by Liz Shoaf
Hoyt stepped back and gave them all a hard look. “So everything is okay here?”
Ned’s gut clenched when Mary Grace gave the sheriff a wide, welcoming grin.
“Absolutely,” she said, “and I’m sorry for leaving my car on the side of the road. Ned’s driveway was impassable, so I hiked to his cabin. Well, we’ll just be on our way now. I’m sure you’d like to get back to the station where it’s warm.”
Hoyt gave them one last lingering look, nodded and folded his long frame into his patrol car.
Maybe living alone on his mountain hadn’t been a good idea, because when Mary Grace gave that warm, gracious smile to the sheriff, Ned wanted to strangle the guy.
Maybe he’d been isolated for too long and it had affected his brain.
FOUR
Mary Grace hunched over the steering wheel in her rental car as she followed the two snowmobiles in front of her. Ned had said Fran lived several miles away.
She checked the heater to make sure it was on full blast. She’d never been so cold in her life. She’d take the sticky, sweet humidity in Georgia any day over these bone-chilling temperatures.
She couldn’t imagine Ned living all alone on that isolated mountain. But maybe not completely alone. She now knew he had a sister and a niece. They evidently visited periodically. When she awoke that morning, she assumed he was all alone, because why in the world would anyone choose to live sequestered in complete isolation?
Tinker Bell growled when Krieger stuck his massive head between the bucket seats.
“It’s okay, Tink. Krieger just wants to be friends.”
Tink growled one more time for good measure and Krieger disappeared into the back seat. The dogs reminded Mary Grace of her and Ned. Uptown girl meets gruff mountain man. She chuckled at the comparison, but sobered when she remembered riding on the snowmobile with her arms wrapped around his waist. Something had stirred deep inside her. It was attraction and that was ridiculous. She didn’t even know what his face looked like. It was almost completely covered by a beard that appeared as if it hadn’t been groomed for months. Her grandmother would have been horrified by his appearance. About the one thing she was sure of so far was that the man calling himself Ned apparently loved his niece and, judging by his reaction, loathed Mary Grace’s brother.
He was an enigma. She had to find out everything about Ned’s connection to Bobby so she could protect her brother. She had no idea what was going on, but she’d find out. It was her gift—ferreting out secrets and information.
Outside of his negative reaction at the mention of her brother’s name, the only thing Ned had actually said about Bobby was when he asked if she and her brother were working together to get rid of him and Finn.
Who was Finn and why would someone be trying to get rid of both men? But the most disturbing question was how her brother was involved in this situation. The people after Mary Grace and Bobby weren’t playing games. Even though she finally felt warm, she shivered at the thought of the recent attempts on her life. She prayed Bobby would be safe until she could resolve this situation.
Her reporter’s curiosity piqued once again when she made a right turn behind the snowmobiles onto a long driveway that appeared manicured, even beneath the snow. After making several soft turns, a large house loomed at the end of the driveway. A sizable fountain stood in the middle of the circular drive, complementing the wood and stone structure. She wouldn’t classify it as a mansion, but it definitely came under the heading of mini mansion.
She cut the engine and flung open her car door. This was her best chance to find out more about Ned. There was no name on the mailbox and she needed information. She’d always had great rapport with other women. One mention of their cute kids or their pets or their boyfriends/husbands and they were usually off and running. Politicians would be the exception to that rule. She had to break out the big guns for those interviews.
She had one leg out of the car when Ned silently appeared and halted her momentum with a big bear claw on the door, stopping her from reaching her goal: to talk to his sister.
“You stay here. I’ll be back.”
His quiet but firm order really burned her. The terror she’d experienced on the mountain had melted away and she was more herself now.
She jutted her chin out. “Why should I?”
His expression didn’t change, but she noted the twitch in his left eye, the only thing that remotely revealed what he was feeling.
“Because I’m the only one who can protect you while we look for your brother.”
Like she was born yesterday. “For all I know, you want to kill Bobby. Why should I trust you?”
Her heart palpitated when he grinned for the second time since she’d met him, and her gut clenched. No, no, no, she absolutely refused to be attracted to this bear of a man. He hovered over her open door like a caveman. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall. She considered herself of average height at five feet six inches, but he towered over her. He wasn’t skin and bones, either. She briefly wondered how much muscle was hidden beneath those layers of clothes.
“Because your brother sent you to me.”
Well, that took the wind out of her sails. He was right. Bobby had sent her to Ned. With little grace, she jerked her leg back inside the car and grabbed the door handle. It’d serve him right if his hand got caught in the door, but that wasn’t to be. He showed his superior strength by holding on to the door until he was ready to release it. She gritted her teeth and pulled hard. He let go suddenly and the door slammed shut, rattling her hand.
Fuming, she crossed her arms over her chest and watched as Ned met Fran at the sidewalk and together they walked through the front door, firmly closing it behind them.
“Tink, I don’t trust that man, not with Bobby’s life on the line.”
Tink barked and Mary Grace jerked when a big, rough tongue licked the side of her neck. She turned her head and looked at Ned’s dog. “If only you could talk.” The animal’s eyes were full of intelligence and she remembered how Krieger had followed Ned’s orders right before the explosion. She sat upright in her seat. Was Krieger military or police-trained?
As happened when she came across a vital piece of information while pursuing a story, her adrenaline took a sharp spike. She reached across the console and grabbed her backpack from the passenger floorboard of the car. Dropping it onto her lap, she dug through her belongings until her fingers wrapped around her cell phone. She lifted it triumphantly in the air.
“Ha! Got it.” Tink barked her approval and Mary Grace held the smartphone close to her chest. “Now, if I can get a signal, I’ll be in business.”
She turned on the phone and fidgeted in her seat, willing the phone to power up fast. She wanted to do a quick search on Krieger before Ned came out of the house. Her heart beat faster when two bars appeared. Opening the search engine, she typed in Krieger—military dog and pressed the search tab. The blue line at the top had never taken so long, but when it finished, she grinned. There were several articles that popped up immediately.
The first one caught her attention and her nose actually twitched. She was in what she called her “reporter zone,” a place where her gut told her she was on the right track.
It read: Old-fashioned, giant German shepherd musters out with handler after six years of service in Army Special Forces.
Mary Grace quickly skimmed the article, looking for a reference to the handler, but it never gave a name. She checked several other articles, but nothing. They did list all of Krieger’s achievements and they were quite impressive. She glanced over her shoulder.
“I appreciate your service to our country, Krieger.”
Tink growled again, but Mary Grace ignored her and scanned the house and grounds, searching for anything that would give her a clue she could follow to find out Ned’s true identity. Then an idea popped into her
head. She opened Google Maps on her smartphone and a map popped up. She got the address of his sister’s house from there and was just following up on that when the driver’s door whooshed open.
“Move over, I’ll drive.”
Mary Grace scooted over the console into the passenger seat and quickly sorted through all her options. She could probably, eventually, find Bobby on her own, and she was uncertain why Ned wanted to find her brother. Was it for information, or had Bobby inadvertently done something to anger this quiet, lethal mountain of a man? On the other hand, there were people trying to kill her and she wasn’t quite ready to meet her Maker. Ned could protect her. She’d stay with him for the time being and try to figure out what was going on. If he would bother saying more than two words, she could make faster progress. She was a whiz at research.
“Fine, but you’re going to have to start talking or I’ll find Bobby on my own.”
* * *
For a moment, Mary Grace had amused Ned. Through her eyes, he could almost see her brain rapidly processing her options, but then she smirked. She was up to something.
As he pulled out of the driveway, he glanced at her and considered her demand for answers. She was staring out the window and the rat dog—he really should call it by its name, but Tinker Bell just didn’t feel right slipping past his lips—was glaring at him. The small dog and its name were enough to unman a guy. Concentrating on TB—that’s what he’d call the animal—helped him to ignore the unwanted pull of attraction. Instead of answering her questions, it was time he asked a few of his own and got back to the task at hand.
“Do you have any idea where Bobby might be hiding?”
She turned her head and glared at him, much like her dog.
“Why do you want to find my brother? Bobby said you were a big part of this, whatever this is.”
He stopped the car at the end of the driveway and turned toward her. Her jaw was set at a stubborn angle and her lips were pressed together. He had to give her something or she might bolt, and Mary Grace Ramsey was the only lead he had at the moment. His gut told him Bobby could lead him to the people who were after him and Finn.
All the evidence he had accumulated so far involved Bobby Lancaster, but the geeky young man just didn’t fit the profile of a killer, which is why Ned had been trying to lure the bad guys to his mountain.
He’d soon find out where the CIA’s computer wonder boy had holed up. At this point, he didn’t care who he tipped off. Bobby had gone on the lam recently, and the ambush had happened six months ago, but it had taken Ned four months to get Finn settled, make sure he was okay and then lay his trap for their enemies. Prior to this, he’d stayed on his mountain between missions. No one in town knew when he slipped away and returned because of his hermit-type lifestyle, and he’d made sure no one knew he was related to his sister and niece because danger might follow him from current or previous missions. As far as the townspeople and anyone he worked with knew, he was all alone in the world.
Bobby must have been alerted by something, or found himself in a tight spot and took off. His gut told him that Bobby had to be involved because he’d fed Ned and Finn the bad intel that placed them in danger. Whether it was voluntary or involuntarily, well, that was yet to be determined.
“It’s classified.” She snorted, and he rushed to add, “Fine, I spent some time in the military a while back. You can trust me.”
She didn’t even respond to his admission of a small part of his past, instead she started typing on her phone.
“What are you doing?”
She lifted her head and gave him a challenging grin. “It’s over two thousand miles to Georgia. You wanna drive or fly?”
He was onto her game. To fly, a person had to present identification. He grinned back and whipped out an encrypted satellite phone. He tapped in a number and held the phone close to his ear. There were two clicks, and he knew his contact was listening. “I need the private plane in Jackson Hole, pronto, headed to—” He looked at Mary Grace and almost laughed out loud at the stunned expression on her face.
“Waycross, Georgia,” she answered through gritted teeth.
“Waycross,” he repeated into the phone. “We’ll be at the airport in thirty minutes. No paperwork.”
He put his phone away and turned left out of his sister’s driveway.
Mary Grace settled into her seat and kissed her dog on top of the head. He felt a mood shift in the car. It was almost as if he could sense her switching gears in that agile brain of hers. He liked the challenge of matching wits with her. He’d always appreciated beautiful women, but it was the smart ones who held his attention, and Mary Grace had proven to be very intelligent.
“Why Georgia?”
“That’s where we grew up for the most part, at my grandmother’s house.” She turned toward him, as much as her seat belt would allow. “Unlike you, I have nothing to hide. Bobby and I were both born and raised in Georgia. My father passed away when I was twelve. My mom remarried quickly—way too soon for decency—and Bobby became my little brother. I was a little over thirteen and he was eight years old at the time. I helped take care of him.”
She twisted back around and became interested in the passing scenery as she continued, “Bobby and I spent most of our youth at Gram Ramsey’s house. We had what everyone now refers to as a dysfunctional family. Our parents were, and still are, pretty much gambling addicts. They traveled a lot and we stayed at my grandmother’s house.”
This time the chatter was laced with an undertone of hurt and regret and it made Ned even more curious about Mary Grace. But he clamped down on the sudden protective instinct that rose to the surface as she matter-of-factly discussed a childhood that had to have been fraught with heartache.
He empathized with her pain more than he wanted to and it was time to get the conversation back on track. He had to find Bobby.
“Why would Bobby go to Georgia? If his family lives there, that’s the first place anyone would look for him.”
Relief hit him full force when he glanced at her. The right side of her mouth kicked up and the challenge was back in her eyes.
“You ever been to a swamp, Mountain Man?”
He had fought the enemy plenty of times in a swamp, but decided to let her win this round. For some foolish reason—a reason he didn’t examine too closely—he wanted to see the now-familiar smirk back on her face.
His hands relaxed on the steering wheel as he turned onto the road leading to the airport. “There’s a first time for everything.”
After waving his hand at the guy at the gate, he pulled onto the tarmac right up next to the plane.
Mary Grace gave him an incredulous look. “You can’t just drive onto the tarmac without permission, and don’t we need to go inside and see about the car return and go through security?”
He grabbed her hand, stopping her. “The car will be taken care of and we don’t need to go through security. Stay close to me until we’re on the plane.”
She stared at him for a full minute, then pulled her hand away, her eyes narrowing. “Is this legal? Am I going to end up in jail?”
He couldn’t help it, he grinned through his beard. “Everything is legal, and no, you won’t end up in jail.”
She stared at him a moment longer. “Who are you?” she asked, then grumbled, “Never mind. I’m sure it’s classified.”
She didn’t sound as if she believed him, but after he called Krieger, she and TB did follow him onto the tarmac toward the plane. He stopped halfway there when the fine hair on his nape rose. Mary Grace ran into his back and he pulled her under his arm. Smart woman that she was, she didn’t fight the maneuver.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice muffled under his heavy fleece jacket.
“Stay close to me and run when I say go.”
The instinctual warning system that had saved his life on
more than one occasion was screaming a red-hot alert. He took two more steps, moving them closer to the plane before he gave a quiet command. “Go. Now.”
Mary Grace shot out from under his arm, clamored up the steps and barely got through the door before Ned heard a ping on the steps leading into the plane. He took a giant leap forward and slipped into the plane before the sniper could take another shot. Unfortunately, he still didn’t know whom they were shooting at—him or Mary Grace. The bullet could have been meant for either one of them. But the one thing he was sure of was that they needed to get out of there before the sniper found a way to ground them...and finish the job.
FIVE
Mary Grace’s heart thundered ominously inside her chest as she cleared the open door of the plane. Someone had shot at her. Again! A dangerous mixture of fear, adrenaline and fury had her whirling around as soon as she got safely away from the door. She released an undignified oomph when she hit a rock-solid wall of muscle. Ned hissed out a frustrated breath as she slammed into his chest, then caught her by the arms when she bounced off.
Tinker Bell yelped inside the dog carrier strapped to Mary Grace. Horrified she might have injured her dog, she lifted her from the pouch and held her high. Krieger whimpered at Mary Grace’s feet and the tiny dog responded with a half-felt snarl.
Assured her dog was okay, Mary Grace took a relieved breath and placed her on the floor of the plane, then allowed both the dog carrier and the backpack to slide off her shoulders onto the carpet. Jerking her gaze toward Ned, she looked up, way up, and snarled herself. She felt as tiny as her dog standing in front of the six-and-a-half-foot giant and she wasn’t used to feeling intimidated.
Still shaken up from the close call, her words came out sharper than intended. “Don’t you think we better get out of here before whoever is out there shoots the fuselage?”
He nodded curtly and disappeared into the cockpit.
Mary Grace put on a brave act for Ned, but the seriousness of their situation shook her to the core. She prayed that Bobby was someplace safe and that no one was trying to harm him.