by Cindi Myers
She’s undercover to expose a cult leader. He’s on a mission to save his family.
Officer Jake Lohmiller can’t believe the dark-haired, self-contained woman who earlier caught his eye was able to get the drop on him. Or that Carmen Redhorse is an undercover Ranger Brigade sergeant investigating the same Colorado cult his mother and sister are in. When a sniper opens fire on the encampment, the two join forces to bring down a killer. But even as the danger—and the death count—escalates, Jake sees the possibilities of teaming up with the smart, sexy cop on a permanent basis. If they can make it out alive…
The Ranger Brigade: Family Secrets
Carmen pulled away from him, resisting the urge to rub the place on her arm where he had touched her, where she imagined she could still feel the heat of his hand.
“You can insist all you want, but I’m not going to help you.”
“One thing I learned reading Metwater’s writings is that he hates cops,” he said. “What do you think he’ll do if I tell the cult leader he’s got one living with him, lying about who she is and spying on him?”
“I could have you arrested for interfering with an investigation,” she said.
“You could. But you’d have to deal with Metwater first.” He removed his sunglasses and she found herself held by the intensity of his sapphire-blue eyes. His voice was a low, sexy rumble she was sure was intentional. “I’m thinking maybe you would prefer to deal with me.”
SOLDIER’S
PROMISE
Cindi Myers
Cindi Myers is the author of more than fifty novels. When she’s not crafting new romance plots, she enjoys skiing, gardening, cooking, crafting and daydreaming. A lover of small-town life, she lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in the Colorado mountains.
Books by Cindi Myers
Harlequin Intrigue
The Ranger Brigade: Family Secrets
Murder in Black Canyon
Undercover Husband
Manhunt on Mystic Mesa
Soldier’s Promise
The Men of Search Team Seven
Colorado Crime Scene
Lawman on the Hunt
Christmas Kidnapping
PhD Protector
The Ranger Brigade
The Guardian
Lawman Protection
Colorado Bodyguard
Black Canyon Conspiracy
Rocky Mountain Revenge
Rocky Mountain Rescue
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jake Lohmiller—This army veteran grew up rough on the streets of Houston and will do whatever it takes to look after his ailing mom and little sister. He’s slow to reveal his secrets but fiercely loyal to those he cares about.
Carmen Redhorse—The only female member of the Ranger Brigade grew up in a proud Ute family who had high expectations for their beauty-queen daughter. Her parents want her to return to the reservation to work for the Tribal Police and to marry the police chief, but Carmen wants to prove herself on her own.
Phoenix—Jake’s mother has taken a new name and put her past behind her as a member of Daniel Metwater’s Family. She hides her poor health out of fear that her hard-won happiness will be taken from her.
Sophie—Jake’s little sister is thrilled to see her brother again but worried about what the future holds for her and her mother.
Daniel Metwater—The self-appointed Prophet is used to being in charge, but murder has taken one of his followers and he fears the murderer will come for him next. Is his fear related to his brother’s death at the hand of the Russian Mafia, or has Daniel double-crossed the wrong person?
Werner Altbusser—Head of an international smuggling group that sells rare cacti to collectors willing to pay thousands of dollars for a single specimen, Werner comes across as an innocent tourist, but the business partner he cheated has other ideas about the direction the business should go and what will become of Werner and everyone who works with him.
Karol Petrovsky—Werner’s former business partner never got what he felt was a fair share of the money from the cacti smuggling. He intends to take over and will deal harshly with anyone who stands in his way.
Starfall—No one is sure why this young woman is following Daniel Metwater, since she doesn’t seem to adore him the way his other female disciples do. Starfall has her own agenda and is always on the lookout for a way to make money, whether it’s collecting cacti for a smuggler or blackmailing the Prophet himself. But her grasping ways may have gotten her in over her head this time.
For Morgan and Erik
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Excerpt from Into the Night by Cynthia Eden
Chapter One
Jake Lohmiller raised the binoculars to his eyes and studied the group of women who moved along the rim of the canyon. Wind sent their colorful cotton skirts fluttering, so that they reminded Jake of butterflies, flitting among the wild roses that perfumed the air. The women were gathering rose hips and wild raspberries, the murmur of their voices drifting to him on the wind, their words indistinct.
He shifted his elbow to dislodge a pebble that was digging into his flesh and trained the glasses on a dark-haired woman. Her long, straight black hair, high cheekbones and bronzed skin set her apart from the mostly fair-skinned redheads, blondes and brunettes around her. She seemed out of place, not just because of her appearance, but because of the way she carried herself. She moved slightly behind the other women, her movements both deliberate and graceful, her bearing wary. Jake sensed a tension in her, like a cat poised to spring.
She stopped at the corner post of a falling-down fence that ran alongside the path the women were following, and turned to stare across the high desert landscape of rock, cactus and stunted trees, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare. Jake ducked down behind the rock outcropping he had chosen as his vantage point, though he knew she couldn’t see him. Not at this distance. Not when he had been so well-trained to not give away his position.
He had been in the Curecanti National Recreation Area in southwest Colorado for three days, watching the women, learning their routines and habits, and planning his next move. The dark-haired woman turned away and hurried to catch up with the others, and Jake shifted his attention to the oldest woman in the group—a slight, very fair blonde with almost-white hair and light blue eyes. She went by the name Phoenix these days, the latest in a string of names and nicknames she had gone by over the years. He tried to read her mood, to guess what she was thinking or feeling, but at this distance he could tell nothing except that she looked fairly healthy—something that hadn’t been the case the last time he had seen her. He clenched his jaw, struggling against the mixture of love and anger that warred in him whenever he thought about her.
He shifted again, focusing this time on
the youngest member of the group, and his jaw relaxed. Sophie was growing up to be a pretty young woman, her long brown hair plaited in a single braid that hung to her shoulder blades. She laughed at something one of the others said, and Jake’s heart clenched, aching at the sound. The last time he had seen her, she had been ten and crying. Four years had changed her in so many ways, but it cheered him to see her looking so happy, especially since he hadn’t expected it—not here.
The women moved on until they were out of the visual field of his binoculars. The silence of the wilderness closed in around him, with only the rattle of the wind in dry tree branches reminding him that he hadn’t suddenly gone deaf. He put away the binoculars, then stretched out on his back, the shadow of the boulder keeping the sun off his face. He ignored the hardness of the dry ground and focused on reviewing all the information he had gathered so far. It was time to complete his mission. He had to make contact with Phoenix and Sophie and persuade them to leave with him. But he had to do it without raising alarm. And preferably without attracting any attention from the local cops.
A shadow fell across his torso, and the crunch of a leather sole on gravel had him lurching to his feet, reaching for the weapon at his side. “Keep your hands where I can see them!” a woman’s voice commanded.
He held his hands out from his sides and stared at the dark-haired woman. Obviously, she had left the group and circled around, but how had she managed to sneak up on him? Had he gotten so rusty in the months since he had left his unit in Afghanistan? He must have, because, in all the time he had been watching her, he had never noticed the handgun she was aiming at him now.
* * *
CARMEN REDHORSE KEPT her weapon trained on the man who stood opposite her, thankful that he was cooperating with her orders. He was a big, powerful-looking man, young and strong, and he seemed at home here in this rugged environment. He held his hands at his sides, and his gaze remained focused on her, his manner calm, though it struck her as the calm of a predator who doesn’t feel a threat from a weaker opponent rather than that of a man who has nothing to worry about. “Who are you, and what are you doing out here, spying on us?” she asked.
“Who are you, and why should I answer your question?” His expression and the tone of his voice betrayed nothing. She judged he was about six feet tall, lean and muscular. His erect posture, close-cropped hair and deep tan pegged him as a military man—either still on active duty or only recently discharged. An officer, she guessed—he had the air of a man who was used to being in charge.
“I’m the woman who has a gun trained on you,” she said. “Trust me, I know how to use it.” Until she knew more about him and what he was up to, she wasn’t going to let him distract her. “I need you to very slowly remove your weapon from the holster and place it on the ground in front of you.”
He hesitated, then did as she asked, his attention focused on her, though she couldn’t see his eyes clearly behind the dark aviator sunglasses he wore. He straightened, some of the stiffness gone out of his posture. “What is a cop doing way out here?” he asked.
“What makes you think I’m a cop?” she asked.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Everything from your choice of weapon to the way you handle it—not to mention the way you bark out commands—says law enforcement. And not a rookie, either.” He shifted his weight, still keeping his hands in view. “So what are you doing in Daniel Metwater’s cult?”
His word choice—cult instead of group or, as Metwater preferred, Family—told her he wasn’t a fan of the trust-fund millionaire turned itinerant preacher, who was camped with his followers on public land. The women she had been foraging with were part of Metwater’s faithful. “What I’m doing here isn’t your concern,” she said. “And you haven’t answered my question—what are you up to? And I’ll need to see some ID.”
“My wallet is in my back pocket,” he said.
“Take it out slowly, and hand it over.”
He did as she asked. She studied the Texas driver’s license. “Jacob Lohmiller,” she read. Twenty-seven years old, with an address in Houston. She glanced across at the Veteran ID. Army—so she had been right about that. And he had been discharged only four months before. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Lohmiller.”
“Are you conducting some kind of undercover operation with Metwater’s bunch?” Lohmiller asked, accepting his wallet from her and returning it to his pocket. “Are they involved in something criminal?”
The Ranger Brigade—a multidisciplinary task force charged with law enforcement on Colorado’s public lands—had suspected Daniel Metwater’s involvement in more than one crime, but so far they had found little evidence to support their suspicions. Carmen was ostensibly with the group now, posing as a new convert in order to verify that the group’s women and children were not subject to any kind of abuse. She had lobbied hard to take a closer look at the group after a young woman who had been associated with them had died. Her commander had agreed to give her a week, all the time he could spare from the Rangers’ other duties. Four days of that week had passed, and Carmen was just beginning to win the other Family members’ trust. She couldn’t afford to have Lohmiller blow her cover.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again. “Why were you watching us just now?”
“As you said, this is public land. Maybe I came out here for a hike.”
She glanced at the pack that lay in the shade of the boulder he had been stretched out beside. “So you were hiking, and you saw a group of women and decided to take a closer look.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“How long have you been in the area?” she asked. “Where are you staying? Do you have a vehicle, and where is it parked?”
“Why all the questions?” he asked.
“A man focused on a group of women, a man who refuses to account for himself, makes me suspicious. I wonder what I would learn if I brought you in for questioning.”
“I flew in to Montrose four days ago,” he said. “I’ve been hiking and camping out here ever since. I have a truck parked at my campsite not far from here.”
She nodded. “So, again—why were you watching us?”
“How did you know I was watching you?” he asked.
“I had that sensation of being watched,” she said. “I saw a bird startle from your hiding place and decided to take a closer look.”
He looked away and mumbled what might have been a curse word. She waited, the gun pointing toward the ground now, but still in her hand.
“I came here to check on a couple of Metwater’s followers,” he said. “To make sure they’re all right.”
“Which members?” she asked.
“A woman who calls herself Phoenix and a girl, Sophie. I don’t think she’s taken one of their loopy nicknames yet.”
“You know Phoenix and Sophie?” She knew of a couple of families who had sent private detectives to check up on their loved ones at the camp, but the forty-something blonde and her fourteen-year-old daughter had never mentioned any other family to Carmen.
Lohmiller squared his shoulders. “Phoenix—her real name is Anna—is my mom. Sophie is my half sister.”
It was Carmen’s turn to be surprised. “Phoenix is your mother?” The woman looked scarcely old enough to have a son Lohmiller’s age, and he didn’t resemble her at all.
“She had me when she was sixteen.”
“There’s nothing to prevent you from walking into camp and visiting your mother and sister,” Carmen said. “Why skulk around in the wilderness?”
“I needed to assess her situation, determine the lay of the land and formulate a plan for getting them away from here.”
Again, his choice of words was telling. He spoke like a man on a mission. “What exactly did you do in the service, Mr. Lohmiller?” she asked.
“Army Rangers.”
She might ha
ve guessed. “Your mother is an adult, free to make her own decisions and, by extension, decisions for her daughter,” she said. “I’ll admit, a wilderness camp with no running water or other facilities is not my first choice for a place to live, but it’s her choice. Neither she nor Sophie are in any danger that I’ve been able to determine. Or are you aware of something I’m not? Some circumstance you believe puts them in danger?”
“No particular circumstance, no. But my mother doesn’t have a history of making wise choices.”
“Wise and dangerous are two different things.”
“As you said, my mother is free to make her own decisions, but my sister is not. And the so-called wilderness paradise Daniel Metwater likes to brag about is no place for her.”
Carmen thumbed the safety on her weapon and shoved it into the waistband of her skirt. Later, she’d replace it in the holster strapped to her thigh beneath the long, loose skirt. For all his obvious agitation and coiled energy, she didn’t sense that Jake Lohmiller was any threat to her. “I’ve talked to Sophie, and she’s not unhappy. She’s being homeschooled, she’s healthy, and she seems to have a great relationship with her mother.” So far, nothing Carmen had learned in her time with the Family had pointed to any abuse or neglect, though she couldn't shake the feeling that life in the camp wasn’t as rosy as Metwater and his followers liked to paint. The truth was, a week probably wasn’t long enough to get a real picture for what was going on. She didn’t look forward to returning to her commander with nothing to show for her efforts.
Lohmiller scowled. “What about that creep, Metwater?”
“What about him?”
“I’ve checked him out. I’ve read his blog and newspaper articles about him—everything I could find online. And I’ve been watching him for a few days now. He collects beautiful women the way some men collect cars. How long before he starts eyeing Sophie?”
His words sent a shiver through Carmen. “I’m sure your mother would never let anything happen to Sophie.”