by Julie Miller
She still didn’t know why Jason had kissed her. Maybe he had a thing for four-eyed geeks with wild hair and horrid luck with men. Maybe kissing a socially awkward heiress or kidnap victim completed some notch on his bedpost. Or maybe he’d simply wanted to distract her from her panic for a moment so that she’d calm down and listen to what he was saying to her.
It wasn’t lost on her that she was completely dependent on this man for her life. Or that his mood could swing from hero to heartthrob to hermit in the span of these twelve long hours.
Rule one. Do what I say. How was she supposed to ensure her survival on this fast trek to only-Jason-knew-where if he didn’t give her any directions?
Other than the occasional warning about some bear scat or loose rock hidden beneath the snow, Jason’s last words had been about the need to put as much distance as possible between them and the mysterious Buck and his surviving band of mercenaries. Yes, the route through the black, freezing, thankfully bear-free cave would make them difficult to find now, especially since they seemed to be avoiding anything that resembled a road or path. But discovery wasn’t impossible. And until she was home in a hot shower and a warm bed, and she was certain her father wasn’t blaming himself for her kidnapping or stressing to the point of a heart attack, she intended to do her best to follow Jason’s rules.
She had rules five and six down pat. Step where I step. Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
But she was getting so tired. Tired of walking and climbing and overthinking everything that had happened to her in the past twenty-four hours. She wanted to know who’d kidnapped her, and if there was any significance to being taken on the night she was supposed to get engaged in front of a crowd of dignitaries and reporters. She imagined she was front-page news. Except for the drugs and bullets and two dead men on the mountain, this might have been a whale of a publicity stunt. Mostly, she wanted to know whether being taken on the anniversary of her mother’s abduction and murder was a stab at her father or just a cruel coincidence. She was tired of worrying about what the next twenty-four hours held in store for her. For her father. For Jason.
Despite the spectacular scenery of the Tetons on the cusp of spring, her vision had narrowed to the wall of Jason’s back and the twenty yards or so of tracks and terrain between them. Although she was tempted to ask how much farther she had to walk, she tucked away the whiny voice and summoned the most sensible tone her weariness and sore throat could manage.
“Do you think it’s safe to take a break now?” she asked, cursing his machine-like endurance, even as she wondered about the secrets and emotional pain he seemed to crush beneath every step. “I haven’t heard a snowmobile or voices or anything but us for ages now. The sun was overhead the last time we stopped, and now it’s in front of us. That means a couple of hours have passed, doesn’t it?”
Silence. Was this how he grieved? March on and ignore the rest of the world?
“Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I haven’t had anything to eat since that energy bar you gave me before dawn this morning. All I need is ten minutes to get off my feet and eat something. I can make do with five,” she bargained, when he showed no sign of stopping.
Twenty yards stretched to twenty-five as she stumbled over some uneven ground and her pace slowed. She was getting a little light-headed. Probably not breathing right. Too much oxygen or not enough. Her lungs and brain struggled to find the right rhythm. “I don’t know if you noticed this yet, but your legs are longer than mine. It wouldn’t hurt you to slow down every now and then, would it? Jason? Can you hear me?” Either her voice was too raw to carry the distance between them or he was so focused on finding the safest route between men who wanted to kill them and civilization that he couldn’t hear her.
Although they were gradually working their way down the mountain, the course he’d charted for them was more like a roller coaster—up one rise and down the next, circumventing one rock formation while climbing over another, avoiding one stream of icy water and hiking straight across the next one. As her stride shortened and every breath strained her lungs, she watched him climb a winding path through the trees up to the next ridge.
A flat rock sunning itself in a clearing a few feet up the slope beckoned. Without the surrounding pines to shade it, even last night’s snow had melted away to expose dry gray rock with hundreds of sparkly specks that beckoned like a neon sign. The ancient chunk of granite had been pushed ahead of a glacier eons ago and worn smooth by erosion. Samantha pulled off her borrowed glove and spread her palm against the surface. The sun made it warm to the touch, certainly warmer than the air around it. It wasn’t her bed, or even one of the stiff new leather chairs back at the lodge. But it was warm and she wasn’t, and the chance to sit for a moment was too inviting to pass up.
“I’m taking a break,” she announced to Jason’s back. He had a way to go to reach the top of that rise yet. She could make do with a two-minute respite.
Obeying the needs of her body, Samantha climbed onto the rock and stretched her legs out in front of her, relishing the warmth seeping into the back of her thighs and bottom. She heard the whoops and chirps of small songbirds, and the screech of a raptor—an eagle, maybe?—soaring overhead. She let her vision blur out of focus and listened more carefully. Underneath the sounds of animals and wind, she heard the splashing of water. No, it was more like splashing times a hundred. There was gushing water running someplace nearby. Someplace where the water was thawing better than she was. A waterfall?
This was a beautiful part of the country, she admitted. Rugged, hard, but worth the effort to see and hear and understand it. Not unlike her stony mountain guide. Even if he did refuse to talk to her. Or acknowledge her fatigue. Or slow down.
Her eyes drifted shut and her chin dipped forward until her head grew too heavy, and she jerked it back. She’d be asleep in those two minutes if she didn’t keep her thoughts and at least some part of her body moving. Forcing her eyes open, she spared a few glorious moments to look straight out over the tops of the trees into the greening valley and frothy lines being drawn across a pond far below before her gaze traveled up the next slope beyond the dark tree line to the mountain’s snowy peak. That pond was probably a lake. The creek feeding into it was most likely a river, maybe attached to the waterfall she heard. Those lines were probably boats motoring across the surface. If there were any people down there, they were too tiny to make out. Everything looked small from this altitude. She felt small, too, surrounded by towering trees and endless miles of mountains, snow and sky. “Get out of your head, Sam,” she chided herself. A pity party had no place in her life if she wanted to survive this endless hike and the cruel, greedy men and dead bodies in their wake.
She was probably down to one minute now. Working as quickly as her gloved hands would allow, she pulled the pack she’d taken from the helicopter into her lap and unzipped an outside pocket. “Thank you, Marty.”
Smiling at the pair of water bottles there, she opened one and toasted Jason’s friend before taking a long drink. The next pocket revealed a stash of protein bars. She ripped into the first one and gnawed off a chunk of the bone-dry granola, oats and nut butter mix. She swallowed it down with some more water and felt it sink all the way down her gullet. It wasn’t tasty or easy to eat, but there was something heartening about the feel of a food-like substance in her stomach again.
Rest, water and two bites of sawdust improved her spirits enough to risk conversing with Jason again. He was a tall gray figure in a black knit cap, pumping his long, strong legs from snow to grass to rocky precipice through the trees. “This tastes like cardboard, but I was getting to the point where I was worried the growling in my stomach would give our position away.” No laugh. No response. She drank some more water, soothing her throat before reaching out to him again. “I am so eating a steak and mashed potatoes when I get home. What are you looking forward to when we get
back to civilization? Are you a cake or pie man? Crème brûlée? A beer?” She lowered her voice to a grumble and forced down another bite. “Right. Super Scary Mountain Man doesn’t need food or water or rest like us mortals do. Probably doesn’t even know what civilization is.”
Samantha cringed when she heard the words coming out of her mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it,” she apologized, even though he hadn’t heard her weary complaint. “Are you hungry? Do you want part of this? I can share...”
Jason was a good forty to fifty yards ahead of her now. Invisible threads of panic tightened Samantha’s chest even as her breathing evened out and more oxygen reached her brain. She took stock of her surroundings the way a practical engineer would.
The depth of snowfall was thinner here. As their altitude dropped, the late afternoon sun was melting more snow, leaving gaps of bare ground and exposed rock instead of the oversize boot prints she’d been following for miles now. She glanced behind her, surveying the path they’d made through the trees. Even though she saw no armed men in black camo gear, she was too far away from Jason to feel safe. And if she lost his trail, she might accidentally wander off the edge of another cliff or come face-to-face with the bear who’d been marking this part of the mountain. Panic became thick cords that nearly choked her. In another ten yards, the people down below wouldn’t be the only ones she couldn’t see.
“Jason, wait up!” Samantha zipped the water bottle back into its pocket. Slinging the straps of the pack over her aching shoulders, she scrambled off the rock to catch up with him. “Are you upset about Lieutenant Flynn? Is that why you’re not talking? I can’t tell you how sorry I am he got killed trying to help me. You didn’t even get any time to mourn. When we get home, I’ll set up a memorial for him. Or help his family. Whatever you think is right.” Her feet, back and leg muscles were really protesting now as she pushed herself to close the distance between them. Why had he set such a relentless pace? Had she said something to offend him? Did he know something about the men following them he wasn’t sharing? Could it be...? Ah, hell. “Are you mad about that kiss? Did you break some gentleman’s or mountain man’s code? I didn’t mind it, I swear. I liked it. A lot. It took my thoughts off everything else for a few seconds and I wasn’t quite so scared. I know that doesn’t mean we’re dating or anything if you’re worried about me crushing on you. No pressure, okay? I can pretty well guess that I’m not your type. It was just a peck on the lips.”
A peck on the lips combined with that full-body hug and that rumbling deep voice that had tickled her skin and warmed her from the inside out. Kyle had had his tongue down her throat and her blouse unbuttoned, and she hadn’t felt anything like the ignition point in the pit of her stomach that had jolted through her blood like a combustion engine turning over the way she had when Jason had teased her lips. It must be the thinner air at this altitude that made her think that kiss could have turned into something much more significant if he hadn’t been so quick to pull away.
“If it wasn’t a good kiss, it’s my fault. I mean, I don’t think my ex was that great of a teacher. I thought he was, but you know, there’s a reason he’s an ex, and I just never seemed to catch on the way he wanted, so he was kissing other women and boinking them and... Jason?” She froze for a split second when he crested the rise and disappeared down the other side. She was alone. He’d left her alone.
She wadded up the wrapper of the protein bar and stuffed it into her coat pocket so she could use her hands to balance and help pull herself up the slippery rocks. When she reached the top, she exhaled a noisy sigh of relief. Not a sheer drop-off this time, but a gentle, shadowed slope that angled down to a frozen creek bed. Indirect sunlight left the snow knee-deep as she half climbed, half slid down to the bottom of the ravine. The icy crystals got into the tops of her socks and beneath her dress, chilling her skin. But cold was good. Cold meant she was feeling and awake—awake enough to be concerned.
Jason stood on the opposite side, his pack and radio sunk into the snow at his feet. He stared into the blackness between the trees while she searched for a narrower point to cross than where he’d obviously leaped from one bank to the other. “Did you hear anything I just said?” she asked, carefully testing a protruding rock for ice before using it as a stepping-stone over to his side of the creek. “Please don’t ignore me. I know I’m rambling, and I’m sure it’s annoying. But all these thoughts are going through my head, anyway, and saying them out loud is what I do when I get worried or need to think things through...”
He wasn’t fixated on the space between the trees; he was focused on the gnarled trunk of the lodgepole pine right in front of him. Her hand instinctively went to her torso for one nervous scratch.
“Is everything okay?” Samantha lowered her voice to a whisper as she crept up behind him. “Is your fist supposed to be up?” She stepped to one side after a moment with no answer, to see if there was some sort of message carved into the tree. Or blood or a chunk of fur or some other clue that told them they were in imminent danger. “I haven’t heard anyone behind us since we climbed out of that cave, so I think we lost them. Did you find that bear?” She took another step, peeking around his shoulder to see his jaw clenched so tightly, it shook. Was he having a seizure of some kind? Was he angry? “I’m sorry I ignored rule number six and stopped back there. I didn’t think I could take another step, and the front of my stomach was trying to eat the back half—”
All at once, he punched the tree.
“Jason!”
“There’s a damn bullet hole in my pack and the radio doesn’t work. I can’t call for an extraction or radio our position, even though we’re close to being within range. It’ll be nightfall in another hour, and no way can we reach a search and rescue station, or get within cell phone range by then.”
While he rubbed his bruised knuckles, Samantha picked up and eyed the broken device, wondering if the pocketknife she’d stolen from the helicopter had the right tool to open the casing and pry out the bullet wedged inside. Maybe the radio could be repaired. Finally, something she was good at, something that might be useful up here. “Let’s not give up hope yet. Fixing things is a hobby of mine.”
She ran her finger around the hole. That hole could have been in her. She glanced up at the broad target of Jason’s back. Her snack sat like a rock in her stomach, and she suddenly felt light-headed again. The bullet could have lodged in his spine or pierced his heart.
Although she’d known it, she hadn’t really felt it until this moment—those men wanted to kill them.
“Hope? You’re stuck with me, Princess.” Ouch. Okay, she deserved that one for calling him a Scary Mountain Man back on the rock, even though she doubted he’d heard her. “And that sure as hell isn’t the best news I can give you.”
She knelt to flip over his backpack in the snow and poked her finger into the clean round hole the bullet had made. “Thank God the radio was there, or you’d have been shot.” Losing Jason up here in the wilderness would surely sign her death warrant, as well. Losing him, period, messed with her equilibrium again. She shook off the dizzying emotions of fear and relief and shrugged the bag she carried off her shoulders. If it was simply the power cell that had been damaged, she could cannibalize parts from his flashlight and get the radio working again. “We’ll figure out something else. Like you did with the cave and getting away from Buck. We’ll walk all the way down the mountain if we have to. It’ll be all right.”
“All right? Nothing about this mission is all right.” Foul words spewed through his gritted teeth. “It’s not supposed to go down like this.” With every negative word, he punched the tree. Samantha jerked at the violence of each blow, gasping at the pain he must be feeling. She shot to her feet. Did she grab his arm? Was she strong enough to hold on to all that muscle and stop him? “First I lose Elaine. And now Marty.”
“Who’s Elaine—?”
“Too many damn peo
ple have died on my watch. I can’t...”
“Captain!” When he pulled back his fist again, she leaped into the space between him and the tree, bracing her hand at the middle of his chest. “Stop.”
His fist froze in midair, his face contorting with grief and rage, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in deep breaths of brisk, cooling air. He dropped his hand to his side. Of course, he wouldn’t hit her. But the tree and his hand deserved kinder treatment, too. His eyes, dark with the emotions that must have been building inside him as they walked, darted in every direction before his gaze settled on her. He pulled her hand away from the rough texture of his jacket and released her. “You can do better than me, Sam. You should have better than me to keep you alive.”
Better than him? How could that be? What happened to that confidence he never once had to brag about the way Kyle had?
“I’m sorry about your friend.” Tears made her eyes gritty, and she had to swipe them away to keep her glasses from fogging up. “I’m so sorry you hurt like this.” She tenderly grasped his fist. He’d split two knuckles open and two more were swelling. “But please stop hurting yourself.”
She reached into her coat pocket to pull out a tissue to dab at the oozing wounds. A single drop of blood trickled down the side of his hand and dripped into the snow. The moment it hit, he pulled away. But before he fully retreated, Samantha reached up to touch his face. She cupped the side of his neck and jaw, feeling the friction of his beard rasping against the palm of her glove as she tilted his face down to hers.
“Jason, I need you.” His wild gaze snapped to hers. She felt the tight muscles vibrating beneath her touch as he held himself still. She gently brushed her fingertips across the sharp angle of his cheekbone, soothing the tension there. “I have no idea where I am. I don’t know how to survive in the wilderness. I don’t know how to beat the bad guys. I need you to save me.”
