by Julie Miller
“That son of a bitch had the nerve to sit here at this table—”
“Walter.” Joyce Eddington interrupted her husband before he sprang from his chair. “We don’t know what happened yet. We’ll straighten things out with Kyle. We might need his help with Samantha.”
The long-limbed bodyguard gave a reluctant nod. “Grazer was the last person to see her. He said she lost her temper, was behaving irrationally. He called the security team for help.”
Pellegrino confirmed as much. “I’m the one who let him out of the walk-in freezer where she’d locked him up.”
The woman had fire. She’d have to in order to survive this bunch. She was resourceful, too, if she could end an argument with the other guy locked up. And even with a gun to her head, there’d been nothing random about the intel she’d fed them on that video.
But any awareness of those haunting eyes or admiration for his target’s intelligence would be distractions that could derail this mission. “Get back to the abduction.”
Metz continued. “Men were waiting for us in the parking lot.”
“They ambushed you?” With something as spontaneous as an argument to drive her out of the lodge, away from witnesses, the abduction indicated inside knowledge of Samantha and the people around her, or someone monitoring her movements. Like a fiancé. Or a family member. Or a bodyguard.
“The rain masked their approach. Two men pulled me out of the car. I put up a fight, but they knocked me out, removed my weapon. I grabbed my spare sidearm out of the glove compartment as soon as I could get to my feet, but they fired on me. The shots came from a black van. I managed to get off a couple of shots before they turned west onto Highway 22. I called it in to Pellegrino and went after them.”
“Heading into the Bridger-Teton National Forest.” Jason knew the area well. But that was still a lot of miles to cover in a search for the missing woman. “You get a plate number?”
“A partial.” Metz gingerly tapped the swelling at his temple. “My vision was a little out of focus.”
Pellegrino dismissed his employee. “Go outside and keep an eye on Grazer. He’s a loose cannon. I don’t trust the guy.”
“Sir, I want to be part of the team that goes after her,” Metz argued. “She was taken on my watch.”
“Outside. Now.”
Metz’s mouth opened as if he wanted to respond to that directive. But he wisely snapped it shut and headed for the exit. “Yes, sir.”
Pellegrino watched his man leave before taking over the briefing. “You can’t blame him. These guys are pros. Samantha’s cell signal went dead around the time she was taken. The kidnappers used a burner phone we can’t trace.”
“You thinking of hiking up to the high country tonight, Jase?” Marty finally added his voice to the conversation. “I can’t fly the chopper and do a visual search until sunrise. That’s still a lot of ground to cover before that eight o’clock call.”
Pellegrino paced to Jason’s end of the table. “Maybe this will help. As a security measure, Walter had himself and his family chipped with tracking devices.” He pulled up an image on his phone and showed it to Jason. “We tracked Samantha’s to a location at a gas station near the Snake River. Discovered the abandoned black van with the tracking chip still inside it.” Jason gritted his teeth against the picture of a plastic bag holding a tiny microchip that still had bits of blood and tissue clinging to it. That must account for the bandage he’d seen on Samantha’s shoulder in the video. “A local there said a small group of men with a load of cargo switched vehicles to an all-terrain SUV and four Arctic Cats on a trailer. He didn’t get a license plate.”
Snowmobiles. Useless in the mud or on paved roads. That many men and equipment like that left tracks. Tracks and high country just tipped the search into Jason’s favor. If the tip was legit. “Did this local actually see Samantha? Could be a misdirect to throw off any rescue effort.”
Pellegrino pocketed his phone. “He saw crates, rifles, gas cans...and a lumpy, rolled-up rug. Everything else was state of the art. I’m guessing that rug was Samantha.”
Jason nodded. Chances were, he was going to come away from this unsanctioned mission with blood on his hands. But saving Samantha Eddington might go a long way toward atoning for the lives he hadn’t saved in Kilkut. For Elaine Burkhart’s life.
“I’m not a cop,” Jason reminded them. He wouldn’t be bringing these men in for justice. “If I have to break a few rules to extract your daughter—”
“I have friends in the county sheriff’s department,” Eddington assured him. “And the lieutenant governor is an old friend from school. If there’s any trouble, I’ll make sure it goes away.”
Jason wasn’t sure how much faith he’d put in any of these people. But his decision had been made. He pulled his knit cap over his head. Then he opened the duffel bag and tossed a stack of bills across the table to Marty. “Gas up the chopper. I’ll call in once I’ve secured a rendezvous point. You’re flying at first light.”
Marty turned his cap around, tugging the bill into place, a sign he meant business. “I’ll be ready.”
As Marty jogged to the exit, Eddington stood to hand the duffel bag to Jason. “Take it.”
“Money isn’t what I need. Donate it to a veterans’ charity and survivors’ scholarship fund.”
“Done.” Walter extended a hand. After a moment, Jason reached out to take it. He was surprised to feel the older man transfer the chain and locket he’d been holding into the palm of his hand. “So she’ll trust you. Bring my daughter home.”
With a sharp nod, Jason pocketed the necklace and strode out the door, heading to his gray 4x4 pickup. The rain limited his scan for activity up and down the street. He wasn’t surprised to see that Junior and his crew had driven off in their trucks and SUVs. He was surprised that there was no sign of Metz or Grazer. Had they ducked behind the tinted windows of the Eddington limo to avoid the elements? For two men so interested in Samantha Eddington’s well-being—or maybe just their standing with the family—they hadn’t waited around to find out if he’d agreed to Eddington’s rescue request. Unless one or both men had gone off on some fool’s errand to track down Samantha himself. Jason paused with a hand on the scratched-up paint of the truck’s door handle. A wildcard like a guilt-ridden fiancé or eager-to-please bodyguard could be problematic to the speed and focus of his mission tonight.
And his focus was already compromised. He might be dealing with snow instead of sand, freezing nights versus mind-cooking heat—but the resolve to complete this mission was the same. He’d failed Elaine.
He squeezed his eyes shut as if that could blank the memory of the embedded reporter his unit had been sent to rescue. He and Elaine had spent a lot of late nights together, talking about work at first, then home and hopes and how crazy it was that they should find each other and fall in love over in the Heat Locker. Yeah, she’d talked about her affair with her bureau chief back in Stuttgart, and how she ought to feel guilty for getting close to one of the jarheads in the unit she was covering. But for those few weeks they’d been together, those precious nights they’d shared, the world and the war hadn’t mattered. If she hadn’t been so dedicated to putting her job first, she wouldn’t have been taken. If he hadn’t waited for orders to come through before going after her...
“Mr. Hunt? Hold up.” Jason shook off the painful memories, turning to see Dante Pellegrino jog across the street. “Metz isn’t the only one who wants to help make this rescue happen. It’s my job to protect this family. I started this security firm on my own dime. The reputation of my company is at stake here. It’ll put me out of business if we lose Eddington’s daughter, and I can’t afford that.” If Pellegrino was as good as he claimed, Samantha Eddington wouldn’t have been kidnapped in the first place. “What do you need from me and my crew?”
“Nothing.” Jason wasn’t about to trust anyone’s
chain of command but his own. He didn’t care about Pellegrino’s reputation or the financial solvency of his business. All he cared about was a frightened woman with glasses, and putting old nightmares to rest. “The fewer people I’m responsible for, the faster I can move.”
“You don’t want any backup? Weapons? Night-vision goggles? A newer truck to tackle those roads?”
Jason reached into the bed of his truck and picked up one of the logs he stored there to add weight and give the back axle more traction. “This baby’s gotten me through plenty of bad weather and rough terrain.”
Pellegrino thumbed over his shoulder toward the bar, indicating the patrons inside. “You can talk miracle rescues all you want in front of those civilians. But I know the risk you’re taking. You’re going up against dangerous men who don’t care who gets hurt.” Jason watched the drops of rain beading on that ridiculous mustache. “There were at least five men involved in Brandon’s attack and the kidnapping. Probably more. The second they hear your approach, you’ll be a dead man.”
Jason tossed the log into the back of the truck and opened the truck door. “They won’t hear me.”
“No one expects you to go up against those kinds of odds alone. Let us be part of your team. My men are trained to deal with mercenaries like this.”
Jason climbed up behind the wheel. “They’re not trained to deal with that mountain. It’ll be the only ally I need.”
Chapter Four
“Mama?”
Samantha’s shivering and her empty belly filled her sleep with familiar dreams. The sedative working its way through her system morphed those dreams into nightmares.
“Mama, where are you?” She was a little girl again, searching through every room of the house for her mother, smelling her sweet perfume, wondering why she wasn’t coming upstairs to read her a story and tuck her in. All the rooms were dark, every door locked. She heard thumps and footfalls and angry growls from shadowy corners, but she couldn’t see the monsters lurking there. She only knew the monsters were real, lying in wait for a little girl who was all alone.
The house was so cold. Her long hair hardened into shards of ice that poked her neck and shoulders. Her glasses fogged over, and she could barely see. She rattled every doorknob, pounded on wood that wouldn’t budge. She fled from one closed room to another, scratching her way through locks and doors until her hands bled. She threw herself against every barrier, breaking through only to find more darkness. She felt the cold, fetid breath of the monsters as they stirred from the shadows and pursued her.
“Stay away,” she murmured.
She always slept deeply, securely, when her mother sat on the bed beside her, reading until Samantha’s eyes grew heavy and her head tumbled onto her pillow. But tonight, she was running, searching, panicked, bleeding. “Mama?”
She couldn’t sleep. She wanted a story. She wanted to melt into the warmth and softness of her mother’s body next to hers. She wanted to hear that gently articulate voice in her ears, filling up her head with magic and science, imaginary worlds and characters whose ideas and adventures Samantha wanted to be part of one day.
But she couldn’t find her mother. Her tears had frozen on her cheeks. Her pajamas itched against her skin, and every desperate step she took hurt. She was trapped in the darkness. Trapped with monsters, alone and afraid. A cold hand closed around her arm, but she shook it off. Ran. “I can’t find you, Mama. Help me.”
And then she found a door with light blazing outward from every crack around it. Someone was awake. Someone was alive. She wasn’t alone.
“Mama!” Samantha ran, raw nerves stabbing her frozen feet with every step. But hands reached for her from the shadows. Fingers, gnarled like tree limbs, crawled against her skin and tangled in her broken hair. Large hands, strong and unforgiving, closed around her arms and dragged her back into the darkness. “No!”
She fought against the hands. Shoved. Twisted.
The darkness exploded with a loud crash and Samantha screamed. Only the sound stopped up her ears and rang against her skull. She fought to get to the light. Fought to get to her mother. To warmth. To safety.
The shadows closed in all around her, suffocated her. The terrible hands pulled her down, down, snatching at her, grasping her, burying her in the darkness.
“Mama!” she cried out, the timbre of her voice sounding wrong. Older. Deeper. Hoarser.
“Quiet.” Not a sound of comfort. Something deeper. More dangerous. A warning.
Too many hands, reaching, grabbing, wanting a piece of a little girl who’d already lost the most precious thing in her life.
False hands, pretending to love her, but offering pain and betrayal, using her.
Rough hands, lifting her off her feet, pushing her inside a van, stealing her ability to see. Hands that didn’t care if she was hurt or cold or tired or afraid. Too many hands.
Samantha squirmed and twisted and kicked against the nightmare.
The monster cursed.
“Damn it, woman. I’m not hurting you.”
She fought through the dark fog of her brain. She fought for her mama, fought for her freedom. Fought against her kidnappers.
She was trapped, pinned beneath the heavy weight of all that she had lost, of everything she feared, everything that controlled her. Samantha battled the hands in her dream, wrestling with monsters as she came awake, screaming.
Her eyes opened to the reality of two granite-colored eyes inches above her face, eyes that seemed to capture the haze of moonlight reflecting off the snow outside and glow in the dusty air of the cabin. Such mysterious, masculine eyes.
A man was on top of her. A very large man, with shoulders that filled up the limits of her vision, and hips that pinned her to the floor in the most intimate of positions. A long, muscular thigh was wedged between hers, and something cold and hard poked against her hip. Her arms were splayed over her head on the twisted rag rug where she must have struggled with him. He needed only one hand to pin her cinched-up wrists in place. The other hand had a hard grip on her mouth, cheeks and jaw, absorbing every sound she made. He used the rest of his body to keep her still. It was an effective tool. His chest was as solid and unforgiving as the thick wood planks of the cabin floor.
Her nostrils flared with shock, but her lungs refused to expand. What was happening? Was she still dreaming? Was this a side effect of the drug-induced sleep she’d slipped in and out of for the past several hours?
One of the monsters from her nightmare had caught her.
Samantha squeezed her eyes shut, then blinked them open again. He was still there. This monster was real, pinning her to the floor, his warm breath brushing across her cheek. Clarity rushed in along with fear and the awareness of just how completely vulnerable she was, crushed beneath the weight of the big man’s body. His muscular thigh pressed with humiliating familiarity against the most feminine part of her, igniting sensations she didn’t want to feel.
Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. She tried to speak, but her mouth and jaw were anchored shut by his hard, leather-gloved hand.
Was this some new torture her kidnappers were playing on her? Was rape now on the list of assaults that included threats, guns and drugs?
Only, her kidnappers didn’t have faces. They all wore masks. And this man very definitely had a face. Not a handsome one. But taut, compelling, dangerous. Even the dusting of a dark brown beard across his jaw and neck didn’t soften the rugged contours of the facade that could have been carved from the same granite that colored his eyes.
A grizzly bear of a man.
“You’re awake. No more kicking. And do not scream again,” he warned. Her kidnappers didn’t have hushed, deep-pitched voices that vibrated from their chests into hers, either.
Samantha nodded her compliance, inhaling a shallow breath as he removed his hand and propped it on the braided rug
beside her head. When he released her arms, she pulled her hands beneath her chin, trying to wedge some space between her body and his. The fact that his hips and chest still pressed into hers indicated that he didn’t entirely trust her. The feeling is mutual, buddy.
“Samantha Eddington?”
She nodded again.
“You hurt? Concussion? Broken bones? Internal injuries?”
She tapped her fingers against the sandpapery stubble of beard that darkened his chin, the only part of him she could reach in this position. “Can’t breathe.”
He did a push-up, shifting his weight off her, and she sucked in a much-needed breath of air, filling her nose with the scents of pine and cold coming off his clothes and skin. “Scrapes and bruises as far as I can tell.” Her voice came out in a crackly rasp. “A little dizzy from the sedatives. Sore throat.”
In a surprisingly graceful movement for such a large man, he grasped the hand she’d touched him with and helped her sit up as he shoved aside a limp body that lay on the rug beside her.
A body?
The moment he released her, Samantha scooted away on her bottom, retreating until her back hit the log-and-plaster wall. Whether she was fleeing him or the lump of man at her feet, though, she wasn’t sure. She dragged her knees up to her chest, making sure her bare toes didn’t touch the lifeless man.
“Who are you? Is he dead? Did you kill him? Did you kill the other guard? There were two of them.” But she couldn’t hear either one of them now. A chill of absolute panic shivered across her skin, despite the lightweight coat that covered her arms. Had she just switched one kind of terror for something new? Where had this mountain man come from, and what did he want with her? “Are you going to kill me?”
“No,” he answered, tucking a gag into the limp man’s mouth and dragging him into the shadows beyond her line of sight.
The kidnappers must not be dead. There’d be no reason to muzzle a dead man. A knocker-outer was better than waking up to a murderer lying on top of her. Good.