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“We’ll help you out of here.” One of the officers signaled to the group of armed police awaiting orders by the clearing.
The other officer paged an ambulance. With guns drawn, the men split into two groups and disappeared down the trail.
Seconds later, an armed backup team arrived, led by Inspector Willis. “Glad ye stayed safe. What can ye tell me?” Deep lines stretched across his forehead, and he adopted a wide stance.
Pulse racing, she updated him but omitted one detail—Yuri’s death. Despite seeing the gunman’s corpse, her fear didn’t evaporate at once, as she expected. “Mark’s missing, and we must find him.”
Willis frowned and relayed the information to the response teams via radio.
In the nearby clearing, a bank of blinding lights flicked on. Raising a hand to shield her eyes from the intense wall of light, she searched for Mark in the gathering crowd of officers but couldn’t find him.
A different radio channel beeped, and Willis adjusted his earpiece and pushed the mouthpiece toward his face. “What do ye have?” His eyebrows knit together in a frown. “No sign of a struggle? Nothing? Yes, we need a second ambulance here. I’ll send EMTs.”
Overhearing his conversation, Tess tensed her body as her apprehension rose. Please let Mark be safe.
Willis clicked off his radio and turned toward Tess. His mouth formed a tight, flat line and revealed no emotion. “Yuri Petrov is dead.”
“Are you sure?” A bit of shock and denial delayed her relief from sinking in, and she resisted trusting her newfound safety.
“Yes, but we’re not sure why. No bleeding or obvious trauma.” He rocked back and forth on his heels. “My officers assumed a heart attack, given he reeks like a chimney and carried three packs of smokes. But our senior officer smelled bitter almonds around the suspect’s mouth, consistent with cyanide poisoning. We think this terrorist group trained with Russia’s KGB or FSB, depending on their age. Suicide capsules were common in their field survival kits.”
“Suicide.” Although she witnessed Yuri’s death, hearing the police declare it official comforted her. She slipped her thoughts back to Cedarcliff when Yuri cracked her cheek open. His death offered relief but failed to erase her scar, a permanent reminder of his brutality. “He almost killed me tonight with a knife, but I got away.”
“Ye were bloody lucky to have survived the brute. Yuri Petrov was notorious for torture, and few people survive an encounter with him once, let alone twice.”
Tess hadn’t stopped long enough to realize how fortunate she’d been to dodge death again, and Willis’s observation made her pause. With Yuri gone, safety became attainable again, and she offered a prayer of gratitude to the universe. An icy wind whipped through the trees and chilled her to the bone, and the one person she wanted most was missing. “Willis, who’s searching for Mark?”
An altercation erupted nearby. Men’s angry shouts blared several yards away, near the clearing.
She exchanged a worried glance with Declan.
Willis held up his palm to signal her to wait. He addressed a group of officers waiting at his side to investigate. His radio beeped, and he excused himself to answer it. “What? Please repeat. Who? Hostage?” Grimacing, he lowered one hand to his gun. “Yes, damn it. I copy.”
Glowering, he bolted toward one of the uniformed officers awaiting orders. “Ye got a negotiator with ye, Thomas?”
“Yes, sir.” The officer nodded.
“Send him down there, now,” Willis boomed.
“Wait. Who’s the hostage?” Tess tightened her body like a brittle stick, and she grabbed Willis’s arm.
“The situation is fluid and could change any minute.” Avoiding eye contact, he pressed his temples and fingered his radio as his shoulders sagged.
Balking at his attempt to airbrush the mess, she threw her crutches to the ground and yanked Willis’s jacket to pull his face closer. “Goddamn it, don’t give me vague bullshit. Who is it?”
He met her stare. “The remaining gunman has taken Dr. Nygaard hostage.”
Tess froze. She heard the words but refused to accept them, as if denial held the power to change the truth. Registering Willis’s dismal expression, a silent scream rose in her throat. No, not Mark. Please, not again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Truth
Standing in the park clearing with the Metropolitan Police officers, Tess felt her heart tumble off a mile-high cliff into free-fall. As the grave reality struck her with full force, she winced as a surge of adrenaline hit the top of her skull with the force of an ice pick. “Take me to Mark. Now.”
“No. Whatever goes down, good or bad, I promise it won’t help ye to watch it.” Willis stood solid, unmoving in his boots.
Tess gritted her teeth, fearing she’d burst into a fireball of fury. “I’m not going to stand here and do nothing. You cannot let Mark die. I can't lose him.”
