Carol Ericson - Mountain Ranger Recon

“Do you think she found that something?”

“If not, she must’ve been getting warm.”

Meg’s radio crackled, and she informed her home office that she and the victim’s husband were with the body and that Scott was leading the rest of the group to the top of the mountain.

She ended the transmission and pocketed the radio. “Did you hear that? They want us to wait with Kayla until search and rescue gets here.”

“I can move her downstream to wait for the helicopter. The El Paso County Search and Rescue doesn’t have to waste its time hiking down here.”

“And blow your cover? Remember, you’re a tourist who just lost his wife.”

And an agent who just lost his partner.

Ian sank down on the nearest boulder and buried his face in his hands—for real this time. He’d wanted to go on this operation alone, but the colonel thought he’d be less suspicious as part of a couple. That didn’t work out too well. He plowed his fingers through his hair and cursed.

The pressure of Meg’s hand rubbing circles on his back calmed him. He squeezed his eyes shut and allowed the warmth to seep through his body. God, he’d missed her touch these past three years.

Why had he let Meg go without a fight? Because she deserved better. A better husband than one who’d been halfway across the world when his wife suffered a miscarriage. He blamed himself. His mission had caused her too much stress. His secrets had strained the trust between them.

Truth was he had no idea how to be a good husband and even less of an idea how to be a good father. His role model had been neither.

Apparently, he also sucked at being a good partner.

His muscles tensed, and the pressure of Meg’s hands increased. “I’m sorry about Kayla, but it’s not your fault, Ian. If she was an agent with Prospero, she knew the risks.”

Ian twisted around to look into Meg’s clear blue eyes. Did she really know so little about Prospero, the military covert ops team that worked so deep undercover, sometimes their own government didn’t know what they were doing?

What did he expect? He’d compartmentalized that entire side of his life, keeping Meg so far away from it that she’d felt abandoned by him and excluded from the closeness he’d shared with the members of that group.

He dragged in a deep breath of crisp mountain air. “Kayla wasn’t part of Prospero, Meg. She joined our mission from the CIA. There is no Prospero anymore. We disbanded almost two years ago.”

She pushed up abruptly. “Th-then what are you doing here? Are you working for the CIA now?”

“Not exactly.” He rubbed his knuckles across his jaw. What the hell. They were alone and he owed her big time. Through no fault of her own, she was smack in the middle of this thing, and she had a right to know why he and Kayla, and apparently some terrorist, had commandeered her hike on a fresh fall morning.

“Sit down. We can’t do anything for Kayla now anyway, except wait for search and rescue to move her body.” He patted a space beside him on the rough boulder.

She perched next to him, looking poised for flight, her back stiff, her eyes wary.

“Do you remember Jack Coburn from Prospero?”

She nodded and her silky strawberry-blond ponytail bobbed behind her. “I remember all the guys from Prospero—the colonel, Jack, Riley and Buzz. You were all so close. You had some kind of unspoken bond, so thick it was a like a cord binding you all together.”

Her voice sounded wistful, and Ian reached out and grabbed her hand. He should’ve been forging that bond with his wife, but those guys had been the closest thing he’d ever had to family. Until he’d met Meg.

“Jack went missing a few months ago.” His own words punched him in the gut all over again, and he convulsively squeezed Meg’s hand. “After Prospero disbanded, we all went our separate ways. Always the silver-tongued devil with nerves of steel, Jack took a job as a hostage negotiator.”

“You mean like with the FBI?”

“No. Jack worked…works freelance. Large corporations, newspapers and private citizens hire him to rescue loved ones, usually being held hostage in foreign countries.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Jack was working a case in Afghanistan when he disappeared off the face of the earth.” Ian clenched his teeth. The CIA had labeled Jack a traitor, but the spooks in the Agency didn’t know Jack. Except Kayla, Kayla knew Jack.

Meg ran a finger along his tight jaw. “So what are you doing in Colorado?”

“One of the other former Prospero members, Riley, traced Jack’s disappearance to a drug cartel in Mexico, which in turn led to an arms dealer here in the States. The arms dealer’s clients were transporting some kind of weapon in a private plane over this area. We had a line on the plane, and Buzz Richardson picked it up and forced the plane down at the air force base. Unfortunately for us, the weapon wasn’t onboard.”

Meg covered her mouth with her hand, her brows shooting up to her bangs. “What happened to it?”

Ian spread his arms wide. “Buzz thinks they jettisoned it right here, once they spotted him on their tail.”

“A weapon here in Crestville? Why wasn’t it on the news? How come there was no rescue operation?”

“This is all under the radar, Meg.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb across her knuckles. “The pilot never filed a flight plan, had no instruments on board and had no radio contact with any towers. It’s as if that airplane never existed…except on Buzz’s personal radar.”

“How did Buzz figure out the occupants of the plane ditched their cargo here?”

“He did a little creative interviewing of the folks on that plane. One couldn’t take the pressure and cracked, admitting they’d tossed the suitcase overboard.”

“What’s in that case, Ian?” Meg clamped her lower lip between her teeth, her eyes round and definitely worried.

He lifted one shoulder, hoping she’d believe him. “We don’t know. Whatever’s in that case came from an arms dealer named Slovenka. We know it’s a weapon of some sort. A very expensive weapon. A very dangerous weapon.”

“Didn’t Buzz’s creative questioning unearth the type of weapon?”

“Uh, the suspect killed himself before he gave away anything more.” Damn, he hated exposing her to this stuff.

Meg hugged herself and said, “And now the rest of them are back trying to find the weapon…along with you. Do you think the arms dealers are after it, or the terrorists they sold it to?”

He didn’t want her involved, but that decision was beyond him. He eased out a long breath. “Slovenka got his money. The location of the weapon is now the purchasers’ problem.”

She snapped her fingers, getting into the spirit of the thing. “The German tourist—he lingered behind to take pictures. Maybe Kayla saw something and he pushed her.”

“A lot of them lingered behind. It could be any one of them, Meg. Just because the German traveled solo doesn’t necessarily make him the prime suspect. Maybe it’s one of the married couples with the same idea as Kayla and…”

Ian squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. This is one aspect of active duty Ian didn’t miss—losing coworkers.

Meg entwined her fingers with his. “Did you know her well?”

He shook his head. “Not at all, not even her real name. It’s better that way.”

The whomping sound of helicopter blades cut off further conversation.

Shading her eyes, Meg pushed up from the boulder. “Search and rescue is here. The chopper will drop off the team and they’ll hike upstream to retrieve Kayla.”

Meg radioed the helicopter, giving the rescue team their exact location. Fifteen minutes later, two hikers emerged from the thick foliage.