Liz Shoaf - Holiday Mountain Conspiracy

“You stay here. I’ll be back.”

His quiet but firm order really burned her. The terror she’d experienced on the mountain had melted away and she was more herself now.

She jutted her chin out. “Why should I?”

His expression didn’t change, but she noted the twitch in his left eye, the only thing that remotely revealed what he was feeling.

“Because I’m the only one who can protect you while we look for your brother.”

Like she was born yesterday. “For all I know, you want to kill Bobby. Why should I trust you?”

Her heart palpitated when he grinned for the second time since she’d met him, and her gut clenched. No, no, no, she absolutely refused to be attracted to this bear of a man. He hovered over her open door like a caveman. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall. She considered herself of average height at five feet six inches, but he towered over her. He wasn’t skin and bones, either. She briefly wondered how much muscle was hidden beneath those layers of clothes.

“Because your brother sent you to me.”

Well, that took the wind out of her sails. He was right. Bobby had sent her to Ned. With little grace, she jerked her leg back inside the car and grabbed the door handle. It’d serve him right if his hand got caught in the door, but that wasn’t to be. He showed his superior strength by holding on to the door until he was ready to release it. She gritted her teeth and pulled hard. He let go suddenly and the door slammed shut, rattling her hand.

Fuming, she crossed her arms over her chest and watched as Ned met Fran at the sidewalk and together they walked through the front door, firmly closing it behind them.

“Tink, I don’t trust that man, not with Bobby’s life on the line.”

Tink barked and Mary Grace jerked when a big, rough tongue licked the side of her neck. She turned her head and looked at Ned’s dog. “If only you could talk.” The animal’s eyes were full of intelligence and she remembered how Krieger had followed Ned’s orders right before the explosion. She sat upright in her seat. Was Krieger military or police-trained?

As happened when she came across a vital piece of information while pursuing a story, her adrenaline took a sharp spike. She reached across the console and grabbed her backpack from the passenger floorboard of the car. Dropping it onto her lap, she dug through her belongings until her fingers wrapped around her cell phone. She lifted it triumphantly in the air.

“Ha! Got it.” Tink barked her approval and Mary Grace held the smartphone close to her chest. “Now, if I can get a signal, I’ll be in business.”

She turned on the phone and fidgeted in her seat, willing the phone to power up fast. She wanted to do a quick search on Krieger before Ned came out of the house. Her heart beat faster when two bars appeared. Opening the search engine, she typed in Krieger—military dog and pressed the search tab. The blue line at the top had never taken so long, but when it finished, she grinned. There were several articles that popped up immediately.

The first one caught her attention and her nose actually twitched. She was in what she called her “reporter zone,” a place where her gut told her she was on the right track.

It read: Old-fashioned, giant German shepherd musters out with handler after six years of service in Army Special Forces.

Mary Grace quickly skimmed the article, looking for a reference to the handler, but it never gave a name. She checked several other articles, but nothing. They did list all of Krieger’s achievements and they were quite impressive. She glanced over her shoulder.

“I appreciate your service to our country, Krieger.”

Tink growled again, but Mary Grace ignored her and scanned the house and grounds, searching for anything that would give her a clue she could follow to find out Ned’s true identity. Then an idea popped into her head. She opened Google Maps on her smartphone and a map popped up. She got the address of his sister’s house from there and was just following up on that when the driver’s door whooshed open.

“Move over, I’ll drive.”

Mary Grace scooted over the console into the passenger seat and quickly sorted through all her options. She could probably, eventually, find Bobby on her own, and she was uncertain why Ned wanted to find her brother. Was it for information, or had Bobby inadvertently done something to anger this quiet, lethal mountain of a man? On the other hand, there were people trying to kill her and she wasn’t quite ready to meet her Maker. Ned could protect her. She’d stay with him for the time being and try to figure out what was going on. If he would bother saying more than two words, she could make faster progress. She was a whiz at research.

“Fine, but you’re going to have to start talking or I’ll find Bobby on my own.”

For a moment, Mary Grace had amused Ned. Through her eyes, he could almost see her brain rapidly processing her options, but then she smirked. She was up to something.

As he pulled out of the driveway, he glanced at her and considered her demand for answers. She was staring out the window and the rat dog—he really should call it by its name, but Tinker Bell just didn’t feel right slipping past his lips—was glaring at him. The small dog and its name were enough to unman a guy. Concentrating on TB—that’s what he’d call the animal—helped him to ignore the unwanted pull of attraction. Instead of answering her questions, it was time he asked a few of his own and got back to the task at hand.

“Do you have any idea where Bobby might be hiding?”

She turned her head and glared at him, much like her dog.

“Why do you want to find my brother? Bobby said you were a big part of this , whatever this is.”

He stopped the car at the end of the driveway and turned toward her. Her jaw was set at a stubborn angle and her lips were pressed together. He had to give her something or she might bolt, and Mary Grace Ramsey was the only lead he had at the moment. His gut told him Bobby could lead him to the people who were after him and Finn.

All the evidence he had accumulated so far involved Bobby Lancaster, but the geeky young man just didn’t fit the profile of a killer, which is why Ned had been trying to lure the bad guys to his mountain.

He’d soon find out where the CIA’s computer wonder boy had holed up. At this point, he didn’t care who he tipped off. Bobby had gone on the lam recently, and the ambush had happened six months ago, but it had taken Ned four months to get Finn settled, make sure he was okay and then lay his trap for their enemies. Prior to this, he’d stayed on his mountain between missions. No one in town knew when he slipped away and returned because of his hermit-type lifestyle, and he’d made sure no one knew he was related to his sister and niece because danger might follow him from current or previous missions. As far as the townspeople and anyone he worked with knew, he was all alone in the world.

Bobby must have been alerted by something, or found himself in a tight spot and took off. His gut told him that Bobby had to be involved because he’d fed Ned and Finn the bad intel that placed them in danger. Whether it was voluntary or involuntarily, well, that was yet to be determined.

“It’s classified.” She snorted, and he rushed to add, “Fine, I spent some time in the military a while back. You can trust me.”

She didn’t even respond to his admission of a small part of his past, instead she started typing on her phone.

“What are you doing?”

She lifted her head and gave him a challenging grin. “It’s over two thousand miles to Georgia. You wanna drive or fly?”