Chapter 14
Dilya turned for the ranch. She’d wanted to wait until the middle of the night. Then she could return the horse and slip away. It was a chickenshit move, but it was far and away her first choice.
Except Zackie was shivering despite her thick coat.
Wind Runner had begun pawing the ground with his impatience.
When the sun sank below the peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains far earlier than official sunset time, the three of them were cast into bitter shadows.
Unsure if she could find her way back in the dark, she followed the three sets of tracks in the snow. Two outbound, one inbound.
Riding alone.
Emily was right. None of her instincts led her to expect help from a team of anyone other than herself and her dog. Reaching out to Emily hadn’t been enough. Or was it too much?
She didn’t know, but she’d found a way to make one of the worst weeks of her life even more horrible. She’d lost Jimmy, driven half across the country to discover that Miss Watson had been taken by force. And now, perhaps worst of all, she’d unleashed Emily’s fury.
Neither Kee nor Archie had ever unloaded on her; though she’d probably deserved it any number of times—not the least when she’d stowed away on their helicopter during a long-ago Spec Ops mission.
They’d thought her a na?ve little girl at the time.
Instead? She’d been terrified of losing them and even more afraid that they wouldn’t follow through and kill the men who had murdered her parents.
She’d stowed away to make sure they kept their word, which they had.
That they had done it to stop a war was a detail she hadn’t understood until years later.
The heads of the former President and First Lady’s protection details—practically her third set of parents—would do no more than look at her sadly when the occasional fit of being a teen in the White House had swept through her.
Emily’s ire probably wouldn’t hurt so much if it hadn’t been so pointed…
and accurate. She needed to go somewhere and think about this.
But doing it while freezing to death at the foot of the Sawtooths was too reminiscent of when she’d nearly frozen and starved to death in the Hindu Kush—only to be rescued by Emily’s team.
Well, Emily certainly wouldn’t be rescuing her this time.
Dilya crested the ridge overlooking the ranch’s main compound.
She was halfway down the hill before she spotted the three figures.
They stood in the failing light halfway between the big lodge and the horse barn—all three facing in her direction when she hove into view.
The big man who hadn’t bothered to zip up his parka.
The smaller man, his body so quiet that it would be easy to miss his presence at all.
And the woman at his side. Emily’s husband Mark, Michael, the greatest Delta Force warrior in The Unit’s history, and Claudia, the Night Stalker pilot whom he’d married.
Oh God. She was in so much trouble.