Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Down on one knee, he leaned forward, moving logs around and stoking the fire as if he hadn’t just done that. As if he needed to do something with his hands. Something to distract him. Too bad they didn’t have marshmallows they could roast.
The glow cast flickering lights across the room.
This man—this wilderness guide, Ryder Goodwin—was a mountain man through and through.
He was a hero who carried a burden, and she’d just dumped an even heavier one on him.
How dare she intrude into his peaceful life?
But he was involved long before she ever entered the scene—and that was thanks to his grandfather.
And now he wanted her to share her plan.
What was my plan again?
For now, at this moment, yeah, she had a plan—put some space between her and Mountain Man.
Sarah had to get away from Ryder. She grabbed her coat off a chair and rushed outside into the darkness and sucked in the cold, fresh air.
Being inside the old, musty cabin—such a small space to be confined with a man like Ryder—made her edgy.
She wasn’t someone to run or hide. Right.
Wasn’t that exactly what she was doing? Would Ryder follow her outside or give her time to cool off and think?
She headed for that lake she’d seen. Through the canopy, she caught a star or two, and over near the higher summit, the clouds were building. She groaned inside at the thought of snow, a blizzard, colder weather up on that mountain.
Footfalls crunched behind her. Ryder. Yeah, he’d followed. What had she expected?
Maybe she’d even wanted him to follow. After all, he was a hero before, and even now, when she looked into those intense eyes, she knew she could trust him. The problem was, he couldn’t trust her—not really.
Her heart ached at the thought of Tessa and Jeremy and her brother, Aaron.
If only she had a moment to just cry through it all.
Let the anguish out. But not with Ryder standing a few paces away, though he’d given her space.
Checking up on her because he didn’t trust her?
No. He wasn’t that kind of guy, from what she’d seen so far. He was more likely protecting her.
She wanted—needed—to call Tessa and check on her family.
To actually hear their voices rather than read a simple text, but it was too risky, especially after they’d spent far too many minutes connected to Wi-Fi via his device.
She wasn’t one for tears, and maybe that had been trained out of her, but tears escaped anyway, and she let them stream until she had no more, then swiped them away.
For Aaron. She had to finish this.
She hiked over to where Ryder leaned against a tree. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“All things considered, I’ve been better. Aren’t you cold out here?”
“Sure. But the cold air helps me think.” And . . . okay . . . time to talk about her plan. Ryder stared out at the lake, waiting. She owed him.
“Does he know the danger?” Malcolm had asked.
“Sarah,” Ryder said. “Who do you work for now? Who did you work for before?”
“I . . . I thought you wanted to hear my plan.”
“I do, but why don’t you answer those questions first?” His question had a bite to it.
And here she thought she would get away with not telling him everything. “Really, Ryder? You want to talk about that now?”
“I think now is the perfect time. Nothing standing between us except a vial filled with poison.”
“I thought you would have figured it out on your own.” She’d hoped as much.
“What, that you worked for the government? You were a fed? Sure, I know you worked for a three-letter agency.”
Ryder closed the distance. He was in her space now. “I think we’ve been through enough together, you owe me an explanation. You owe me the truth.”
“You act like my previous job has anything to do with this.”
He was granite, staring down at her. He was right. She owed him. She didn’t want to hold back from him. “I’ve only been keeping to my obligations, Ryder. I’m sure there are missions you participated in . . .”
Oops. Was she supposed to know he was a Navy SEAL? She’d already brought that up.
His features shifted.
“I mean, it’s on your website.” Wasn’t it?
“It’s not, actually.”
Now she’d done it. “Well, the information is somewhere. Why would you keep your experience a secret? I picked you for the job. I looked into your background.”
“I didn’t have the same luxury,” he said.
“You didn’t even do a Google search?”
He shook his head.
“Well, that isn’t my fault.”
“I’m waiting.”
He wasn’t giving up, was he?
“I’m never supposed to reveal any of this, do you understand?
” She hadn’t been Sarah Frasier in years.
Fear gripped her chest, but with Aaron’s death and now a possible operation happening here on this soil, everything had changed.
“I was . . . a CIA operations officer, working under a non-official cover, or NOC. Officially I worked for an NGO. My role was completely secret, even diplomats weren’t aware.
That’s all I can say and, really, shouldn’t have said that.
You tell anyone, and I could get in big trouble. ”
He might have been unmoving granite before, but now he was stone-cold.
“Have you got something against the CIA?” she asked.
He finally shook off the stupor and took a step back from her, as if she had slapped him. Oh, please . . . don’t. Weird that she hated his reaction so much. She shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t matter.
But it did.
Then. Of course. He turned his back on her and walked closer to the lake, leaving her. She wished she was back inside the cabin, and he was outside alone.
“Ryder, please.”
But what was she going to say? Nothing. That’s what. Except an explanation—her original plan, maybe. What was it? She’d been making it up as she went.
He threw a stone into the lake, startling her back to the present.
She thought back to the fragile map they’d found with the image of the wing of the downed Sentinel One—it had seared into her mind.
And that vial . . . just left in the box.
None of this was what she’d expected when she’d started this venture. Not even close.
Maybe she should share everything—everything—with Ryder. More than he was asking.
“Ryder . . .” His name came out in a whisper.
And he’d heard it. He turned from the lake and trudged over to where she stood by a tree, then looked at her expectantly. That he’d heard her and responded shifted something inside her.
She lifted her shoulders, rallied her courage. “When I came to your little town at the foot of the mountain—Mercy Ridge—I was driven by grief and fury. I had one goal. I was single-minded.”
“You wanted to uncover the truth about your brother’s murder,” he said. Maybe he was simply prompting her to continue.
Right. She’d told him that much.
“The truth . . . I want to find something—anything—that could expose the people responsible for his death. Responsible for silencing him. And maybe I was hoping for too much to think I could force the world—the powers that be—to acknowledge what they’d done.
” Sarah crossed her arms. “But this was never about revenge. It was always about justice and closure. Maybe even . . . redemption, if that makes sense.”
Tears once again burned behind her eyes, and she blinked them away. This wasn’t the time to be that vulnerable, even though she was sharing her heart. She slowly shook her head as she unscrambled her thoughts about finding the vial. Learning about a bioweapon. “But this?”
Her stomach roiled as she stared out over the lake near a cabin that held a closed Army box containing the vial, as if that could protect them if the vial were to break. There’d been no label. No explanation. And the weight, the burden of what this all meant, was almost too much.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Ryder asked. “I mean, in your line of work?”
He’d been patient enough and given her space. He was listening, but she’d drifted back into her own thoughts. She wasn’t supposed to share anything. Ever.
“Once. Just a quiet briefing at Langley about old threats. They never made the news, of course. On weapons designed to not just kill but erase. Experimental pathogens. Ghost projects. No one would ever admit their existence. And I remember thinking . . . if news of this sort of thing ever got out—it would bring the country to its knees.”
“And now, here we are,” he said. “Here it is. Practically in our hands. In a box buried beneath the floor. Your grandfather mentioned more vials. Maybe the one in the cabin was the only one to survive. But if there are more remaining at the crash site, I don’t think it’s a good idea to actually find the plane. ”
“But your grandfather wouldn’t have survived if the bioweapon had leaked,” she said. That gave her some hope that she could convince Ryder to help her finish this mission. “You thought the same or you wouldn’t have held it in your hand.”
“That’s a fair point.” Ryder stared at her as if he was thinking something but wasn’t prepared to say it.
“So does that mean we can head to where X marks the spot?” she asked.
Raking his hand down his face, he was clearly unprepared to agree to that. “What about your brother? Was he also a federal agent or CIA operative?”
She was in this far. “No. He was who I told you he was.”
“Did he know about you?”
She sucked in a breath between her teeth. “Yeah. We dreamed of being spies when we were kids. Dumb. So dumb. I mean, how could I keep that to myself? But I knew that he would never reveal that secret.”
“It feels weird, like something’s really off, when you consider the fact that he got caught up in a decades-old secret military operation.”
“I agree.” No doubt she was missing important pieces.
“So, what if he wasn’t chasing this,” Ryder said, “but he was protecting the secret that could still kill? Or what if he died because someone knew he was getting close and would learn the truth?”
“The recording said that someone wanted to keep it hidden, and someone else wants to find it. Maybe they haven’t yet because they were prevented. And now here I am, leading them right to it.”
“And you’re in the crosshairs, the same ones as your brother. This is exactly why we aren’t going to that plane. We burn everything that could lead someone else there.” Ryder started forward, heading back to the cabin.
She followed and grabbed his arm, surprised when he actually stopped. “You can’t be serious. You aren’t going to burn that map. Someone needs to know about this, Ryder, like you said—the truth comes out when it’s time. What if in the future someone stumbles upon this and unleashes hell on earth?”
“This isn’t about your brother anymore, Sarah.”
“Or even about getting answers or grief or even justice. I get it. This is about everyone else.”
“The town at the base of the mountain. The state. The whole world, maybe,” he said. “We need to plan our next steps very carefully. What are you thinking we should do, then?”
I don’t know. She wasn’t so sure anymore. “We get the one vial out of here and find that plane and destroy it along with whatever else we find,” she said. “And we make sure no one uses this bioweapon, ever. No one stumbles on it either. Ever.”
Because now, her mission wasn’t about exposing the past. It was about preventing the future.
“I’m going back inside,” she said.
A hand clamped over her mouth as Ryder pushed her down into the needles and ferns, once again crushing her. “They’re here,” he whispered.