Elle James - Hot Zone

He’d hoped this temporary assignment would give him the opportunity to think about his next steps in life. Should he continue his military career? His enlistment was up in a month. He had to decide whether to reenlist or get out.

So far, since he’d been in Grizzly Pass, he hadn’t had the time to ponder his future. Hell, he’d already been in a shoot-out and had to rescue one of his new team members. For a place with such a small population, it was a hot zone of trouble. No wonder Garner had requested combat veterans to assist him in figuring out what the hell was going on.

Thankfully, today was just a fact-finding mission. He was to traverse the line Khalig had been inspecting when he’d met with his untimely demise. He was to look for any clues as to why someone would have paid Wayne Batson to assassinate him. Since Batson was dead, they couldn’t ask him. And he hadn’t been forthcoming with a name before he took his final breath.

Which meant whoever had hired him was still out there, having gotten away with murder.

Hawkeye double-checked the map, oriented with the antique compass his grandfather had given him when he’d joined the army and cross-checked with the GPS. Sure of his directions, he folded the map, pocketed his compass, climbed onto the ATV and took off.

At the top of the ridge, he paused and glanced around, looking for other vehicles or people on the opposite ridge. He didn’t want to get caught like Khalig at the bottom of the valley with a sniper itching to pick him off. Out of the corner of his eye, he detected movement in the valley below.

A man squatted beside another four-wheeler. He had something in his hands and seemed to be burying it in the dirt.

Hawkeye goosed the throttle, sending his four-wheeler over the edge, descending the winding trail.

The man at the bottom glanced up. When he spotted Hawkeye descending the trail on the side of the hill, he dropped what he’d been holding, leaped onto his ATV and raced up an old mining road on the other side of the ridge.

Hopping off the trail, Hawkeye took the more direct route to the bottom, bouncing over large rock stumps and fallen branches of weathered trees. By the time Hawkeye arrived at the base, the man who’d sped away was already halfway up the hill in front of him.

Hawkeye paused long enough to look at what the man had dropped, and his blood ran cold. A stick of dynamite jutted out of the ground with a long fuse coiled in the dirt beside it.

Thumbing the throttle lever, Hawkeye zoomed after the disappearing rider, who had apparently been about to sabotage the oil pipeline. Had he succeeded, he would have had the entire state in an uproar over the spillage and damage to the environment.

Not to mention, he might be the key to who had contracted Batson to kill Khalig.

At the top of the hill where the mining road wrapped around the side of a bluff, Hawkeye slowed in case the pursued had stopped to attack his pursuer.

Easing around the corner, he noted the path was clear and spied the rider heading down a trail Hawkeye could see from his vantage point would lead back to a dirt road and ultimately to the highway. With as much of a lead as he had, Dynamite Man could conceivably reach the highway and get away before Hawkeye caught up.

Hawkeye refused to let the guy off the hook. Goosing the accelerator, he shot forward and hurtled down the narrow mining road to the base of the mountain. At several points along the path, he skidded sideways, the rear wheels of the four-wheeler sliding dangerously close to the edge of deadly drop-offs. But he didn’t slow his descent, pushing his speed faster than was prudent on the rugged terrain.

By the time he reached the bottom of the mountain, Hawkeye was within fifty yards of the man on the other ATV. His quarry wouldn’t have enough time to ditch his four-wheeler for another vehicle.

Hawkeye followed the dirt road, occasionally losing sight of the rider in front of him. Eventually, between the trees and bushes, he caught glimpses of the highway ahead. When he broke free into a rare patch of open terrain, he spied the man on the track ahead, about to hit the highway’s pavement.

* * *

“I’LL BE DAMNED if I sell Stone Oak Ranch to Bryson Rausch. My father would roll over in his grave.” At the thought of her father lying in his grave next to her mother, Olivia Dawson’s heart clenched in her chest. Her eyes stung, but anger kept her from shedding another tear.

“You said you couldn’t live at the ranch. Not since your father died.” Abe Masterson, the Stone Oak Ranch foreman for the past twenty years, turned onto the highway headed toward home.

Liv’s throat tightened. Home. She’d wanted to come home since she graduated from college three years ago. But her father had insisted she try city living before she decided whether or not she wanted to come back to the hard work and solitary life of a rancher.

For the three years since she’d left college with a shiny new degree, she’d worked her way up the corporate ladder to a management position. Eight people reported directly to her. She was responsible for their output and their well-being. She’d promised her father she’d give it five years. But that had all changed in the space of one second.

The second her father died in a freak horseback-riding accident six days earlier.

Liv had gotten the word in the middle of the night in Seattle, had hopped into her car and had driven all the way to Grizzly Pass, Wyoming. No amount of hurrying back to her home would have been fast enough to have allowed her to say goodbye to her father.

By the time Abe had found him, he’d been dead for a couple of hours. The coroner estimated the fall had killed him instantly, when he’d struck his head on a rock.

Liv would have given anything to have talked to him one last time. She hadn’t spoken to him for over a week before his death. The last time had been on the telephone and had ended in anger. She had wanted to end her time in Seattle and come home. Her father had insisted she finish out her five years.

I’m not going to get married to a city boy. What use would he be on a ranch, anyway? she’d argued.

You don’t know where love will take you. Give it a chance, he’d argued right back. Have you been dating?

No, Dad. I intimidate most men. They like their women soft and wimpy. I can’t do that. It’s not me.

Sweetheart, her father had said. You have to open your heart. Love hits you when you least expect it. Besides, I want to live to see my grandchildren.

Her throat tightening, Liv shook her head. Her father would never know his grandchildren, and they’d never know the great man he was. The tears welled and threatened to slip out the corners of her eyes.

“If you sell to Rausch, you can be done with ranching and get on with your life. You won’t have to stay around, being constantly reminded of your father.”

“Maybe I want to be reminded. Maybe I was being too rash when I said I couldn’t be around the ranch because it brought back too many painfully happy memories of me and Dad.” She sniffed, angry that she wasn’t doing a very good job of holding herself together.

“What did Rausch offer you?”

Liv wiped her eyes with her sleeve and swallowed the lump in her throat before she could force words out. “A quarter of what the ranch is worth. A quarter!” She laughed, the sound ending in a sob. “I’ll die herding cattle before I sell to that man.”

“Yeah, well, you could die a lot sooner if you go like your father.”

Liv clenched her fist in her lap. “It’s physically demanding, ranching in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains. Falling off your horse and hitting your head on a rock could happen to anyone around here.” She shot a glance at Abe. “Right?”