Rescued By The Marine

Samantha dropped the skillet and opened the back door.

“This is Grazer. I need your help.” With the rain beating down on the loading area’s metal canopy, she lost the rest of the conversation until he started shouting. “I mean right now! She’s taking off. Running out the back door. This is plan B!”

Whoever Kyle’s ally was, she wasn’t waiting for his help to arrive. Slightly breathless with the exertion of fending off Kyle, she scanned the row of employee cars on the other side of the driveway for her silver BMW. The rain fell in sheets on either side of the canopy, blackening the night sky and shrinking her world to the lights beneath the canopy and parked vehicles ahead of her. Her steps stuttered to a halt beside the caterer’s van. Where was Brandon? Surely, he’d had time to fetch her car from the lot in front of the lodge to drive back here. “Where are you?”

Although she was out of the elements, the moisture in the air dotted her skin. She shivered with a chill that was part Wyoming springtime and part apprehension. Samantha took out her own phone and pulled up Brandon’s number. Should she call him? Give him a few more seconds?

A powerful engine revved nearby. Too big to be her car. Tires screeched against the wet pavement somewhere out in the darkness. Two headlamps came on, their bright lights crystallizing every raindrop, blinding her. Shielding her eyes, Samantha drew back to her side of the driveway so she wouldn’t be run over.

Just as she punched in her bodyguard’s number to get her out of this madhouse, a black van erupted from the wall of rain and skidded to a stop only feet away, sending a wave of dirty water splashing over her feet. “Hey!”

The side door opened and two men in dark camouflage gear and ski masks jumped out. One was carrying what looked like a machine gun.

Samantha screamed.

“Shut her up!” a growly voice ordered.

She spun around and slammed into a third man. Where had he come from? Strong arms snugged around her like a vise, knocking the phone from her hand. “Let go of me!”

“Get that phone!” someone shouted.

Someone tore her purse off her shoulder. She kicked. Clawed. Twisted. “Brandon! Help! Help me! Ky—!”

A gloved hand slapped an oily cloth over her mouth and nose, forcing her to breathe in some nasty fumes, making her dizzy. Rough hands lifted her off her feet. Her knee cracked against the running board of the van before she was shoved inside. “Help me,” she wheezed. The hands let go and she rolled across the floor of the van, slamming into the opposite side. “What’s happening? Who are you?”

“Samantha!” Help. Brandon was coming for her. She heard two sharp pops, and jumped inside her skin at the metallic clank of two bullets striking the back of the van.

A man in the front seat thrust his hand out the window and fired a gun that made a whup, whup sound. A silencer. Her would-be rescuer wouldn’t hear the man returning fire.

She pushed herself up, tried to warn him. “Brandon!”

The side door slammed shut. The van lurched forward and she fell.

“Glasses.”

Cruel hands pulled them off her face, blurring the world around her. “Please... I can’t see—”

“I said shut her up.” She felt the prick of a needle in the side of her neck. “Get the tracking device.” The man giving orders cursed. “Drive!”

Those same cruel hands tugged at her coat. A sharp blade pierced the back of her shoulder. Her world blurred into a woozy haze of faceless men and squealing tires.

Kidnapped. Just like her mother. Michelle Eddington had been taken on a raw night just like this one.

Samantha’s brain went dark on one final thought.

Kyle’s betrayal, seeing his daughter used and being played for a fool himself, might anger her father.

But this would break him.

Chapter Three (#u763d1fd9-adff-54dc-9b52-253f97212a2b)

A beer bottle sailed through the air. Jason dodged the flying projectile and watched it shatter against the wood door frame behind him at Kitty’s Bar.

He halted a moment to brush off some of the beer that had sprayed his jacket and quickly assessed the combatants of the fight he’d just walked in on. Looked like locals versus outsiders. Located on the outskirts of Moose, Wyoming, Kitty’s was usually a quiet hole-in-the-wall where a man could get a drink and meet a friend without running into too many people. But at o-dark-thirty on a Friday night, this place had more people in it than he’d ever seen—and half of them were throwing punches.

“Stop it!” Kitty Flynn yelled from behind the bar as a table tipped over, spilling playing cards and poker chips over the warped floorboards.

He spotted a familiar search and rescue ball cap sliding across the floor before zeroing in on a head of curly red hair. Sure enough, Marty Flynn, Kitty’s nephew and Jason’s coworker, was right in the middle of it, landing a punch on a blond guy in a three-piece suit before pulling a dark-haired waitress out of Blondie’s arms and pushing her toward the bar and his aunt. “You get out of there, Cathy, before you get hurt.”

Marty shoved at a dark-haired twenty-something wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. That was one of the Murphy boys, twins who ran a gun shop with their dad. He never could tell Cy and Orin apart. The kid shoved right back, trying to get at a tall, lanky man who already sported a black eye. Jason pulled off his knit cap and shook the rain from the dark hair that dripped onto his collar. He never should have answered his phone.

“Hey, Captain. I’ve got a woman we need to track down in the Tetons.”

“Missing hiker?” Jason had asked, thinking the woman was a fool to risk going up into the high country in the spring before the upper elevations had thawed. But he was already grabbing his go bag to load into his four-wheel-drive truck. Night was the worst time to be lost in the mountains. And all this rain and snow, depending on where she was on the mountain, made this a particularly miserable night.

“Not exactly.” Either the woman needed their help, or she didn’t. Jason waited for the younger man to explain. “Meet me at Aunt Kitty’s place. I’m not calling in anybody else on the S&R team because the guy who wants to hire us says this rescue needs to stay off the books. Hell, I’m not even filing a report with the boss, just getting clearance for a flight plan from the airport. I don’t think we need anybody else. And we could make some good money. A lot of it.”

Jason didn’t care about the money. What he cared about was living with his conscience. Letting another woman die when he could do something to help was his Achilles’ heel. Letting anyone die in those mountains when he knew them better than just about anybody in a hundred-mile radius wasn’t something he could hide away from, although he tried damn hard to hide from the world as much as it would let him. He’d found that five-year-old kid who’d wandered off from his parents last summer. He’d tracked down a mountain biker who’d had a run-in with a cougar, carried the guy on his back to clear ground so he could be life-flighted to the hospital. There’d been skiers and snowboarders who’d needed his help, and he’d been there, too, for them.

But it was never enough. The debt was still there. He’d lost too many lives over in Kilkut. No matter how far off the grid he got, that need to balance the scales—a life for a life—demanded that he answer Marty Flynn’s call. Maybe one day the score would be even, and the losses he’d suffered in the Corps, the anger and the guilt, wouldn’t be able to find him anymore.

And so, he was here. At Kitty’s Bar on the outskirts of Moose after midnight, walking into the middle of a bar fight.

Looked like Marty was actually trying to stop the fight, and was getting cursed and dinged up for his trouble. Four more locals, judging by their boots and jeans like Jason wore, were going after four guys in suits who seemed to be toying with them. One of the suits, an older man with a square face and silvering hair, hung back behind the tall guy and a bruiser with a handlebar mustache. Although he seemed mature enough to avoid duking it out with men half his age, he wasn’t above shouting orders, or answering taunts about getting the hell out of where he didn’t belong. Mustache Man had training. He blocked every punch, braced his feet when another drunk local charged him and used his attacker’s momentum to shove him off to the side.

Blondie wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth and grabbed the older man’s arm, pulling him away from two men who knocked over a bar stool and toppled to the floor. “Stay out of it, Walter. Let the professionals handle these yokels. That’s what you pay them for.”

“I’m not afraid of a fight.” While the older man didn’t dive into the thick of swinging arms and wrestling men, he did shrug off the young man’s grip, stepping forward while Blondie waved him off with a dismissive curse and pulled out his cell phone.

Marty looked a little outnumbered, since neither side seemed interested in backing down. But Jason’s priority was the missing hiker, not bailing Marty out of a tough situation because someone had made a joke with the wrong person, or the city dude had made a move on one of the small-town country girls.

Sure, Jason could handle himself in a fight. The Marines had trained him to do that better than most. And the fact that he was built like a tank and stood almost a head taller than anyone else in the room generally dissuaded all but the drunkest or most stupid from picking a fight with him in the first place.

But he didn’t wage war anymore. Only the one inside his head. Not even for a friend from the Corps. Jason backed toward the broken bottle and swinging door. Marty could call in a different favor on another day.

Jason was big, but he wasn’t fast. Not fast enough to make his escape, at any rate.

“Captain! Jason. Thank God. This is the—” Another local boy with a dark crew cut and tats lunged past Marty, trying to get at the old man. He recognized Richard Cordes Jr., the son of a militia leader who’d led a remote compound in the area back when Jason had been a boy. “Damn it, Junior, I said back off!”

“Mind your own business, Marty.” More glass smashed. “Eddington!”

“Jase!”

Putting every emotional survival instinct on hold, Jason squeezed his eyes shut, inhaled a deep breath and answered Marty’s plea for help.

He grabbed the young man who was picking himself up off the floor and shoved him down in a chair with a warning to stay put. Kane Windisch—he was Junior Cordes’s cousin. Jason captured the next punk in a neck hold and twisted him out of his path to reach Marty and Junior, who was wielding a broken bottle, ready to cut anyone who got too close.

And that’s when he saw the guns. The bulges inside their suit jackets indicated Mustache Man and the lanky suit guy already sporting a black eye were both carrying.