Wild Montana

by Danica Winters

“You thinking about the bikers?” Steel asked, pulling him out of the nightmare of his thoughts. “We’re lucky they wanted to talk to us. It’s amazing what happens when you’re the highest bidder.”

  “Sure,” Casper said, looking out the window as they flew over the crystal-clear lake. “I know I should feel lucky, thankful even...but it just doesn’t sit right. We weren’t that close to bringing down charges on them for stealing the Blue, or for selling drugs. It just wasn’t enough motivation to drive them to work with us. There has to be something else going on here.”

  Steel gave him a knowing look. “Let’s not look this gift horse in the mouth.”

  He was right, but that didn’t make the knot in Casper’s gut disappear. “This’s going to come back and bite us in the ass—you don’t need to lose your job over this.”

  “And neither do you.”

  “My job doesn’t matter. The only thing that I care about right now is getting Lex back safe and unharmed. If she’s hurt... You might have to put the cuffs on me yourself.”

  Steel drew in a long breath. “Whatever happens up there, Lawrence, we’re in this together. Thick and thin, I got your back.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The world was black, and for a surreal moment Lex wondered if this was what it was like to be in the world of the blind. She drew in a breath, pulling the scent of pine and earth deep into her lungs. Wherever she was, it didn’t carry the mineral-rich aroma of heated rock, or the leftover greasy scents of cooking that always seemed to permeate the chalet at the end of the season.

  A damp chill wafted against her skin. Was she outside? No. She sat back slightly and her back brushed up against crumbling dirt. Sliding her foot to the right, it hit a wall. She had to be enclosed, but where?

  Maybe in a place with an opening...somewhere that let in natural air. Perhaps a cave?

  She racked her brain, trying to think of a cave that she knew of near the chalet, but nothing came to mind.

  Her hands ached from being tied behind her back, and she tugged at the rough rope, but it only made slivers of the rope dig farther into her skin. Her wrists burned, but she kept moving, and the rope loosened incrementally.

  “Sit still,” a man ordered. She thought she recognized the voice, but she couldn’t put a name to it.

  A wave of light slipped through her blindfold as the man’s footsteps shuffled on the dirt floor. He must have been standing in a doorway.

  The pump house. They were keeping her in the chalet’s pump house, but why? Were they hiding her? Was there someone coming, or was the place simply the first thing they had thought of to keep her out of sight?

  She tucked her feet under her.

  “I told you to sit still. If I have to tell you again, you’ll get another lump on your head.”

  She stopped moving. Her fingers brushed against the edge of her pant leg. Running her fingers up the leg, she touched the L-shaped hole that Casper had mended. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and rolled it back and forth. In a strange way, the simple action calmed her and her thoughts wandered to Casper.

  He couldn’t possibly know what was going on here. She barely knew what was happening—or why. There wasn’t a single chance that anyone was going to come save her. Whatever happened was up to her. She had to be strong. She traced the stitches. Casper was with her, at least in spirit. She could feel him there, just as if he was beside her.

  “Why am I here?” she asked the man who was standing guard.

  “Shut up. You’re not here to talk. You’re just making this harder on yourself.”

  She couldn’t understand that in any way. He was the one making it hard on her. He was the one who had kidnapped her. None of this was her fault.

  Waiting a few minutes, she spoke up again. “How’s Travis?” The question was simple and decidedly safe—or so she hoped.

  The man shuffled his feet as though he was trying to decide whether or not to answer her.

  “Is he alive?” she pressed.

  “Travis’ll be fine, and a heck of a lot better off than you.”

  “Did you get him medical attention? It looked like he broke his ankle. He needs to see someone as soon as possible.”

  “Look, Lex, if you were smart, the person you’d be worried about here is yourself. Yours is the ass that’s really on the line.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He snickered. “If you stopped to think about anyone besides yourself and the little melodrama you’ve had over the last few years with Travis, you’d know exactly who I am...and maybe why you’re here. As it is, you and your stupid attitude have gotten you nothing but trouble. Now it’s time you paid.”

  “My attitude?”

  Normally, when it came to her job, she kept to herself. It kept her out of the politics and away from the gossip mill. If anything, her attitude had been a healthy thing—especially when she and Travis had gone through their divorce.

  “You always thought you were so much better than everyone. They all call you Wonder Woman behind your back, you know that, right?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, if there’s some amazing feat that needs to be done, we just call Wonder Woman. You always make a point of having all the answers. You’re so self-righteous. You never screw anything up. It’s freaking annoying.”

  She wasn’t following his logic in the slightest. “If I’m so-called Wonder Woman, then why did Dragger pull me off the case?” As she spoke, a thought struck her. Had Dragger pulled her because he didn’t want her to solve it? Was he somehow involved in all of this?

  The man laughed again, the sound low and menacing. “You can ask him yourself when he comes back. From what I hear, it may be the last chance you’ll get to talk to anyone, so you better make sure you ask any questions you want answers to ’cause the only person you’ll be talkin’ to is God himself when Dragger’s done.”

  She couldn’t think of anything that she’d ever done to make Dragger hate her. Why would he want to kill her?

  “You guys don’t have to kill me. I don’t know anything. I won’t talk to anyone.” She hated begging, but panic filled her. “I promise.”

  “You are too much of a Goody Two-shoes to make me actually buy in to what you’re saying. You couldn’t even let the bear-mauling go.” The man must have leaned against the door frame—she heard wood creaking beneath him. “Just think about it. If you’d just let things go and let our guys do what they do, the case would have been done and over with. You could be safe now. But no. You always have to go the extra mile. You always have to make the rest of us look bad.”

  “You look bad all on your own, John,” she said, finally placing the man’s voice.

  “Screw you, Alexis.” The man didn’t deny his identity. He was the other ranger who’d helped recover Razor’s body.

  This must have had to do with her investigation, but how? What did he and Dragger have to do with it?

  She rolled Casper’s mend between her fingers. Silently, she wished he was here. He’d know how to get them out of this mess.

  Outside, there was the sound of Travis’s voice. He sounded upset, his tone deep and dark, but she couldn’t quite make out his words.

  “Is Travis okay?” she asked, hoping this time John would give her more.

  “Your ex-husband is just fine. He just needs to shut his damned mouth.” John moved, the light shining through her blindfold again.

  “Don’t kill her. We already paid the MC—they got what they wanted. There has to be another way to get around this. There has to be,” Travis shouted.

  “What’s he talking about?” Lex asked. She moved to her left, and her body rubbed against the cold rock wall.

  “Don’t worry about it,” John growled. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He stepped out and t
here was the sound of a door slamming behind him.

  She was back in the blinding darkness. Her only company was her nagging fear that the next time the door opened, death would be there to greet her.

  * * *

  THEY LOWERED THE HELICOPTER, the stone-sided chalet growing larger as they neared. A man stood out in the only flat area and raised a rifle. He shouted something, but they couldn’t hear him above the sound of the chopping blades and the motor.

  The pilot glanced down. “You guys know him?”

  “No,” Casper said, his voice grainy in the mic.

  “Either he’s going to have to move, or we’re not going to be able to land. I did see another small clearing we could use, but it’s about a mile back.”

  “No. We’re not leaving her here with these men any longer than necessary. Land this sucker.”

  The pilot gave him a stiff nod, but even behind his sun visor, Casper could see the strain in his face.

  The man beneath them motioned for someone else, and another man, a taller one, with wider shoulders and a paunch belly sauntered out of the chalet. He took one look at them and flipped them the bird.

  “Huh, so we’re not going to get the royal welcome,” Steel said, pulling out his sidearm and motioning for Casper to do the same. “If you want to save her, we may have to fight.”

  “With two of them out there in our landing zone, there’s no way I’m going to be able to get any lower—and if they start shooting, I’m going to have to bug out. We can’t put the bird at risk. Not if we want to make it out of this alive,” the pilot said.

  At their feet was a long rope, the type used for rappelling.

  “You up for the ride of a lifetime?” Casper asked Steel, motioning toward the rope.

  “I haven’t done that since my training at Glynco. I guess it’s about time to brush up on my skills,” Steel said with a laugh.

  They hurried to put on their rigging and Casper took his position at the door. “You got my six?”

  Steel nodded. “You better hit the ground with a round in the chamber. Right now they are like trapped animals. It’s going to be hard to tell what they’ll do. They’re desperate.”

  Steel hadn’t needed to tell him. He was more than aware how deep they were in this. One mistake and none of them would make it to the end of the day. They would disappear, or become “victims of a helicopter accident,” and no one besides the men responsible would be the wiser.

  Casper jumped out the door. The rope whirred through his hands until he was far enough from the copter to slow his descent, but even then the rope burned his skin. He needed to get down there, get his boots on the ground and save the woman he loved.

  A bullet zinged through the air and the copter pitched to the left, dragging Casper off course and forcing him to hang on to the rope for the lifeline it was. Steel was sitting at the copter’s door, his legs out, taking aim at the men who’d tried to wing him.

  His shot cracked through the air.

  Casper slipped down the rope, taking the momentary cover that Steel was providing.

  His feet touched the ground and he unclipped from the rope and pulled out his gun. There, just out of range, stood the man who’d been on the mountainside when they’d recovered Razor’s body. John. The bastard pointed his gun at him, but the man next to him grabbed him by the arm and shook his head, motioning toward the helicopter and Steel. “Take them out first,” the man yelled.

  “You got it, Dragger!” The man took aim and his shot split through the air. There was a metallic tang as it struck the bird.

  Dragger... Alexis’s boss? He was in on this?

  White-hot rage burned through him.

  It made perfect sense. It was why he’d sent Lex up on the longest and most dangerous trail to the chalet, and it was why he called her off the case... Ultimately, everything came back to him.

  Casper had been so stupid in letting Lex walk into the trap her coworkers had created.

  Sometimes your worst enemies were those you thought were your friends.

  Dragger took aim at the helicopter, but before he could squeeze off a shot, the helicopter cut to the left and whipped out of the hot zone. They moved west, likely toward the safe landing area a mile away. Casper was on his own. Alone with two gunmen.

  Two men with guns were never going to be enough to stop him, not when it came to saving Lex.

  “Lower your weapons!” He raised his gun over the top of the rock, taking aim squarely at Dragger’s center of mass. “I can guarantee that this isn’t going to end well for you if you don’t put down your guns.”

  John looked over at Dragger like he was waiting for an order, but Dragger didn’t budge.

  “Look, Lawrence, you don’t have to get wrapped up in all of this. This doesn’t concern you.”

  “It does concern me. You don’t get to kidnap the woman I care about and then expect that I’m not going to gut you.”

  “Gut us?” Dragger laughed. “In case you didn’t notice, you’re outmanned and outgunned. You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it out of this alive. So why don’t you play it smart and listen to what I have to offer... Or we can just kill you now and get it over with. Your choice.” He flagged the gun in Casper’s general direction as he spoke.

  Casper was within his rights to pull the trigger and kill Dragger, but he held back—this wasn’t like the last time he pulled the trigger. He only saw two men, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t more men in the wings...or with Lex. If he took the shot, it wasn’t just his life at risk—he might be putting Lex even further into danger.

  “What do you want from me?” Casper asked.

  “See, I told you he’d come around, boss,” John said.

  Dragger shut him up with the wave of a hand. “Why did you come up here, Lawrence?”

  He thought for a moment before he answered, fully aware that the wrong answer could end up getting him killed. “I wanted to save Lex.”

  “It wasn’t to cart us off to prison?”

  It was, without a single doubt, but he held back from saying so. “My main concern is Lex. I need to know she’s safe before we can discuss anything else. Got it?”

  Dragger turned to John. “Go get her.”

  John ran off in the direction of a small building east of the chalet.

  “You didn’t really answer my question, Lawrence. Don’t think I didn’t notice.” Dragger lowered his gun slightly, almost as if his arm was growing tired. “How did you know we were here?”

  “The tooth fairy told me.”

  “Told you what, exactly?” Dragger gave him an appraising look as if he were trying to understand how much trouble he was in.

  There was untapped potential in his ignorance. For once, it wasn’t Casper who was in the dark—and he could play this to his advantage and maybe get the confession he needed to bring this guy and his crew to justice.

  “I heard all about your dealings, Dragger. You have one heck of a racket going. How much money did you pull in this summer running the Canadian Blue?”

  “We would have gotten a whole lot more if you hadn’t gotten in the way.”

  “How much did we cost you?” Casper continued.

  “Close to 140k.”

  “That’s just a drop in the bucket over the summer, isn’t it?”

  “Our Canadian friends charged us for the loss of their guy and they took our cut. They’re threatening to take their business elsewhere. In order to make things right, we told them we’d take care of the loose ends—starting with Lex. Once she’s gone, killing you should be easy.”

  “Assuming I’ll let you hurt her is one hell of a mistake.”

  “Whether you believe me or not, I don’t want to see her killed. She’s a good ranger, but if we don’t do something to ma
ke things right with our business partners, in the end it’s the park that suffers. Half of that money goes into our budget.”

  Casper didn’t believe him—Dragger was no Robin Hood antihero no matter how badly he wanted to convince himself he was. He was a criminal, and more than likely every cent they made landed squarely in his pocket. “Let’s cut the bull. I know you’re not giving the park the money. You’re lining your own pockets.”

  Dragger smirked. “If you’re capable of keeping your mouth shut, you could, too. You could make our whole process a hell of a lot easier. It’d be nice to have someone at the border helping us bring our supplies across. We could quadruple our business.”

  “Depends on what’s on the table.”

  Dragger glanced over at the little building near the chalet. The front door opened and John dragged Lex out by her bound wrists. Casper rushed in their direction, putting himself directly in the line of fire—but he didn’t care.

  “Take your damned hands off her.” He pushed John out of the way and ripped off Lex’s blindfold. He fumbled with the knot of rope at her wrists, but finally managed to break her free. Her wrists were red and raw. “You had no right to treat her like this.”

  John stepped back, a look of fear crossing his face.

  “Lex, are you okay?” Casper asked, wrapping her in his arms.

  She pushed her face into his neck, drawing in a long sigh of relief. She smelled like dirt, sweat and fear and it made the fury inside him grow. The men she worked with and had grown to trust over the years had done everything in their power to break her spirit.

  Every shred of him hated Dragger and John.

  “I’m here. I’m going to get us out of this. Whatever you do, just play along,” he whispered.

  She leaned back and blinked a few times, unaccustomed to the bright light, and gave him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

  “Where’s Travis?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

  “He’s here?” Casper looked around for her ex, but he was nowhere in sight.

  “He came up with me, but his horse threw him. I think he’s hurt somewhere, but you need to watch out. He’s a part of whatever this is.” She nodded toward Dragger.