Montana Secrets

by Charlotte Douglas

  “And,” Ryan said with a frown, “from the lookout, every switchback up the mountain below can be clearly seen. There’s no way to sneak your team up that road. And they’ll spot you coming from miles away if you try an aerial insertion.”

  “I’ll get my team in there,” Bathurst said, “but we’ll need to move now. We’ll meet you on the mountain.”

  Wentworth walked Bathurst to their truck, and Cat watched them conferring briefly before the special agent climbed in and roared away. The colonel returned to the house, went to one of his cartons and pulled out three bulky black items. He tossed one to Ryan, handed another to Cat and kept the third for himself.

  “Kevlar vests,” Wentworth explained. “Bullet-proof. Put these on beneath your clothes, then get your jackets. We don’t want to be late.”

  Cat didn’t have to be persuaded to hurry. The sooner they left, the sooner she’d have her daughter back.

  RYAN PARKED the SUV in a turnaround at the end of the logging road on Lookout Mountain and checked his watch. As anxious as he was to retrieve his daughter, they couldn’t be too early. They had to give Bathurst’s team time to arrive.

  Wentworth had explained the assault plan on the way up the mountain. The scheme seemed doable. The tricky part would be keeping Cat and Megan out of the line of fire. Making sure they were safe would be his job. He’d gotten them into this mess. He intended to get them out. Unharmed.

  Gazing through the windshield, Ryan could see the lookout in crisp detail against the clear Montana sky. The lower floor was a square concrete block building with a window on each side and one door. Inside, a staircase led to the top floor, a lookout tower with four walls of solid windows. He could barely make out a dark form inside.

  “No sign of another vehicle,” Wentworth observed. “They’re obviously not planning their getaway down the road we just used.”

  Ryan nodded toward the trail leading up through the snow. “Those tracks are fresh. At least two or three people climbed that trail recently.”

  Cat stared at the rugged path strewn with rocks and snow, and tears glistened in her eyes. “Megan didn’t have her shoes on. Only bedroom slippers.”

  “Someone carried her,” Ryan assured her. “Otherwise, she would have slowed them down.”

  He didn’t want to consider the possibility that Megan wasn’t there. Or where she might be if she wasn’t.

  Wentworth checked his watch. “Ready?”

  With a grim nod, Ryan opened the door and hopped out. When he helped Cat out, he held her for a moment and whispered in her ear. “Everything’s going to be all right. Just remember what you’re supposed to do.”

  She gazed at him with trusting blue eyes. “I’m ready.”

  His heart swelled with love and pride. Other women in the same situation would be having hysterics by now. Even though he could read her fear for Megan in the tremor in her voice, she gave no other sign of her terror as she squared her shoulders and started up the trail.

  Wentworth adjusted the sling on his arm and followed her. Ryan brought up the rear.

  The trail, a grueling climb at an angle that at times seemed almost perpendicular, presented a formidable obstacle for an older man with the use of only one arm. For the first several yards, while they were still visible to the man in the lookout tower, Ryan assisted Wentworth up the slope. As soon as they reached the cover of the trees, however, the athletic colonel was able to make the climb on his own.

  For the next hour, they hiked in silence. The only sound besides the wind soughing through the evergreens was the occasional rattle of a loose rock skittering down the path and the labored wheeze of their breathing.

  When they neared the top, they paused beneath the trees before stepping onto the exposed ridge that led to the lookout. Ryan couldn’t help remembering Cat’s anxious question on the ride up the mountain.

  “What if they just open fire and mow us down on the ridge?” she’d asked.

  “They won’t,” Wentworth said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because they want to know what Ryan knows and who he’s told,” the colonel replied. “Until they’re satisfied he’s told them everything they need to know, we’re safe.”

  “And Megan, too?” Cat said.

  “Megan’s the bait they’ll use to lure us into the cabin,” the colonel had explained.

  While they caught their breath after the arduous climb, Wentworth adjusted the sling on his arm and repositioned the small twenty-five-caliber automatic he’d hidden in its folds. Ryan checked the commando knife concealed in his boot.

  “When we step into the open,” Wentworth said to Cat, “call to them. Tell them we’re not coming any closer until you’ve seen your daughter and know she’s okay.”

  Cat nodded.

  “Lieutenant, let me lean on you. I’m supposed to be exhausted from making that climb one-handed.”

  “Yes, sir.” In spite of the seriousness of their situation, Ryan had to suppress a smile. Never had he seen anyone looking less weary than the colonel. Wentworth wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “Let us go first,” Ryan said to Cat. In case Wentworth was wrong about the terrorists wanting them alive, he wanted to be between her and the line of fire.

  “Okay.”

  The exertion of the climb had reddened her cheeks, and the mountain wind had tangled her golden blond hair into appealing curls around her face. Her blue eyes sparkled, whether with anticipation at seeing Megan or anxiety, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that Cat had never looked more beautiful, and he had never loved her more than he did this minute.

  With Wentworth leaning on Ryan’s left arm, the men stepped out of the trees onto the exposed ridge that led to the lookout. Ryan eyed the silhouette of the man in the tower, who turned and watched their approach.

  Good, Ryan thought, keep looking this way.

  The door of the first-floor cabin swung open, and a man stepped out with a Russian assault rifle cradled in his arms.

  Ryan and Wentworth halted.

  “I want to see my daughter,” Cat called to the man, but the stiff wind atop the ridge whipped her words away.

  The man motioned with his rifle for them to keep coming, but neither Ryan nor Wentworth nor Cat moved.

  “Show us the girl,” Ryan shouted.

  Another man appeared in the doorway with Megan in his arms.

  “Mommy!” she cried.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Cat called, her voice amazingly steady for someone who, Ryan knew, was scared out of her mind for her daughter’s sake. “We’ve come to take you home.”

  “Now we know she’s okay,” Ryan whispered to Wentworth. He experienced a wave of relief so strong he had to lock his knees to keep them from buckling beneath him.

  “And that there are at least three men altogether,” the colonel muttered under his breath.

  The man with the assault rifle motioned them forward again, and this time, the trio on the ridge bent into the wind and tramped toward the building.

  When they were within a few feet of the cabin, Megan wiggled so fiercely in the man’s grip, he lost his grasp on her. She landed on her feet and flew across the rocky escarpment into Cat’s arms.

  “Search them,” the man with the gun ordered his partner.

  Suddenly the clatter of machine-gun fire and the shattering of glass in the tower above them split the stillness on the ridge.

  From that moment on, for Ryan everything seemed to move in slow motion. Cat shoved Megan to the ground and threw herself over her daughter.

  The man with the rifle glanced toward the broken windows of the lookout. The terrorist in the tower had disappeared. Wentworth used those precious seconds to draw his gun and drill a shot through the gunman’s forehead. He fell backward and lay still.

  The man who’d held Megan fumbled in his coat for his weapon just long enough for Ryan to pull his knife from his boot and jump him. Ryan wrestled the man to the ground and held the knife to his throat. “Don�
��t move.”

  With automatic weapons at the ready, Bathurst and four members of his FBI team burst around the corners of the building. They had climbed the rock face for the assault on the tower and timed their arrival perfectly. The special agent waved two of his men inside.

  “Secure the tower,” he ordered, then tossed Ryan a pair of handcuffs and trained his gun on the captive until Ryan could cuff him. As soon as his prisoner was secure, Ryan grabbed the blanket Megan had dropped in her rush to her mother and covered the body of the terrorist Wentworth had killed.

  He hurried to Cat, who had risen to her feet and was checking Megan for injuries.

  His daughter broke into a huge smile. “Hi, Trace.”

  “You okay, short stuff?”

  Megan nodded, but her expression sobered. “They were bad men. I wanted to go home. They wouldn’t let me.”

  Cat hugged Megan and gazed at Ryan over their daughter’s head. “It’s okay, sweetie. We can go home now.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked Cat.

  Her smile was as dazzling as the sun reflecting off the surrounding snow. “I’m fine.”

  Bathurst approached. “They had a truck and driver waiting at the bottom of the cliff and rappelling equipment at the top to use to escape. We captured their driver. He’s the one who placed the telephone call.”

  “I wanna go home,” Megan said.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be going home just yet.” Wentworth stood beside them.

  “Why not?” Cat asked.

  Ryan felt a sinking in his stomach. He knew what the colonel was about to say.

  “We have choppers coming to fly you to Great Falls,” Wentworth announced. “You’ll be staying at the safe house on the base for a while.”

  Cat frowned. “How long?”

  Wentworth shrugged. “Until we round up the rest of Righteous Sword.”

  “But the ranch—”

  “Don’t worry.” Bathurst had joined them. “I’ll put a team in place to take care of things while you’re gone.”

  The colonel and special agent returned to the lookout. Cat sat on a boulder and pulled Megan onto her lap, and Ryan removed his jacket and wrapped it around his daughter.

  “Where are we going, Mommy?” Megan asked.

  “To visit Grandpa,” Ryan said. “He’s in Great Falls.”

  His answer seemed to mollify Megan’s concerns, but Cat gazed at him with questions in her eyes. Ryan placed his arm around her and pulled her close, but he couldn’t tell her what she needed to hear. If Wentworth and Bathurst’s teams couldn’t ferret out the remainder of the terrorist cell, none of them would ever be safe at High Valley Ranch again.

  LATE THAT NIGHT, Ryan sat in front of the fireplace in the safe house. The choppers had plucked them off the mountaintop, returned them to the ranch to gather their clothes, then flown them to the base at Great Falls.

  Megan had been ecstatic through the entire trip, leaning toward the Plexiglas bubble for a better look at the mountains below. Unlike Megan, Cat had been a white-knuckle flyer who’d been happy to place her feet on solid ground again.

  Gabe had been waiting for them at the house when they arrived. After putting Megan to bed for a nap, Cat had joined the men in the living room while Ryan told Gabe the entire story of his amnesia, the fake identity and the kidnapping attempt by Righteous Sword. His gut had churned with guilt and sorrow at the old man’s expression when Gabe had digested the fact that he and his family might be in hiding for a long, long time.

  “We can’t stay on this base forever,” Gabe said.

  “If the search goes on too long,” Ryan explained, “the government will place us in the witness protection program.”

  Gabe’s eyes had filled with pain. “You mean new identities?”

  Ryan nodded. “And a new location.”

  “But the ranch has been in our family for five generations,” Cat cried. “We can’t just walk away from it.”

  Gabe had reached for his daughter’s hand. “We can if it means staying alive.”

  Remembering, Ryan was assaulted by fresh regret and anger. If he could only remember those last ten days before the bombing, he could point the investigators toward the traitor in the embassy. That man could hold the key to uncovering the rest of the cell.

  He lay his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. The harder he tried to remember, the less he seemed to recall. But he had to do something. Although he knew Cat and Gabe were rejoicing at his miraculous return from the dead, he could gauge as well the grief they felt at being torn from their home and the land they loved.

  Ryan breathed deeply and forced himself to relax. In his mind, he pictured the last memories he held of the days before the bombing. If he could only go forward another day or two…

  A sudden weight landed on his stomach and shattered his concentration. Opening his eyes, he faced Megan, sitting on his lap. Cat stood behind her, watching them both.

  “I came to tell you good-night,” Megan said.

  Her hair was still damp from her bath, and she looked adorable in her pink flannel gown. He ached at the sight of her, knowing the kind of life to which his amnesia had condemned her.

  “Good night, short stuff. Do I get a kiss?”

  She threw her chubby arms around his neck and kissed his lips. His arms tightened around his daughter, and he fought tears, recalling how close he’d come to losing her.

  Megan drew back and studied his face. “Are you crying, Trace?”

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Must be the smoke from the fireplace.”

  Megan was fiddling with the collar of his shirt. “You lost a button. Mommy can get you a new one, can’t you, Mommy.”

  Megan’s observation triggered his recall of Marc’s last words, and they replayed in Ryan’s mind.

  Did Ryan hit the button?

  But Marc had been dying, his speech slurred. He wasn’t talking about buttons at all! Ryan hugged Megan and handed her to her mother. “I have to call Wentworth.”

  “What’s wrong?” Cat asked.

  Ryan couldn’t help grinning. “Nothing’s wrong. I have my memory back. You misunderstood Marc’s last question about me. He wasn’t talking about a button. He wanted to know if I got Derrick Hutton, the traitor in the embassy.”

  For the first time since their arrival in Great Falls, Cat’s face lighted with hope. “You call Wentworth. I’ll put Megan to bed.”

  When she returned a few minutes later, Ryan took her in his arms. “I gave Wentworth Hutton’s name. He and Bathurst are on his trail.”

  She leaned back in his arms and gazed at him. “Then everything’s going to be all right?”

  “I can’t guarantee it,” he said honestly, “but there’s a good chance we’ll be home by Christmas.”

  Her smile warmed him. “What more could a woman want?”

  “I have a few ideas,” he said with a grin, “and they don’t have to wait until December.”

  Epilogue

  Cat stood on the front porch, watching the moon rise over the Cabinet Mountains. Even though it was a late October night, the weather was mild. Yesterday had been mild, too, a perfect Indian summer day. A perfect day for a wedding.

  She and Ryan had been married in her mother’s perennial garden at the ranch. Friends and neighbors from Athens and all over the valley had gathered to join in the celebration.

  The screen door creaked, and in a moment, she felt Ryan slide his arms around her and draw her against him. His chin rested on the top of her head.

  “Having second thoughts, Mrs. Christopher?”

  “I’m just remembering what a wonderful wedding it was. I’m glad we were home in time to hold it outdoors.”

  “You can thank Derrick Hutton for that.”

  “That traitor?” She’d been so busy with plans for the wedding, she hadn’t had time to catch up on the particulars of Hutton’s capture.

  “His attention to details,” Ryan said, “is what
kept his group undiscovered for so long, but in the long run, it was also his undoing. As soon as Wentworth and Bathurst located him, they also found precise records of every member of the cell, their location and all their activities. That’s why they caught them all so quickly.”

  Cat shuddered. “Would Righteous Sword really have used suicide troops to pilot those boats filled with explosives into the Norfolk shipyards?”

  “Hutton was ruthless. Wentworth caught them just in time.”

  “But Hutton is an American. Why did he ally himself with Middle Eastern terrorists?”

  “The man had a vendetta against the United States government. Some problem with his parents’ business. His parents committed suicide as a result, and Hutton blamed America.”

  Cat shook her head. “Hutton’s bitterness caused all that death and destruction.”

  “He won’t bother us again, thank God. And neither will Snake Larson.”

  “What’s happened to Snake?”

  “Gabe brought the news back from town this morning. Snake pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Killed a man in a bar fight in Eureka. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.”

  When she shivered at the news, Ryan tightened his arms around her. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Cat was happy to oblige. “Did you notice Todd Brewster at the wedding yesterday?”

  “He seemed extremely cheerful, considering the woman he wanted for his wife was marrying someone else.”

  Cat smiled. “You can thank Joyce Carruthers, the new home-economics teacher, for his happiness. I noticed how they sat together at supper and danced every dance with each other.”

  “Speaking of happy,” Ryan added, “your dad seems to be on cloud nine.”

  “He has his ranch back and you to help him with it. I was so worried about him after Marc died, but he’s rallying now. He’s putting on weight, and the spring’s back in his step. He’ll never get over missing Marc, but he’s coping better.”

  “Megan helps. She brightens all our lives.” The pride in Ryan’s voice was unmistakable.

  “She’s glad to have her father back.” Cat paused and turned to face him. “But she’s says there’s still someone missing.”