by KaLyn Cooper
So that’s how his uncle had afforded the high-end amenities he’d put in the cabin. Sly old goat. Uncle Samuel had been a hunting guide for years, but that gig only lasted a few months. He’d often complained about clueless city fishermen who flew in for one week to wade in the area’s Blue Ribbon Rivers, fully expecting to leave with a trophy trout, salmon, or bass so they could brag to their friends back home. Isaac would bet good money the old fart was raking in thousands showing tourists a good time tromping around the backcountry, too.
“We won’t be needing a guide, but I’ll keep that in mind,” Isaac reassured Hannah. “So, do you have your own backcountry gear?”
She bounced to her feet. “We store it down in the basement. Follow me.”
Oh, yes. He’d follow that pretty little ass almost anywhere.
While securing the house, he had seen a room filled with everything from downhill skis to four-season sleeping bags. She led him past the small downstairs kitchen, the pool table, and two more bedrooms before reaching the storage area at the far end.
“You might want to reconsider hiring Samuel.” Hannah pulled a large plastic bin with her name on it from the shelf. “He took my brother and me on a three-day, two -night backcountry excursion. It was outstanding. We saw elk and sheep, and I caught my first fish in a pool at the bottom of a waterfall. Best trout I’ve ever eaten.”
Fresh trout was one of Isaac’s absolute favorite meals. He wondered if Hannah would be interested in going out for a bite to eat. He hadn’t seen his kind of food in her refrigerator. He had to be careful, but he seriously doubted anyone from ISIS knew her location. She’d already be kidnapped or dead if they did.
Hannah popped the top off the bin. She withdrew a pair of ski skins and pointed toward the wall. “These fit my telemark skis and you can see my bindings were built for backcountry touring.”
Isaac was impressed. Her equipment wasn’t just high-end, it was high-tech, even though it was a few years old. The skis and poles also looked as though they had been used, but not abused. He hated when people spent good money on great equipment and then didn’t take care of it.
She lifted out a red, waterproof bag labeled Avalanche and opened it. “Transceiver, reflector, probe, extra insulation layer.” She named each object as she pulled it out.
“Have you had avalanche training?” Isaac asked.
With a knowing grin, she lifted that pretty little pointy chin of hers. “I’ve been through Level III Certification courses at the American Avalanche Institute.” She leaned her forearms on the box. “I love this shit. I’d rather be all alone, trudging up a hill, my thighs and calves burning, than dodging novice skiers on packed snow. Don’t get me wrong, I love the speed and adrenaline rush of downhill skiing, but walking through fresh powder, listening to nature all around me…it’s like a religious experience.”
Isaac completely understood. When things got rough at home, he’d take off for a walk in the woods, no matter what time of year. Sometimes that meant cross-country skis, other times snowshoes, and summertime meant boots. Nature had a distinct calming effect on him. As a teenager, he and Uncle Samuel would walk for miles in silence, simply absorbing the very essence of nature.
“I know exactly what you mean,” he admitted. Changing the subject, which he seemed to have to do a lot with Hannah, he looked into the bin and asked, “Do you have a backpack?”
She stood. When she stretched to reach the top shelf, her forearm was exposed. Was that a tattoo of a feather? He wondered what other tattoos she had…and where. His gaze passed over her body. So many interesting places she could have ink. He could picture himself sliding off that loose-fitting shirt and peeling down the yoga pants that fit her like a second skin, checking every inch of her body for tattoos.
His cock became very interested in the idea of a naked Hannah.
Don’t go there, sailor. She’s a client. He stood and reached over her head grabbing the dark blue backpack. The coconut scent of her shampoo hit him just before the heat of her body radiated into his chest.
“This one?” His voice sounded gruff in the small room. He stepped back and the entire front of his body cooled, missing her next to him. Ignoring his erection, he suggested, “Let’s get this packed so it’s ready when we decide to go backcountry.”
“Is that what we’re going to do tomorrow?” Hannah put the subzero sleeping bag in the very bottom, just as he would’ve done.
“No, I think we’ll warm up our legs with some downhill first.” Isaac really needed to determine her skill level. He knew far too many men and women who could talk a good game but when faced with the challenges of the mountain, they just couldn’t handle it.
Hannah started to secure the top of the backpack when Isaac noticed the avalanche sack. “You forgot this.”
“No, I put it in this outside pocket.” She took it from him and started to place it in the zippered area behind her right hip.
“You should put it up here.” Isaac grabbed for the bag, but she clutched it to her chest.
“This is where I learned to carry it and it’s where I’m going to put it.” Hannah glared at him. “It’s my damn pack, and I’ll put everything where I know exactly where it is and I can reach it.”
He relented. Choose your battles, Uncle Samuel used to always say.
Isaac visually inspected the backpack. “What’s this?” He pointed to a hard nylon tubing that would sit against her body. He’d never seen anything like that before.
“That’s an avalanche airbag.” She hoisted the backpack onto her shoulders. “All I have to do is pull on this.” Hannah indicated a tab on her left shoulder. “It automatically inflates from my hips to about two feet above my head. Side bags protect my shoulders and hold my head securely.”
That was the coolest thing Isaac had ever seen. He immediately Googled it on his phone. When he clicked on the video, Hannah stood so close her breasts touched his bicep every time she took a breath. For several minutes, they watched people skiing and snowboarding on extremely steep slopes getting caught in avalanches, then inflating the airbags.
“I need one of those,” he declared.
“This brand is the best,” Hannah pointed to her backpack. “I’ve done extensive research.” She glanced up to the top shelf. “Grab that red backpack. I bought one for my brother when I got this one. He won’t mind if you use his. He’s far too busy with his residency at Johns Hopkins to make it out here this winter.”
Isaac gazed at her. She seemed so open and honest with her responses, caring for his safety, he had to remind himself that she was being hunted. “Thanks. I appreciate that. Let me run out to my SUV and grab mine to transfer everything into this one.”
“While you take care of that, I’m going to make some spaghetti for supper.” As they both turned to head up the steps, she added, “Don’t expect much. My cooking skills are limited to boiling water and heating a jar of spaghetti sauce in the microwave.”
Isaac smiled. “Then I’ll cook breakfast. I make a pretty mean omelet.” The idea of making breakfast after spending the night with a woman took on a new reality.
Chapter 4
Hannah couldn’t sleep.
After she made a passable supper of spaghetti, Isaac had taken a phone call outside and brought in his bags. He’d transferred his backcountry gear into her brother’s backpack then set it next to hers. She really looked forward to Alpine touring with him.
Although she enjoyed skiing the slopes at Big Sky, the thousands of people who flocked to the resort made her nervous. She much preferred cornflower-blue skies, pure white newly fallen snow, and the fresh scent of the tall pine trees that created a circle around the base of the mountain.
She rolled to her side and readjusted her pillow. Through her open bedroom door, she heard Isaac’s soft snoring and wondered what he wore to bed, especially after what she’d seen a few hours ago.
During her college days, she often slept naked. In Syria, she had spent her nights hunting ISIS
extremists, and slept during the day in the busy encampment filled with other female members of the YPJ and usually a battalion of men from the Syrian People’s Protection Units. She had learned to sleep in much of her uniform, boots next to her bed, ready to move at a moment’s notice. Since she had returned to the United States and was told about the threat on her life, she had been sleeping in clothes she could easily escape in, which often meant yoga pants and a T-shirt.
Hannah rolled to her back and listened to the slow, rhythmic breathing coming from the room across the hall.
He was the reason she couldn’t sleep.
Although there were three bedrooms on this floor, the master was at the end of the hall. When Hannah had arrived a week ago, she’d selected her bedroom based on security reasons. She had multiple exits available to her, she could go up or down depending on her situation assessment, and it was central to the entire house so she could keep an eye on everything at the same time. Besides, sleeping in her parents’ bedroom had a definite ick factor to it.
There wasn’t a problem until Isaac insisted on taking the bedroom across from hers. That meant sharing a bathroom. Hannah moved all of her personal items to the master bathroom. That felt like less of an intrusion on her parents’ private space than if he were using it. Besides, she loved their dual showerheads.
Cotton abraded cotton as Isaac rolled over across the hall. The thought of him sleeping so close made her girl parts tingle again.
Several hours ago, she had seen his magnificent body in nothing but a towel riding low on narrow hips. She had almost reached her bedroom door after brushing her teeth and washing her face in her parents’ en suite when Isaac stepped out of the smaller bathroom. All she could do was stand and gape. She couldn’t stop looking at well-defined chest muscles under a smattering of dark hair. His flat nipples were nut brown and wrinkled like walnuts the longer she stared at him. She couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering over six distinct ridges before finding the thin dense line of dark hair that led from his belly button to under the towel. Ho-ly hell. The man was built.
Her nipples had hardened and she’d hoped the loose-fitting T-shirt hid them. It had been months since Hannah had sex, and just looking at Isaac made her wonder what sleeping with him would be like. She’d had a few lovers before Aziz, but they were boys, more interested in getting off than her orgasm. Not that Aziz had been all that concerned after the first few times.
While seducing her, he’d made sure she orgasmed before he slid inside her. Once they had been lovers for a while, he often came before she had time to get there. Looking back, she could now see that he was just using her for quick fuck…and information.
She had been so young and naïve, believing they were in love. She’d trusted him, and that had turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life. And the lives of hundreds of young girls she was not able to save. Her love for him had blinded her.
That would never happen again. Never.
She pinched her eyes closed and fought back the truth. She might not live long enough to have to worry about falling in love again.
That was another reason she couldn’t sleep.
She knew Isaac would protect her, if by some rare possibility Aziz’s family actually found her and tried to kill her. Death would be preferred over kidnapping. She had seen the results of what ISIS soldiers had done to the young girls they’d captured. They would do even worse to her.
Hannah had to shove the pictures in her mind of abused teenage girls into the dark recesses before anger took over and she headed back to the Middle East to avenge the atrocities.
Her body was exhausted after being on alert constantly. She hadn’t slept well in weeks. When she’d returned to the United States, she thought she had left all the troubles of the Middle East behind her. Then her mother had been attacked.
The Atlanta Police Department had called it a mugging, an attempt to steal money or drugs as she’d left the hospital late one night. Her family knew differently. The men who’d beat the shit out of her mom had told her it was because she had given birth to such a rebellious daughter. They had called her a whore because she touched men who were not her husband.
The woman was an emergency room physician. Of course she touched men, several times a day. She also saved their lives, but the radicals didn’t approve.
One of her mother’s assailants chastised her because she wore American clothing and did not cover her body head to toe in an abaya. Hannah hated the attitude of extremist Muslims toward women. That was why she had joined the Syrian People’s Protection Units, specifically the all-female YPJ.
She had been welcomed with open arms since she had been born in a Syrian refugee camp. She was also a citizen of the United States of America by birth. Her father had been born and raised in the USA, working for the CDC in Iraq when he’d met her mother. Even then, she had been an emergency room physician. The two had worked together and quickly fallen in love.
Hannah thought she had followed in her mother’s footsteps. Aziz had practically swept her off her feet. At twenty-one, she was thrilled to have captured the attention of the handsome Syrian army captain in his mid-thirties. Although she was not a virgin, she was definitely naïve when it came to a man as experienced as him.
Thanks to her American education, she had risen quickly through the officer ranks of the YPJ since women in the Middle East were given little opportunity for schooling. As they were the same rank, and Aziz’s charismatic personality made him a favorite, their affair was shrugged off by senior officers.
Until she had revealed him as a traitor.
Smack. Smack.
The wind had kicked up and Hannah already knew that sound came from the dryer vent. It had about scared her to death the first night she spent alone in the large house.
She heard the sheets rustle in the bedroom across the hall. Having Isaac so close was comforting and disturbing at the same time.
A board squeaked in the hallway, and Hannah reached under her pillow to grab her H&K mini submachine gun. She crept to the doorway and plastered herself against the wall. Peeping out, she saw Isaac looking down the sights of a fifteen-round Sig Sauer.
“Isaac, it’s just the dryer vent,” Hannah said in a normal voice as she stepped out of her bedroom, gun nestled into her shoulder. Trust no one had been her motto since arriving in Syria four years ago. Only once had she let her guard down, and she was now being hunted because she’d trusted a man. Never again. Not even if he was supposed to protect her.
“Holy fuck!” Isaac lowered his gun. “I could have shot you. You should’ve stayed in your bedroom.”
Hannah laughed as she let her gun drop down next to her thigh. “Let you wander all over this house clearing every room? I’ll never get to sleep.”
In the dim hallway lit by the half-moon reflecting off snow, she could see the tension ease the lines in his face. “Sometimes talking about your worries helps them go away.”
A deep noise burst from within Hannah. It wasn’t a chuckle but could have been perceived as one. “I don’t think talking about the brother of the ISIS Caliphate, is going to stop his family from hunting me down and trying to kill me.” She let out a heavy sigh. “But maybe a strong drink will help me sleep.”
Without turning on any lights, she walked to the wet bar in the corner of the living room. She laid her gun on the granite counter and removed a half-empty bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon from the glass shelf above. “Want one?” She turned the label toward Isaac.
He shook his head. “I’m on duty.”
She grabbed a second glass. “I hate drinking alone. Besides, after that adrenaline rush you just had, you’ll need something to bring you down to normal.”
“You’re right.” Isaac was so close to her, she flinched. She hadn’t heard him move. Damn, but she was off her game. If she wasn’t more careful, she could end up dead.
She poured the golden liquid into a glass and handed it to him.
“I take it you know
how to use that one, too?” He asked and held the glass to his nose, sniffing appreciatively.
Smiling as she poured the alcohol, she admitted, “I’m a damn good marksman with almost any weapon.” She turned to face him. “But my favorite is my custom-made, Barrett 82A1. For a .50 caliber, it doesn’t have much recoil and fits very nicely in a lightweight case. I can carry that little baby all day long, and all night.”
She curled up in the corner of the couch tucking her feet under her, resting the small machine gun across her lap. She had shocked him. She loved surprising men with her abilities. They always underestimated women.
Well, not always. Aziz had known exactly how to play her. She had been the one to underestimate her foe.
Isaac followed her to the seating area, and to her surprise, he settled at the other end of the couch after laying his gun on the coffee table in front of them.
“Why is ISIS after you?” Isaac had obviously decided to cut straight to the point.
After a moment of consideration, she decided she liked that. No games. No small talk. She decided to return the favor. “I’m sure you’ve heard of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he’s the Caliphate of ISIS.”
Isaac nodded. “The self-professed direct descendent of Mohammed who, in 2014, declared himself the leader of the Islamic faithful because the Taliban was not fundamentalist enough for him. What about him?”
That was an excellent summary. Hannah was happy she didn’t have to give him a Middle Eastern history lesson. She let out a long sigh. “Because of me, his brother is dead.”
With her eyes now adjusted to the darkness, Hannah watched Isaac’s jaw drop.
“You killed the heir apparent? The guy who would take over ISIS if we finally managed to kill al-Baghdadi?” Isaac closed his eyes and dropped his head on the back of the couch. “Oh, fuck,” he said just above a whisper.
