by Elle James
The man being held against the wall gagged, his feet scraping against the hard rock surface behind him.
James couldn’t let Reed kill the other man, even if the other man happened to be the one who’d helped him escape from prison. Taking a deep breath, he called out, “Drop him, Reed, or I’ll shoot.”
The convict froze with his hand still gripping the other man’s throat. “Guess you’re gonna have to shoot.” Then he spun, dragging his captive with him, and using his body as a shield.
Since his back was still to James, James couldn’t see who it was.
“Go ahead,” Reed taunted. “Shoot. This piece of shit deserves to die.”
The man he held fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulled out something long and shiny and then shoved it toward Reed.
Reed gasped, his eyes widening. “Bastard,” he said, his voice more of a wheeze. His grip loosened on his captive.
The man slumped to his knees and bent over.
Reed stood for a long moment, his hand curling around the knife protruding from his chest. He gripped the handle and pulled it out. He stared at it, and then at James, and collapsed on top of the man he’d almost killed.
James rushed forward, jammed his handgun into his holster and felt for a pulse in Reed’s neck. He had one, but it was faint and fluttering erratically.
The man beneath him, grunted and pushed at the bulk of the dead man weighing him down. “Help me,” he said.
James grabbed Reed’s arm and pulled him off the other man, laying him flat on his back.
Reed stared up at James, his eyes narrowing. He whispered something.
James leaned close, barely able to hear.
“Where the…snake…threads…needle’s eye,” Reed coughed, and blood dribbled out of the side of his mouth.
James pressed his hand to the wound in Reed’s chest. Having seen similar wounds in Iraq, he figured the knife had damaged a major organ, and Reed wasn’t going to make it out of that cave alive.
Reed raised a hand and clutched his collar in a surprisingly strong grip. “They’ll never find it.” He chuckled, a gurgling sound that caused more blood to ooze from the corner of his mouth. Then his hand dropped to his side, and his body went limp.
James pressed two fingers to the base of Reed’s throat, feeling for a pulse. When he felt none, he started to straighten.
Something cold and hard pressed to his temple. “Move, and I’ll shoot.”
His heart hammering against his ribs, James reached for the gun at his side. A cold feeling washed over him that had nothing to do with the gale-force winds blasting down through the canyon outside the walls of the cave.
His holster was empty. He couldn’t believe he’d helped the other man, only to have him take his gun and turn it on him.
“What did Reed say before he died?” the man behind him demanded.
James held up his hands, shaking his head. “I don’t remember.”
“You better start, or you can join him in his cold place in hell.”
“Seriously, I couldn’t hear what he said. It was all garbled.”
“He said something about a needle. I know you heard him. Tell me.” The angry guy behind him fired the gun, hitting James in the right arm.
Pain knifed through his arm, and it hung limp against his side.
“Tell me, or I’ll shoot again.”
Outside, a rumbling sound made James forget about being shot at again. “If you want to get out of this cave alive, we have to leave now.”
“I’m the one with the gun. I say when we leave.”
“Then you’ll have to shoot me, because I’m not going to be trapped in this cave by an avalanche.” James lurched to his feet and started for the entrance.
Rocks and snow started to fall from the slope above the cave’s entrance.
“Avalanche,” James called out.
The entire hillside to the south of the cave seemed to be slipping downward toward the floor of the canyon.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot again!” the man in the ski mask yelled.
“That’s what got the avalanche started in the first place. If you shoot again, even more will come crashing down on us.” James kept moving toward the cave entrance, looking north at a narrow trail leading out of the other side of the cave from where he’d entered. “If you want to live, you better follow me, and for the love of God, don’t shoot again.” He’d figure another way out of this mess, if he didn’t bleed out first. For now, James knew he had to get the hell out of there. If they stayed inside the cave, they’d be trapped. If they hurried out the north end, they might make it away from the avalanche.
Rocks and snow pelted his back as he hurried across the slippery slope, praying the bulk of the avalanche was well on its way to the south. But more snow and rocks rushed toward him and the man holding a gun on him. His head light from blood loss, James ran, stumbling and skidding across loose gravel and tripping over small boulders. A rush of snow and debris scooped his feet out from under him and sent him sliding down the slope. He fought to keep his head above the snow. Then he crashed into something hard and everything went black.
Chapter 2
Three days later…
Angus McKinnon stepped off the plane in Bozeman, Montana, his heart heavy, his gaze seeking a familiar face. It wasn’t until he reached baggage claim that he found one.
“Hey, stranger,” someone called out in a soft, female voice. “Got a hug for your little sister?”
He turned and was engulfed in a tight hug from his sister, Molly.
His eyes stung as he held her close, her face pressed into his jacket, her auburn hair tickling his nose. “Hey, squirt. I need to breathe,” he said finally, and pushed her to arm’s length. He stared down into her face, noting the red-rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks. His heart squeezed tightly in his chest. “How are you holding up?” He brushed a strand of her hair back behind her ear.
She sniffed, tipping her chin up in the stubborn way she’d always done when she didn’t want to show any sign of weakness with her brothers. “I’m holding my own. I’m more worried about Mama.” Molly shook her head. “She hasn’t cried since it happened.”
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked, looking over the top of Molly’s head. “Where is she?”
“She went to park the truck. She should be in shortly.” Molly turned toward the exit. “There she is.”
Angus stared across the floor at his mother. She seemed to have aged ten years in the year since he’d been home on leave from the Army.
She stopped as soon as she spotted him. Her eyes widened, and her bottom lip trembled. But only for a moment. Then her chin lifted, much like Molly’s had, and she squared her shoulders. “Angus McKinnon, get over here and give your mother a hug.”
Angus obeyed her order, walking swiftly toward her then scooping her up in a tight hug that lifted her feet off the ground. “Mama,” he said and set her back on her feet. He leaned back so that he could see her face. “Have you heard anything?”
“Nothing good, but nothing bad, either.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m not giving up. They haven’t found his…” she stopped, bit her bottom lip and then continued. “They haven’t found him. Until they do, I won’t accept that he’s dead. That man is too damned ornery for that nonsense. He’s out there somewhere. We just have to find him.”
“At least the snow has stopped,” Molly offered.
Angus released his mother and leaned down to snag his duffel bag off the luggage carousel. “And Rucker came back?” he asked as he straightened.
His mother nodded. “He found his way back to the barn twenty-four hours after the avalanche occurred.”
Molly drew in a deep breath. “He was shaken, and one of the reins on his bridle had been ripped off, but he’s doing fine back in his stall. How he made it back is another question. Now that the snow has stopped, we can get out and check for ourselves.”
“When are Colin, Duncan and Bastian getting in?”
His mother gave him a tight smile. “Colin and Sebastian are coming in on the next flight from San Diego. Duncan is driving in from Fort Lewis, Washington.”
Molly looked up from her cellphone. “Duncan said he’d meet us here at the airport within the hour. Colin and Bastian are due in a little more than an hour.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We’ll be glad when the whole clan is together.”
His mother pressed a hand to her mouth, moisture pooling in her eyes.
Angus pulled her into his embrace. “We’ll find him.” His jaw tightened, and his resolved strengthened. Between the five of James McKinnon’s offspring, they would find their father. “Come on, let’s grab some coffee, and you can fill me in on everything that’s happened since this all began.”
They settled in at the Copper Horse Bistro and ordered.
After their coffee arrived, Angus sipped the fragrant brew then set his mug on the table. “Now, tell me what happened. I’ve heard most of it, but I don’t want the digest version this time. Give it all to me.”
His mother sucked in a ragged breath and let it out before launching into the details of the search for William Reed.
“I thought he was in jail for life for murdering the guards of the armored truck he robbed,” Angus said. “How the hell did he get out?”
“They were moving him from the state prison to a federal prison in Colorado. The transport vehicle ran off the road. The state police are still investigating the crash,” his mother said.
“I’ve heard rumor they found tire tracks near the crash scene.” Molly leaned forward. “If you ask me, I think someone ran out in front of the prison transport, causing the driver to swerve and run off the road.”
“But who would do that? I thought Reed was the lone robber in the armored truck heist,” Angus said.
“He was, but there’s a big reason to help him escape.”
“They never found the money he stole.” Angus shook his head. “They think someone sprang him in order to get to the million-dollar bag of money?”
Molly nodded. “Reed insisted he was in so much danger in the state penitentiary, he needed to be moved to a federal maximum-security prison in Colorado. They found a burner phone hidden in his mattress in his cell at the state facility. The data card had been removed and the device smashed. He had someone working with him on the outside.”
Angus swore beneath his breath. “And apparently, he had someone working with him in the prison. How else would he have acquired the burner phone?”
Molly nodded. “The state police and prison authorities are looking into it. Once Reed convinced the powers that be that he was in danger, they arranged for his transportation to the facility in Colorado. The transport van was supposed to take him from the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge to the Federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, but it never made it there.”
Hannah McKinnon stared down at her cup of coffee. “Since Reed is from Eagle Rock and knows the Crazy Mountains from all the hunting he did as a child and adult, he knew the trails, caves and abandoned mines in the area.”
Molly picked up the story from there. “It’s rumored he hid the money in a cave somewhere northwest of Eagle Rock. Since he was incarcerated, every treasure hunter in the U.S. and abroad has come to the Crazy Mountains in search of that bag of money.” She shook her head. “It’s been insane the number of people trespassing across Iron Horse Ranch and the neighboring ranches to get up to some of the trails. Dad and Parker have had a hell of a time keeping up with the fences people cut to drive their ATVs through.”
Angus clenched his fists. Some people had no respect for what belonged to others. “I take it, someone got tired of looking and finally decided to get the location directly from the horse’s mouth.”
Molly dipped her chin. “Looks like it.”
Angus reached across the table to take his mother’s hand. “How does our father fit into this picture?”
Her chest rose and fell before she looked up and stared into his eyes. “Sheriff Barron formed a posse of people he trusted most to go up into the mountains. The people who live here know the trails and caves best. They were supposed to look, not engage, and then come back and tell him what they found.”
“Everyone but Dad came back,” Molly said softly.
His mother’s hand squeezed his tightly. “There was an avalanche close to the caves you and your brothers used to camp in when you’d hunt elk.”
“One of the men who’d been assigned the adjacent area said he thought he heard the sound of gunfire, but he wasn’t sure. It could have been the sound of the ice and snow breaking off the top of the hill and crashing down, starting the landslide.”
“Has Search and Rescue been called in?”
Tears trickled down his mother’s cheeks. “They have,” she said, her voice choking on a sob.
Molly slipped an arm around her shoulders and looked across the table at Angus. “They’ve been there with helicopters since the avalanche happened. The Montana National Guard even sent up a couple of Chinooks to join the search. They call off the search at night, because it’s too dangerous. It didn’t help that the storm that was supposed to last a day didn’t let up until this morning.”
The chance of finding their father alive wasn’t good. If he’d survived the avalanche, three days in the freezing temperatures would be nearly impossible to live through.
When he’d received word his father had been lost in the Crazy Mountains in a snow storm, Angus had braced himself for the worst—the news his father was dead. But the worst wasn’t acknowledgement of James McKinnon’s death. Not knowing for certain was far more difficult to handle. He looked into his mother’s eyes. “We’ll find him.”
She nodded, pulled her hand free of his and dug in her purse for a tissue. “Whatever the outcome…we need to know.” She blotted the tears on her cheeks and squared her shoulders. “In the meantime, they still haven’t found the fugitive.”
“Which means no one is completely safe until Reed is located,” Angus concluded.
“Exactly.” Molly glanced down at her watch. “Duncan should be here about now.” Her thumbs moved over her cellphone as she typed in a text. “I just messaged him, letting him know we’re at the coffee shop when he gets here.”
“I’m here,” a voice said behind Angus.
Angus pushed to his feet and turned to find the biggest of the McKinnon brothers, Duncan, standing there, his face drawn and tired, his brow furrowed.
Duncan looked past Angus to their mother. “Mom.”
She stood and walked into his arms, her shoulder shaking with silent sobs.
He brushed one of his big hands over her graying hair. “It’s going to be all right,” he murmured. “It’s going to be all right.”
One way or another, it would be all right. Whether their father was dead or alive, they would survive this tragedy McKinnon strong. That’s who they were. A family who stood by each other when the going got tough.
Their mother stood back and let Molly in for a hug from her brother.
Angus glanced at his watch. “Colin and Bastian should be landing about now. Let’s head over to the baggage claim area to meet them. The sooner we get to the ranch, the better. We might even have a few hours of daylight left to do our own search.”
Duncan slipped his mother’s hand through the crook of his arm and led her toward the luggage carousel, limping slightly as he walked. “You can fill me in when the rest of the gang gets here.”
Duncan had been injured during his last deployment and had spent weeks recovering. He’d mentioned a medical review board in his last conversation with Angus but hadn’t let the rest of them know if a decision had been reached as to whether he’d be medically retired from the Army.
Angus would ask when the time was right. At the moment, their father was their number one concern.
Soon, a stream of people emerged from the gate area, meeting family members as they came out into the open. While most peop
le were smiling and welcoming their loved ones, a pall of anxious worry hung over the McKinnons.
Angus was ready to get to the ranch, saddle up and head into the mountains in search of their father. If it wasn’t such a long drive out there, he’d have had his mother and sister take him home, rather than wait on the others to arrive. But it made no sense to make two trips into Bozeman when their flights arrived little more than an hour apart.
Angus looked around at the people waiting for their family members. For the first time since he’d arrived at the airport, he let himself think about the way he’d always thought coming home would be. It wouldn’t have been just his family meeting him. And it wouldn’t have been because his father was missing. He’d pictured himself arriving years earlier, after he’d been to basic training and his advanced training, coming home on leave to the woman he’d loved more than life itself.
Bree.
As if his thoughts conjured her, a woman walked out of the gate area among the other passengers, wearing a long black trench coat, sunglasses and a sporty fedora covering her head. The hat caught his attention. Not many women wore hats these days, but it wasn’t just the hat. It was the way she walked with a firm step and a certain sway of her hips that made him look twice.
Her head came up, and her face turned toward his. The soft curve of her mouth tipped upward for a brief second before it firmed into a straight line and she dipped her head.
Angus frowned. For a moment, he could have sworn it was Bree—the woman who’d promised to wait for him. But as soon as he’d left, she’d packed up and left her home for a job in Alaska and hadn’t been back since. For all he knew, she’d married and had half a dozen children, rather than join him as a military spouse, following him around the country or the world.
Angus shook his head. He was seeing what he wanted to see. Bree hadn’t waited even a month for him. Nor had she returned in the past thirteen years. Oh, he’d looked for her and asked her mother about her when he’d been home on leave. But her mother didn’t have a whole lot to say other than she’d settled in Juneau and worked in a café.
