Mountain Ranger Recon Read online

  Ian lifted a shoulder. “I figured you’d catch on.”

  “And I figured my ex-husband wouldn’t choose one of my hikes as an opportunity to relive old times.”

  “Husband.”

  “What?”

  “I’m your husband.”

  Meg stumbled back, Ian’s words punching her in the gut. The aching pit of emptiness she felt at his words surprised her. Ending her marriage to Ian had broken her heart, but she thought she’d finally recovered. She’d even accepted most of the blame, since she was the one who had changed the rules of their relationship. Seeing him again, and the way his grin tilted up on one side, contrasting with the sharp intensity of his eyes, carved open a hollow space in her heart—one she thought she’d filled ages ago.

  One she’d better start filling with something. Anger would do.

  She dug her boots into the dirt and squared her shoulders. “What are you and your partner doing on this hike?”

  His grin vanished, a furrow forming between his brows. “You know I can’t tell you that, Meg.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Same old crap with you, Dempsey. You’re obviously using Rocky Mountain Adventures for some reason, or you’d hike in here on your own. Why didn’t you just call and ask me? Why’d you have to sneak in here pretending to be a tourist…John?”

  He put his finger to his lips. “Not so loud.”

  “What if I blew your cover, right here, right now?” She narrowed her eyes at the way his jaw tightened. “I’d be jeopardizing national security or something like that, wouldn’t I?”

  “Not only national security, but your own and that of every tourist on this hike.” He cocked his head. “Why so angry, Meg? You’re the one who ended it, although you never did bother filing for divorce.”

  Her cheeks burned and she lifted her face to the cool air. “You couldn’t handle a real relationship, one with trust and commitment.”

  “That’s bull. I committed to you with everything I had. I love…loved you with everything I had. When you lost the baby…”

  “A baby you didn’t want.”

  “I could’ve grown used to the idea.”

  Meg snorted. “That’s big of you.”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “I’m not playing the pity card, but you know damn well why the thought of a child scared the hell out of me.”

  “You’re not your father, Ian. You never were.” Her eyes burned with tears as frustration gnawed at her insides. She should’ve been able to make him see that. She’d failed him.

  His grip on her shoulders softened to a caress. “You made me see that more than anyone, Meg.”

  She swayed toward him, and then clenched her hands into fists. She couldn’t take this trip with him again, especially while he was in the middle of one of his covert operations, shutting her out, keeping secrets.

  She stuffed down her guilt over keeping Travis from him. He’d probably rather not know about his son.

  Whatever Ian and Kayla decided to do once the hike ended didn’t concern her. She’d deliver them to the top of the mountain, along with the rest of the tourists, and they could knock themselves out with their secret agent crap. Then maybe she’d get that divorce she’d been putting off, and then maybe she’d better tell him about his son.

  “Where’s the purple flower?”

  Ian’s nostrils flared for a second and then he grinned. He dropped his hands from her shoulders and swooped down, plucking a flower from the ground. Cradling the small flower in his palm, he said, “Here it is.”

  “It’s poisonous.”

  He tipped his hand over and the flower floated to the dirt. Meg crushed the petals beneath her boot as she headed back up the trail to the other hikers.

  Perched on a boulder, Kayla raised her head from her small guide book and her brows shot up. She didn’t know her partner very well, if she thought Ian had spilled the beans about their mission.

  Meg adjusted her pack. “Our next stop will be the viewing deck for the falls, but on the way keep your eye out for some small mountain critters—picas, squirrels and some cute rodents.”

  Meg did a head count and frowned. “Where’s…” She snapped her fingers, “Russ and Jeanine?”

  The lovey-dovey couple emerged from some underbrush, holding hands. Wide-eyed, Jeanine asked, “Are you waiting for us?”

  A few of the other hikers smirked while Meg nodded, clenching her teeth against her irritation, recognizing it for what it was—jealousy. “Okay, everyone’s accounted for. Let’s go.”

  The furtive conversation with Ian had rattled her. He hadn’t been expecting to see her leading this hike, but he obviously knew she worked as a guide for Rocky Mountain Adventures.

  Had he been keeping tabs on her? Not likely. He’d given no indication he knew she had a child. His child.

  AN HOUR LATER, Meg halted at the top of the fifty-three wooden steps that descended to the viewing platform for the waterfall. “If you don’t want to expend your energy climbing down and then back up these steps, you’re welcome to wait here. We still have another two hours of hiking ahead of us.”

  A few groans met this statement and Meg grinned. Wussies.

  She trudged down the steps with the heartier members of the group, steering clear of Ian and Kayla, who branched out in different directions. After pointing out a few features of the falls and the river running through the canyon, Meg climbed back up the stairs and took some questions while waiting for the others.

  As Meg opened her mouth to answer yet another question, a scream echoed through the canyon where the waterfall plunged into jagged rocks. The sound sent a shot of cold dread straight to Meg’s heart.

  Her gaze darted among the hikers gathered on the trail, their mouths agape. Who was missing from the group? She noted the absence of Ian immediately, along with his pretend wife, two other couples, and the German tourist.

  God, please don’t let it be Ian.

  “Wait here.” Meg charged through the group and headed toward the steep stairs leading to the viewing platform of the falls. Her hiking boots clumped down each wooden step, the blood thrumming through her veins. Like a herd of cattle, the hiking group thundered down the steps behind her.

  The ease with which they ignored her instruction didn’t surprise her. They were a difficult bunch, and that didn’t even take into account the appearance of Ian on the tour with a make-believe wife.

  As Meg rounded the last bend of the staircase, she froze, her foot hanging off the bottom step. The splintered wood of the broken railing that separated the lookout deck from the rugged mountain terrain resembled sharp teeth. Meg swallowed and held her hand out behind her. “Stop.”

  She didn’t need anyone else going over…if that’s what had happened.

  Meg crept up to the gaping rail and held on to a solid piece of wood as she crouched down. The white water swirled beneath her and a slash of red bobbed near an outcropping of rocks.

  Red fleece.

  A hand gripped her shoulder, and she twisted around to look into Ian’s stormy green eyes.

  “I—I think it’s Kayla. Is she missing? What about the others?”

  Ian’s hold tightened, his fingers pinching into her flesh through her layers. “It’s Kayla.”

  “Oh my God, Ian. I’m so sorry.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. She’d called him by his real name and not the alias, John Shepherd, he’d been using on the hike.

  No wonder he’d never trusted her with any of his secrets.

  Within seconds, the rest of the hikers crowded behind them, gasping and crying out. They’d expect Ian to be wild with grief with his wife lying fifty feet below, snagged on the wicked rocks that tumbled along the riverbank. Meg knew more than grief would assault Ian at the possible death of his partner.

  He suppressed those emotions behind his tight expression as he peered at Kayla’s still form below them. Then he covered his face with one hand.

  “I’ll call for help.” Meg plucked the radio out of her pocket and
slid into the familiar mode of enlisting Ian’s leadership skills. “If you can stay with the other hikers, I’ll attempt to climb down in case…in case she survived the fall. There’s never been an accident here before.”

  As the others murmured and sobbed, Ian lifted his head and brushed Meg’s ear with his lips.

  “This was no accident.”

  Chapter Two

  Meg’s skin blanched beneath her freckles. This was why he’d kept his business to himself when they’d been together. He’d never wanted to scare her or make her feel any fear.

  Or put her life in jeopardy.

  But, for her own safety, he had to make it clear that one of her tourists had just shoved Kayla through the wooden railing. Had Kayla’s attacker identified her as CIA, or just pegged her as a nosy tourist who’d stumbled onto something she shouldn’t have?

  Ian covered his face with his hands and hunched his shoulders. He rocked forward, moaning Kayla’s name. Twisting his head to the side, he peered at the hikers between his fingers.

  If the killer ID’d Kayla as an agent, he had to know Kayla’s so-called husband was part of the team. Which one of the shocked faces masked a killer?

  Meg’s radio crackled as she reported the incident, her voice strong and steady. Whatever Meg felt right now, she’d do her job.

  She turned toward him, her blue eyes wide. “They can’t send in a helicopter—too dangerous with the falls so close—but the El Paso County Search and Rescue is going to hike in and move her downstream. The sheriff’s department is sending in a helicopter to airlift her from that area.”

  Ian shrugged off his pack. “I’m not waiting for some search-and-rescue team to get here. She might be alive.”

  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 back stiff, her eyes wary.

  “Do you remember Jack Coburn from Prospero?”

  She nodded and her silky strawberry-blond ponytail bobbed behind her. “I remember all the guys from Prospero—the colonel, Jack, Riley and Buzz. You were all so close. You had some kind of unspoken bond, so thick it was a like a cord binding you all together.”

  Her voice sounded wistful, and Ian reached out and grabbed her hand. He should’ve been forging that bond with his wife, but those guys had been the closest thing he’d ever had to family. Until he’d met Meg.

  “Jack went missing a few months ago.” His own words punched him in the gut all over again, and he convulsively squeezed Meg’s hand. “After Prospero disbanded, we all went our separate ways. Always the silver-tongued devil with nerves of steel, Jack took a job as a hostage negotiator.”

  “You mean like with the FBI?”

  “No. Jack worked…works freelance. Large corporations, newspapers and private citizens hire him to rescue loved ones, usually being held hostage in foreign countries.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Jack was working a case in Afghanistan when he disappeared off the face of the earth.” Ian clenched his teeth. The CIA had labeled Jack a traitor, but the spooks in the Agency didn’t know Jack. Except Kayla, Kayla knew Jack.

  Meg ran a finger along his tight jaw. “So what are you doing in Colorado?”

  “One of the other former Prospero members, Riley, traced Jack’s disappearance to a drug cartel in Mexico, which in turn led to an arms dealer here in the States. The arms dealer’s clients were transporting some kind of weapon in a private plane over this area. We had a line on the plane, and Buzz Richardson picked it up and forced the plane down at the air force base. Unfortunately for us, the weapon wasn’t onboard.”