“And where the coin factory is located?”
He shrugged. “Never been there myself, but I believe it’s over this ridge.” He pointed to a string of hills. “In any case, I wouldn’t recommend going there right now.” He checked his watch. “It’ll be dark soon, and it can be dangerous trying to navigate those roads at night.”
“Good advice.” She grimaced. “Not welcome, but good. Thank you. You’ve been a huge help.”
Johnson awkwardly gestured toward the map. “Uh, that’ll be six dollars for the souvenir map.”
“And worth every penny.” Kendra paid him, and Johnson tipped his hat toward her and strolled back into his store. She immediately pulled out her phone and called Venable. “I’ve contacted the artist, and I believe we’re on track.” She filled him in on the new information Johnson had given her. “I don’t like the idea of waiting until morning.”
“It’s the smart thing to do,” Venable said quickly. “By that time, I should have an exact location for the coin factory and will be able to send up an attack team.”
“No!” Kendra said. “What are you talking about? You show up with a show of force, and Eve is a dead woman. You know that Doane is crazy.”
“Don’t get upset,” Venable said soothingly. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve dealt with Doane for years.” He paused. “And it might be best if you let me handle the entire retrieval. You’ve done a fine job of gathering information, but it’s time I took over. You could get in my way, Kendra.”
“The hell I would,” Kendra said. “You’re scaring me, Venable. We’re so close to being able to get Eve out of this. I won’t let her die because you’ve gone trigger-happy.”
Venable was silent. “You’re right. Perhaps a more subtle, indirect, approach is best. I’ll work on locating that coin factory and get back to you.” He hung up.
Kendra stared blindly down at the map. She should have felt reassured by those last words. She did not feel reassured; she was uneasy. As she had told Venable, he had scared her. The CIA man was experienced and intelligent and should know better than to rush an operation like the one that might be facing them. Yet his first impulse was not intelligent at all.
She was tempted to call Joe Quinn, but evidently he wasn’t presently available. Jane had called her back and told her that she’d not been able to reach Quinn by phone and had sent him an e-mail.
And what could he do anyway from Vancouver? Except maybe contact Venable and make sure he’d taken Kendra’s protests seriously. It would probably be fine. It was just that she’d gone through a hideous experience in the past that had not gone fine but terribly wrong.
“You’re frowning.”
She looked up to see Margaret coming toward her from the picnic area. “Am I? I’ve got to stop that. I hear it causes wrinkles. Where did you go?” She watched Margaret drop onto the picnic bench beside her.
Margaret raised Kevin’s journal. “I wanted to go someplace where I could concentrate on this. You seemed to have things under control here.” She grinned. “Though I don’t know how you could manage without my invaluable help.”
“It was a terrible burden. But I now know where we’re headed. We’ll check into a hotel and set out first thing in the morning. Jane will be here by then, and she can come with us.”
“Good. In the meantime, maybe we can give this journal a closer look.” Margaret snapped the cover band of the journal. “I just read something that makes me think we were right not to give it up too quickly.”
Kendra’s gaze flew to her face. “What?”
“Later. While we’re getting something to eat. It may be nothing, but it made me uneasy.”
“Uneasy?” It was strange that Kendra had been bombarded by that same emotion only moments before. At a time when hope should have been soaring, it wasn’t good that both she and Margaret were experiencing doubt and apprehensiveness.
Margaret shrugged. “It will be okay. Don’t worry. We’ll work through it.”
“Now that’s one of your typically optimistic comments that has no basis on fact or reason.” Yet Kendra felt a sudden surge of gladness that Margaret was here with her, and her words were giving her both warmth and comfort. She smiled. “But you know, I’m not only becoming accustomed to them, I’ve started to search for some inner wisdom in them. That’s pretty frightening.”
Margaret giggled. “It would be more frightening if you found it.” She got to her feet. “Come on, let’s find someplace to eat. I need something normal and megacalorie to balance all this high-powered brain drain.”
CIA Field Office
Denver, Colorado
VENABLE LEANED FORWARD in his chair and stared at the photograph that the young researcher, Callie Burke, had just handed him. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“It’s a coin press made by McGruber Mechanics and Associates between 1848 and sometime during the Civil War. Based on the photographs and measurements taken from Doane’s car in Atlanta, this is what he had been transporting. And based on how little oxidation there is on the interior trunk marks, it was probably in the past couple of weeks.”
Venable nodded. “Exactly what Kendra Michaels said.”
“It’s a different-model coin press than in the photo she sent. But it’s similar. The team in Atlanta said they wouldn’t have even thought of it if she hadn’t tipped us off.”
Venable placed the photo on his desk. Burke, the researcher, a slender woman in her mid-twenties, was obviously eager to impress. She had gone into high gear when he’d issued an order to speed up the research after he’d received that call from Kendra. Okay, impress me. “How many of these were made?”
She shook her head. “As far as we can tell, only about
fifteen were ever in use in North America. It’s hard to tell how many still exist. We’re still combing ads and online auction listings to see how many have turned up in the collectors’ market. But we did find something interesting: one of these was originally used in a coinery near Drakebury Springs, Colorado.”
Yes. He tried to keep her from seeing the intense interest the last bit of info generated in him. “That’s why I told you to look in that area. Doane’s car may have been there.”
“Yes, sir. And that old coinery is still standing. It was sold as a private residence about four years ago.”
“Sold to whom?”
“A holding company. We’re still running it down. It’s not clear if the coin press was still there, but the real-estate listing did make a lot of the fact that it was a former gold-rush coin factory with many original features intact. We’re still trying to contact the property’s real-estate broker to ascertain if the coin press was there.”
Venable nodded. “Good work. Let me know the minute you hear something.”
The researcher hurried out of the room.
But Venable would bet that coin press was no longer in the factory. He felt a rush of fierce satisfaction.
I’ve got him, General. He’s mine. I’m going to take him down.
He quickly got off an e-mail to Kendra Michaels with the information and leaned back in his chair. He thought for a long moment, staring at the photograph on his desk. Difficulties. Kendra Michaels, Joe Quinn, Jane MacGuire. He’d have to sweep those difficulties away.
So? He was good at eliminating difficulties.
He picked up his phone and dialed a number. “I need to pull a team together right away. See about borrowing one from the FBI. Tonight. We’re heading for southern Colorado.”
Drakebury Springs Ghost Town
Southern Colorado
“YOU HAVE HIM ALMOST REPAIRED,” Doane said as he studied the skull reconstruction. “Pretty soon, we’ll be ready to put in his eyes.”
“Déjà vu,” Eve said, her gaze on the skull.