Rescued by the Marine

by Julie Miller

  Although his motives for saving Samantha Eddington were a little muddled today, his mission was as clear as it had been the night before last. Checking the time on his watch, Jason hoped Sam had been right about the twenty minutes she needed to get ready to move out this morning.

  He tightened the cap on the second bottle he’d filled after breaking through the top layer of ice to reach the clear, cold water of the creek and tucked it into his pack before tipping his face to the sky. Although the air still held the chill of the night here in the shadows among the trees, the rosy dawn had burned off the lingering clouds from the last few days of snowfall. Today would be bright and sunny and a few degrees warmer than yesterday’s hike.

  A warm, clear day meant three things. As long as they stayed dry, the risk of frostbite and exposure dropped exponentially. As they continued their winding descent and dropped in altitude, the snow would be melting or gone, meaning they could move faster. And without footprints and disturbed snow trailing in their wake, they’d be that much harder for Buck and his men to track.

  Tucking the water into his pack, Jason looped the straps over his shoulders and studied the red fox that had come to the water to drink about twenty yards upstream from him. The little guy was probably on his way home from what he suspected was a good night’s hunt, judging by the tiny bits of dark fur that dotted his muzzle. Jason held himself still, so as not to startle the animal before it drank its fill and returned to its burrow before the larger predators, like bears or cougars, came out for their morning meal. That little black nose and those wide, triangular ears were a far better tracking system than GPS or infrared technology. And when one of the furry ears flipped back, alerting to a noise in the trees behind him, Jason paid attention.

  The fox scurried into the underbrush, and Jason ducked behind the cover of the nearest tree, quickly covering his tracks with the sweep of a broken pine branch. Tossing the branch aside, he tuned his ears to the sound of footsteps crunching over hard-packed earth and snow. That wasn’t a larger predator creeping up on four legs. That was the sound of two feet. A man.

  The fox wasn’t the only hunter on the mountain.

  Jason automatically reached for the gun on his thigh. But his hand slapped an empty holster. Damn. He’d left it with Sam. He crouched down, quickly assessing the man’s location and in which direction he was headed. Buck’s men had gotten here faster than he’d anticipated. Of course, men was a relative term. So far, he’d heard only the one set of footsteps.

  This guy wasn’t making much of an effort to mask his approach, so he hadn’t spotted Jason. But Jason had no problem pinpointing the man emerging from the trees on the far side of the creek. Dressed in black camo like the kidnappers holding Sam at the cabin and the men pursuing them yesterday, he carried a rifle over his shoulder and wore a pistol at his hip. This guy’s black stocking mask had been rolled up above his ears, but that didn’t mean Jason recognized him, or could even give an accurate description at this distance.

  But the guy had a walkie-talkie pressed to his ear, and his drawled response was loud enough for Jason to eavesdrop on the conversation, even with twenty yards and the rocky creek bed between them. First there was a crackle of static, followed by something about blood in the snow and they must have stopped here.

  Jason eyed his bandaged knuckles, silently cursing his explosive reaction to Marty’s murder. He hadn’t policed the scene. Hell, he shouldn’t have lost it like that in the first place. He’d let his needy reaction to Sam’s insistent words and touch distract him from the basic mission—keep Buck and his men from finding her before he got her home to Daddy.

  The clear morning air also carried the distinct growl of at least two snowmobiles in the distance. Search parties. That’s what he’d do if he was hunting the enemy and had this much territory to search—split his men up and send them out in different directions to scout for their location. Only, he was the enemy this time. And he had no intention of letting any one of those scouts get a bead on Sam’s location and radio back to Buck and his compatriots so the whole group could converge on them again.

  One man he could take out. But facing off against seven or eight men by himself? That meant picking them off one by one.

  Leaning back against the trunk of the tree, Jason unsnapped the sheath of his hunting knife. He hoped it wouldn’t come to using lethal force, but if he couldn’t get behind that guy and subdue him with a choke hold the way he had the men at the cabin, then he intended to do whatever was necessary to keep him from radioing in his position and calling for backup.

  “Copy that,” the man reported, moving upstream to the narrowest part of the creek to cross over to the bank on Jason’s side. “I’m about a mile from the forestry service road. No visual yet. But the signal’s getting stronger.”

  Signal? Jason paused in the shadows as the man moved up the bank into the trees. What signal? Had they found some other way to track them besides that computer chip they’d cut out of Sam? The man shifted course, moving along the edge of the tree line. Fortunately, the few boot prints Jason had left were farther in. But the man’s course correction was far too accurate for his peace of mind. He was on an intercept course with the shack where Sam was right now. Brushing her teeth. Tying her beautiful hair into a ponytail and erasing all trace of their stay there last night. And Jason had no way to call her and warn her. Nobody was that lucky. Or that good at tracking up here. Except him.

  He slipped farther into the trees, mirroring the man’s path along the creek bed. He had to stop him before he found his trail and went to investigate.

  “I’m going silent on my end,” the man reported. “Switching channels to listen in. I’ll call in when I get her twenty.” The man twisted the knob to pick up a different frequency on his walkie-talkie. “This is ranger station twelve. Please repeat that request. Hello?”

  Her twenty? There was no ranger station twelve. And no officer in the park wore anything that resembled a black camo assault uniform. Hell. This was no lucky guess. That guy had Sam and the shack on his radar, and he was heading straight for her location.

  The time for stealth had passed. Jason needed to make his move. Now.

  With all the lumbering grace of a bear waking from hibernation, the man hiked into the trees, his gear clacking together against his back, his boots breaking twigs and pinecones in the shallow snow beneath his feet, making it easy for Jason to slide around him without being detected. He followed him several yards until the man spotted the first print of Jason’s path through the snow and knelt to check it out.

  Taking his cue from the silent little fox, Jason crept up from behind and looped his forearm beneath the man’s chin. In the same move, he yanked the rifle off his shoulder and slung it beyond his reach. Jason cinched his arm tighter, lifting the startled man off his feet, using the guy’s full weight to hang himself. He sputtered and cursed, clawing at the sleeve of Jason’s jacket. But the guy wouldn’t pass out. He’d misjudged the smaller man’s bulk, forcing him to use two hands to secure the choke hold.

  But what the man lacked in brute strength, he made up for in agility. When he gave up the fight to free himself, he went limp, slipping through Jason’s grasp to make a grab for his pistol. Jason clamped his hand over the guy’s wrist, twisting until he cried for mercy. But the guy wouldn’t let go. In the two seconds Jason had shifted his focus to the gun, though, the guy jerked his head back against Jason’s jaw, the back of his skull splitting his lip.

  “Son of a...”

  The gun fell to the ground. One of them kicked the weapon into a bank of snow that clung to the shady side of a rocky outcropping. The guy changed tactics, jabbing the point of his elbow into Jason’s ribs, spinning around to land a swing-kick against Jason’s injured thigh. But facing him gave Jason’s fist an easy target, and he plowed his fist into the middle of the guy’s face. He felt the pop of his nose breaking, stunning his opponent. Jason backe
d off, swiping the back of his hand across his bloodied lip, giving the dazed man some space as he stumbled to his knees and landed face-first in the snow. Either this guy was trained in hand-to-hand combat or Jason was off his game.

  But Camo Man was down, not out. Shaking off the effects of his bloodied, broken nose, he rolled away from Jason, diving toward the rocks where the gun had landed. Jason didn’t waste another second evaluating his opponent or his own rusty skills. When the man rose with the weapon in hand, Jason charged again, hitting him square in the chest and tackling him to the ground.

  They traded punches and fought for control of the gun. They rolled over tree roots and pinecones. Snow abraded his skin and got inside his jacket. But the cold revived him. Sharpened his senses. He took a fist to the cheekbone and a knee to his aching thigh before he got both hands on the gun and smashed the guy’s grip against the frozen ground. Once. Twice. On the third smack, his grip popped open and the weapon skidded into a snowbank.

  Now Jason had the advantage. He braced his forearm against the man’s throat, using his full weight to choke him into unconsciousness. The guy’s stocking cap and walkie-talkie were long gone. His skin was flushed. His lips were pale. His bruised blue eyes laughed with arrogance as he stared up at Jason.

  “It’s you or me, bounty,” he rasped, no doubt referring to the $10,000 promise Buck had made to get him out of the way. “It ain’t gonna be me.”

  When he saw the man’s fingers crawling across his belly toward Jason’s knife, he pulled the weapon himself and put that to the man’s throat. “Who are you guys? Who is Buck? Who wants Sam Eddington dead?”

  Blue Eyes laughed, even as the edge of the blade pricked his skin. “You better kill me, or I’ll find your woman. Too much money at stake. Me or somebody else is gonna—”

  “I’ll kill any man who hurts her.” It wasn’t an idle threat.

  The walkie-talkie, lying somewhere off to the side, crackled to life. A voice, husky and sweet and far too familiar, came across the line. “I’m calling the nearest ranger station or sheriff’s department or search and rescue. Please. I can transmit, but my receiver is damaged. Is anyone getting this message? There are two of us stranded on this mountain. We’ve been hiking south from Mule Deer Pass. Men with guns are pursuing us. They blew up our rescue helicopter. We need help. Over?”

  Blue Eyes laughed out loud. “Guess who she’s been talking to.”

  Jason’s blood ran as cold as the snow soaking through to his skin. Sam had fixed the damn radio. Just like she’d promised. No telling how far her signal had been broadcasting. Was this yahoo the only one who’d heard her or...?

  Jason raised his head to the growl of snowmobiles. Not so distant now. “Ah, hell.”

  Blue Eyes was playing him for the lovesick fool he was. “Buck’s gonna enjoy cuttin’ her up. Maybe he’ll make you watch before he puts a bullet in your head. Unless I tell him you’re already dead.”

  He twisted under Jason’s blade, slamming his knee into Jason’s thigh, ignoring the shallow cut the movement sliced across his jaw. He kicked again, knocking Jason onto his backside before another vicious kick clipped his wrist and knocked the knife into the snow.

  Blue Eyes lunged for his gun. He swung the barrel around, squeezing the trigger.

  But Jason was faster. The shot burned through his arm as he scooped up the knife and thrust it into the man’s belly. With a feral roar, he shoved to his feet, lifting him with the blade before dumping his opponent at his feet.

  The gun dropped to the ground and Jason picked it up, tucking it into the back of his belt. Those blue eyes were wide, dazed, dying. “He won’t...stop... He’s sick with wantin’...to kill...”

  “Who is?” he demanded.

  Jason was bruised, breathless as Blue Eyes bled out. But he sucked in deep gulps of air, clearing his head of the violence, blood and death. He stooped down to clean his blade in the snow before briefly checking the burning gouge where the bullet had grazed the meat of his shoulder. Like the reopened gash in his leg, the thing throbbed like a son of a bitch. But he’d been hurt worse. He needed to move.

  “I just heard a gun go off.” Sam’s voice held a tinge of panic as Jason dug through the snow to find the discarded walkie-talkie. “This is an SOS. My friend could be hurt. Help me, please! I need a ranger station or sheriff—”

  Jason picked up the walkie-talkie and switched on the call button. “Damn it, Sam. Get off the radio.”

  Static was his only reply.

  There wasn’t any time to waste. Jason grabbed his pack, stretching his legs into a flat-out run as the growl of engines became a roar.

  Chapter Ten

  Samantha opened the screwdriver attachment on the Swiss Army knife and tightened the wire connecting the anode with the battery pack she’d cannibalized from the flashlight Jason had left with her. This should be an easy-peasy fix for her, but her hand shook. The reverberation from that gunshot she’d heard had rattled the false sense of security she’d felt since waking up with Jason’s arms wrapped around her.

  This wasn’t some rustic Garden of Eden she was sharing with the rugged veteran. Yes, she’d had a good night’s sleep. She felt closer to Jason Hunt than she’d felt to any other human being for a long time, and she was probably already more in love with him than common sense said she should be. Funny how she trusted him more than she trusted her own feelings. But feelings weren’t the priority here. She wasn’t safe. Neither of them was. She scratched anxiously at the torso of her sweater. There was only one reason why anyone would be shooting up here. And she wasn’t so hopeful to think that a hunter had suddenly shown up on this part of the mountain this morning.

  “Damn it.” The shattered transceiver was beyond repair. There was no way to change the frequency, no way to have a back-and-forth conversation. She had no idea if she was talking to anyone but herself, but she stuffed the knife into her pocket and tried again. “This is an emergency. My friend may have been shot. We need help.”

  Samantha didn’t hear the charging footsteps until they hit the wood planks of the shack’s front stoop. She rose from the bench and picked up Jason’s gun, bracing her feet and aiming at the door when it swung open. In one breath, she’d been numb with fear. In the next, she was light-headed with relief as Captain Jason Hunt of the United States Marine Corps barged in.

  “Sam?” Her early warning contraption tangled Jason in a bunch of cords and noisy cans. Swearing, he pulled them off his body, ripping the nail they’d been connected to out of the wall.

  She quickly lowered her weapon and ran toward him to help. “I heard the gunshot. Are you hurt?” She saw the blood wetting the tear in his jacket, more oozing through the stain on his pant leg. “You are. What happened? How can I—?”

  “Flesh wound. We’ll fix it later. How long have you been broadcasting our position?”

  “You heard me? Who shot you?” There was dried blood in the scruff of his beard and a scrape across his bruised cheek. She peeked around him to look out the door. “Is he following you?” Finally free of her web, Jason caught her by the shoulders and pushed her to the center of the room. “Please tell me the other guy looks worse than you. What are you—?”

  He knocked the radio off the bench and stomped it beneath his boot. His gray eyes drilled her for a second before he plucked the gun from her hand and moved away to pick up her coat and backpack. “How long were you transmitting that SOS?”

  “A few minutes, I guess.” She raked her fingers through her hair until she met the knot of cord securing her ponytail. Clearly, she’d done the wrong thing here. “I thought I was helping.” She caught the coat he’d tossed at her, eyeing the shattered bits of plastic and wire on the floor. “You could have just switched it off. I don’t think I can repair that.”

  He shoved her pack into her chest. “You’re brilliant. I get it.” He ejected the bullet from the firing cha
mber of the gun he’d taken from her and stuffed it into her pack, zipping it shut. She saw now that he had a second handgun secured in the holster at his thigh. Even before he explained himself, she was getting a pretty good idea of what had happened to him out there. “I don’t know if anybody down in Moose or at the ranger station heard it, but Buck and his men sure did. At least one of his reconnaissance men was tracking you on his radio.”

  Samantha batted his hands away and took over gathering the loose supplies into her pack while he moved to the door to scan outside. She recognized the droning echo of snowmobiles in the distance. The hornets were swarming again, closing in on their position. Her entire body itched with regret that she’d unintentionally put them in this position. “I didn’t mean... I’m so sorry.”

  “Your timing sucks, that’s all. I shouldn’t have snapped. I...” He wanted to say something more, but the urgency of the situation changed his mind. “They’re on their way here. We have to go. Now.”

  He didn’t need apologies. He needed her to move. She pulled her coat on over the moth-eaten sweater and hooked her pack over her shoulders. “I’m ready.”

  He eyed the top of her head. “Hat? Gloves?”

  She pulled the knit cap from her pocket and met him at the door. “I can put them on while we’re running. Hiding? Leaping off another cliff?”

  “How did I luck out to rescue an heiress who doesn’t know how to quit?” Heaving a breath laced with exasperation, he slipped his hand beneath her ponytail, palming the nape of her neck. She’d barely braced her hands against his chest when he pulled her onto her toes and covered her mouth in a hard, quick kiss. He squinted his eyes and grunted against her lips as if the pressure there hurt him. But he kissed her again before releasing her and letting her heels slide back to the floor. Then he pried her fingers from the front of his jacket and turned his grip to pull her along behind him. “Stay close.”