Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
The end of the day.
“You have until the end of the day.”
She couldn’t stop the words from running through her mind on repeat. Like Ryder said, she had to get her act together for Jeremy.
Poor Jeremy. Lord, please let these monsters treat him right. She couldn’t stand the thought of her precious little boy being scared if something happened to Aunt Tessa. Bad enough his mother wasn’t there to comfort him.
Oh, God, what have I done?
With her skills she could have taken both Jeremy and Tessa and simply disappeared.
She knew how to blend in and change her identity to fit the situation.
They could have reinvented themselves to escape murderers and assassins and people in authority who had their own agendas and considered the collateral damage of lives lost acceptable.
If she’d just taken a different path and they had started over somewhere new, they could have lived their lives in peace.
Except, deep down, she knew that wasn’t true. She would always be looking over her shoulder because of the dangerous inheritance her grandfather had left for her and Aaron—top-secret information that made them targets. And ultimately that’s why she’d chosen to face this head-on.
She could almost hate her grandfather for this.
He’d kept it secret so that he could live out his life, so why dump it on his grandchildren?
Now look . . . just look what had happened.
Aaron was gone. Tessa incapacitated, or worse.
Sarah couldn’t let herself think the worst had happened to Tessa on top of Jeremy’s abduction. Her chest ached with grief and fear.
Jeremy was now in the enemy’s hands, and she didn’t know if she could make it out of this alive to hold him in her arms again. The mountain was a danger all its own.
Once again, she was breathless as she followed Ryder—she counted on him not only for her life but for Jeremy’s and Tessa’s.
She was in tune to his every move in a visceral way, and when he’d held her and let her sob on his shoulder, she felt like she’d melded into him and he into her.
With those thoughts, she was really losing it.
Maybe the altitude was once again getting to her.
All she knew was that Ryder had settled deep into her marrow. Flakes caught in her lashes, bringing her thoughts back to this moment and the realization that—surprise—it had started to snow and was coming down thick and heavy. She’d expected it, sure, but had hoped and prayed it would hold off.
They crested another rise. Despite the icy wind, her back was slick with sweat. Ryder once again paused to look through his binoculars. Were they being followed? Had their pursuers caught up to them? Closing in yet?
Below them, the alpine basin yawned, presenting a much different view from the evergreens or the sleepy town of Mercy Ridge and yet, still completely stunning.
Frozen-in-time jagged rocks reached for the sky, and at the base of those rocks were windblown snowfields.
And a glacier. As the snowflakes thickened, the view transformed into a crisp winter wonderland.
Funny to think that down below in Mercy Ridge, it might still be a golden, sunlit autumn day, while here on the mountain, winter had already arrived.
For the first time . . . she hated heights. The beauty took her breath away, sure, but standing at the top of this rise, she felt out of place, like an intruder into a world that wasn’t meant for her. An abomination against this raw, untamed wilderness.
She was unprepared for all of it. Any of it.
The altitude. The cold. The way the vastness pressed in around her, making her feel small and vulnerable in unexpected ways.
Still, she slogged forward, letting Ryder lead her away from that viewpoint until she saw nothing but the highest elevation, and the summit of Blackspire Mountain loomed before her.
Rumbling filled her ears as the ground moved beneath her feet. Fear gripping her, she dropped to her knees.
Next to her, Ryder crouched. His gloved hand pressed against the snow, and he lifted his face to the peaks above them, concern creasing around his eyes.
“What is it? What’s happening?” Please don’t tell me another small but common earthquake.
“The mountain.”
“The volcano, you mean.”
“It’s not erupting,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“Then what’s that fear I see on your face?” Oh, why had she thought she could face off with bad guys and a mountain?
“I don’t want to get caught in an avalanche,” he said.
Oh, wait, not the mountain but an avalanche. Why hadn’t that risk been on her radar? Lord, what am I even doing here? “Can we just get on with it so we can get the vials and save Jeremy?”
“You know what I texted Holt. Nothing has changed. We locate the plane, but we hand this off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sarah, we’re not prepared to handle a bioweapon. You know that. I know that. We hand this off.”
“My son, Ryder. I can’t.” Had Ryder suddenly become her enemy? “He’s everything to me. Do you understand?”
Sarah scrambled to her feet and Ryder stood too.
She still had her Sig at her ankle, buried beneath the layers. She’d do this on her own if she had to . . . to save Jeremy. “I thought you were in this with me.”
He stepped forward and grabbed her arms before she could even flinch. React. Good thing. She might have done something she would have regretted. She might have reached for her weapon.
“We’ll get him back, Sarah. We’ll get him. But I thought you had figured this out on your own.”
She wanted to shrink back under his intense gaze, but she stood her ground. “What are you saying?”
Ryder stared, his tight grip loosening only a little as he tugged her closer. “Sarah . . .”
Oh . . . my . . . “You . . . you don’t think they’re going to keep their part of the deal.”
“No. And neither do you. We can’t trust them. So we figure out how to save him.”
“I don’t know how to get him back, Ryder. How do we get him back?” She wanted to crumple again, but she stood taller. Drew in an icy cold breath. For her son.
“You’re smart. You’re strong. Together, we’ll figure this out. The first step is finding the plane.”
“Then handing that intel over to your brother? You think you can trust him?”
“Yes. You trusted yours, didn’t you?”
No need to be so harsh. “But . . . can you be sure he won’t be taken out? He could already be dead. Anyone who knows about it is threatened.”
“I agree there’s a risk, but this is in his wheelhouse. And we have no choice.”
Sarah couldn’t argue with him. She had no answers.
God, please save my son! She focused her attention on the path ahead.
“Let’s locate the plane and get out of here before they find us.
Maybe the snow will cover our tracks. We’ll tell them where the plane is after Jeremy is safe.
They have to know we can’t exactly extract the vials, retrieving them from a crashed plane.
Who knows whether the vials are intact or shattered, and the bioweapon would be unleashed if someone opens the plane up.
They’ll have to do that themselves. Can your brother help with finding Jeremy and make sure he’s safe? ”
“He has connections. He’ll make sure it’s a priority to find Jeremy.”
“If he even gets your message.”
Ryder was putting a lot of trust in his brother, but she wasn’t so sure she could. She might die on this mountain before she even had the chance to make sure her son was safe.
God . . . I’ve never needed you more. My boy, he’s just a baby. Please keep him safe. And keep Tessa safe.
She glanced up at the peaks above—a couple thousand more feet of snow-covered, glacier-packed peaks. A growing dread built up in her chest—where was the danger likely to come from first? The mountain they climbed, the snow above, or the armed men behind?
Ryder lifted his field glasses. “Look, Sarah.”
She peered through as he held them.
“Where am I looking?”
“Just beyond that boulder. Can you see that slice of twisted metal?”
“Partially buried under the snow?” Her breath caught. “Is that what I think it is?”
“A wing. It could be the Sentinel One.”
“But it looks more like it landed and not necessarily crashed. I thought it would have exploded. Something.” And somehow left the vial intact. Right.
“Not everything explodes like in the movies. Your grandfather might have died in that case.”
“Got it.”
“If he had any control, a good pilot would’ve tried to glide and clear that ridge or maybe even make it to the next valley. But if he was losing altitude too fast or the engines were out, he might’ve aimed for the first semi-flat stretch he could find.”
“Whatever. We found it, Ryder. Can you believe we found it.” It wasn’t a question. But with the words, her precious son’s face came to mind. “Even so . . . honestly, I never would have come to Mercy Ridge had I known the true cost.”
Heart pounding, she leaned against him before she realized what she was doing. But she counted on him. Needed him. And at the thought of him—all he’d done for her, all he’d risked—her throat thickened with emotion. Ryder Goodwin was so much more to her than just the man for this job.
Pulling herself together, she leaned away from him, steadying her breaths. She followed him as he began descending carefully into the snow-laced dip in the summit—a narrow basin sheltered by the ridge and wind-polished rocks—toward the plane-shaped mound under the snow . . . now partially exposed.
Whatever had hidden it for decades . . . had finally let go.
Ryder moved too slowly for comfort.
“What are we doing, exactly?” she asked.
“I’m checking for signs of recent movement. Boot prints.”
“You mean you’re checking for a booby trap?”
“Maybe.”
Was he being overcautious? Sarah didn’t like what this meant. What if someone else had gotten the vials? How could she save Jeremy? How could she expose the truth to the world—or, at the very least, to some responsible authority, whomever that might be?
“Let’s make sure this is the right plane,” she said, “and once we know that, we can move on to the next part of our plan.” Though they were making it up as they went. “I don’t care about justice anymore so much as getting my son back, safe and sound.”
The snow fell thick and heavy and left them in a muted silence that was both absolute and eerie, especially on a mountain peak at this height.
She could almost imagine the volcano sleeping beneath them.
The thought of it—rumbling, as if to remind the residents at the base that it was still alive—sent a sliver of terror through her.
Ryder didn’t respond to her statement. Instead, deep concern carved his features as he stared at the peak. “That doesn’t look good.”
Oh no. What now?