Mountain Ranger Recon. Carol Ericson

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      And if Kayla still had breath in her body, she’d identify her attacker.

      “I can’t let you do that.” Probably wondering how far she had to carry the charade, Meg shifted her gaze beyond him to the group of shocked tourists, and Ian followed her line of sight.

      The birthday girls huddled together whispering, while the honeymooning couple, stumbling on the scene late, clung to each other, faces white. The German tourist…snapped photos.

      A burst of anger exploded behind his eyes, but Ian took a deep breath. He had to get down to Kayla. Meg knew he was just as capable of hiking down to Kayla and moving her body downstream as the volunteer search-and-rescue team on its way. More capable, since he’d been a member of the army’s mountain division before joining the covert ops team, Prospero.

      Ian decided to make it easy for her. He raised his voice, a sob cracking his words. “That’s my wife down there. You can’t stop me.”

      He launched over the side of the deck, his boots fitting into the footholds he’d scoped out minutes earlier. As he scaled down the rocky cliff side, he heard voices above him. Several minutes later, a shower of pebbles rained down on his head. He glanced up to see Meg following his path down the side of the cliff.

      He tilted his head back and called to her, “Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on your group?” Although, in all honesty, he’d rather have Meg down here with him than up there with a possible killer.

      She responded in a tinny voice. “One of our guys in the area heard the radio call and just showed up. He’s going to get the group to the top.”

      For the next several minutes Ian heard only his own heavy breathing and the roar from the waterfall. Meg, following his path, made a steady descent in his wake, occasionally dislodging pebbles that pelted his head and hands.

      Reaching the bottom of the craggy cliff face, Ian jumped to the ground, his boots splashing in the river where it tumbled over slick rocks. He reached Kayla in two strides and crouched beside her lifeless form. Her blond hair floated in the water, and her eyes stared, unseeing, at the falls.

      Ian checked her pulse. Nothing. He hadn’t known Kayla well, but she’d shown a fierce loyalty to Jack Coburn. She’d volunteered for this mission as soon as she found out about Jack’s disappearance. And she’d done so without the approval or knowledge of her employer, the CIA.

      There’d be hell to pay for this screwup.

      Meg panted over his shoulder. “Is she…?”

      “She’s dead.” Ian passed his hand over Kayla’s eyes, closing them to the world for the last time.

      Meg grasped his shoulder for support as she choked. “Who did this?”

      “One of your so-called tourists.” He pointed his index finger toward the top of the cliff.

      “Do you think Scott will be safe?”

      “Scott?”

      “The other guide who’s finishing the hike for me.”

      “He’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t start asking questions. And why should he? But I’ll need a list of all the people on the hike.” The colonel had misjudged the enemy. He thought the terrorist scum would sneak in here in the dead of night to recover their lost property. Instead, someone had posed as a tourist, hitting on the same plan as Ian.

      With deadly results.

      “Why are you so sure Kayla was pushed? Maybe she fell.” Meg kneeled on the ground and felt for a pulse in Kayla’s neck.

      “You told me yourself, nobody has ever had an accident on that trail. Kayla falling from the platform is too coincidental. She and I are on this hike looking for…something, and she winds up dead at the bottom of a cliff.”

      “Do you think she found that something?”

      “If not, she must’ve been getting warm.”

      Meg’s radio crackled, and she informed her home office that she and the victim’s husband were with the body and that Scott was leading the rest of the group to the top of the mountain.

      She ended the transmission and pocketed the radio. “Did you hear that? They want us to wait with Kayla until search and rescue gets here.”

      “I can move her downstream to wait for the helicopter. The El Paso County Search and Rescue doesn’t have to waste its time hiking down here.”

      “And blow your cover? Remember, you’re a tourist who just lost his wife.”

      And an agent who just lost his partner.

      Ian sank down on the nearest boulder and buried his face in his hands—for real this time. He’d wanted to go on this operation alone, but the colonel thought he’d be less suspicious as part of a couple. That didn’t work out too well. He plowed his fingers through his hair and cursed.

      The pressure of Meg’s hand rubbing circles on his back calmed him. He squeezed his eyes shut and allowed the warmth to seep through his body. God, he’d missed her touch these past three years.

      Why had he let Meg go without a fight? Because she deserved better. A better husband than one who’d been halfway across the world when his wife suffered a miscarriage. He blamed himself. His mission had caused her too much stress. His secrets had strained the trust between them.

      Truth was he had no idea how to be a good husband and even less of an idea how to be a good father. His role model had been neither.

      Apparently, he also sucked at being a good partner.

      His muscles tensed, and the pressure of Meg’s hands increased. “I’m sorry about Kayla, but it’s not your fault, Ian. If she was an agent with Prospero, she knew the risks.”

      Ian twisted around to look into Meg’s clear blue eyes. Did she really know so little about Prospero, the military covert ops team that worked so deep undercover, sometimes their own government didn’t know what they were doing?

      What did he expect? He’d compartmentalized that entire side of his life, keeping Meg so far away from it that she’d felt abandoned by him and excluded from the closeness he’d shared with the members of that group.

      He dragged in a deep breath of crisp mountain air. “Kayla wasn’t part of Prospero, Meg. She joined our mission from the CIA. There is no Prospero anymore. We disbanded almost two years ago.”

      She pushed up abruptly. “Th-then what are you doing here? Are you working for the CIA now?”

      “Not exactly.” He rubbed his knuckles across his jaw. What the hell. They were alone and he owed her big time. Through no fault of her own, she was smack in the middle of this thing, and she had a right to know why he and Kayla, and apparently some terrorist, had commandeered her hike on a fresh fall morning.

      “Sit down. We can’t do anything for Kayla now anyway, except wait for search and rescue to move her body.” He patted a space beside him on the rough boulder.

      She perched next to him, looking poised for flight, her СКАЧАТЬ