and for a moment she thought he’d managed to stop.
But it was too late.
An explosion filled the air, shaking the rock beneath her feet.
The bike flipped, crashing end over end.
She hugged the tree and braced her legs against the cliff.
The earth gave way beneath her feet.
* * *
Sergeant Zack Keats, recon specialist for the Canadian Forces’ elite and highly classified counterterrorism force, hurtled through the air as the force of the explosion ripped the motorbike out from under him.
Hot smoke billowed around him, with the deafening roar of falling rocks. Just moments earlier he’d been cruising, feeling the wind beat against his body, wondering if he’d even find Rebecca Miles at her campsite. And if he did, how was he going to tell a woman he hadn’t seen since the day she’d shattered his heart as a teenager that her stepbrother, Seth, was now a wanted criminal and traitor? Then he’d rounded a corner, a siren had sounded and the world had exploded around him.
A prayer for help moved through the soldier’s mind as instinctively as his body adopted the position for impact.
Protect his neck. Curl his shoulders. Relax his body.
Save me, Lord. I need You now. But if this is it, have mercy—
The road hit him like a slab of concrete. Pain shot through his body. He bounced. His visor cracked. His bike was nothing but a tangled mass of metal to his right. Beyond it lay a pile of rubble from where rock and trees had slid down off the front of the cliff face, barricading the road ahead. At least most of the cliff was still standing.
Not the worst hit he’d ever taken. First as a soldier with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, and then a part of the Canadian Forces joint task force for special ops, he’d spent most of his life in the world’s roughest hot spots. Long before then, as a painfully sensitive and overweight young man, he’d taken his share of bullies’ beatings, too, before he’d shed the last name he’d hated for a new one, converted his fat into muscle and refocused his emotional core into the kind of steady, unflappable determination needed to throw himself between the world’s biggest bullies and those in need of rescue. But this ambush had definitely come without warning.
The world was still spinning. His ears were ringing. He ignored both, pressed a leather-gloved hand against the pavement and tensed himself to spring.
“Don’t move.” A lanky figure stepped out of the smoke. A ski mask covered his face and there was a handgun in his hand. A Glock. Almost certainly illegal.
Instinctively, Zack’s hand reached for his own weapon, before remembering his firearm was unloaded and locked in his bag on the back of his bike, as was expected of him when on leave in Canada. Zack had always played by the rules. If it came to it, he’d die by them, too. But until that moment came, he was prepared to fight. His hand slid toward the knife in his ankle holster.
“I said, don’t move.” The masked man raised the gun. He sounded flustered and more than a little angry. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”
Didn’t want to shoot him? He’d just blown up the road. If the explosives had gone off just a few seconds later Zack would be dead now. So either this man was so desperate or foolish he didn’t know what he was doing, or else he was lying through his teeth. But was he also Seth Miles, the traitor and criminal, that Zack was up here to talk to Rebecca about?
Zack fixed his gaze on the man’s blue eyes, trying to mentally combine pictures from the news with his twenty-year-old memories of the bully who’d tormented him. Then he reminded himself that he still had no idea where the siren had come from.
“Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want.” Zack kept his hands steady and his voice calm. “But I don’t want to fight you. Please, just let me search the area and make sure nobody else is in trouble.”
The man hesitated. His eyes darted from what remained of the cliff side down to the rock pile now blocking the road. “There’s nobody else here,” he said. But his voice sounded far from confident.
“You sure about that? I heard an air horn. If you weren’t the one who sounded it, then someone else did.”
But this time, he ignored Zack’s question. Instead, he stepped closer.
“You and I both know there’s only one reason for anyone to be on this road.” He pressed the barrel of his gun against the cracks in Zack’s visor. “Get out of here. Don’t come back. And stop looking for Seth Miles. He doesn’t want to be found.”
Zack would’ve snorted if the situation hadn’t been deadly serious. Was he joking? This morning, Zack had been minding his own business, camping, quietly enjoying his last three days of home leave, when he’d hopped on his bike to go get gas and charge his cell phone. The coffee shop television had been blaring the news that authorities across North America had launched an all-out manhunt for Seth. Armed and presumed dangerous, according to the TV, Seth was wanted for treason, theft and attempted murder, after the computer engineer had abused his civilian military clearance, hacked into a government database, stolen something highly classified and then shot an unidentified woman in an Ottawa park.
But while news commentators and coffee-shop gossips had been hung up on how Seth was the only son of decorated hero General Arthur Miles, Zack’s laser-sharp mind had suddenly filled with the adventurous eyes and wild dark hair of the only other person on earth who’d witnessed Seth’s selfishness and bullying arrogance as Zack had. Rebecca. And the pledge Zack had made long ago, to always have her back. So he’d hopped on his bike and headed north, without even waiting for his phone to finish charging.
Seth wasn’t his target. Apprehending Seth wasn’t his mission. Still, he wasn’t about to let a comment like that slide.
“Seth Miles is a coward and a traitor.” Zack’s voice rose. “He stole government secrets—”
Blue eyes flashed in fury. “He was protecting the country!”
“He shot an unarmed woman! Tried to murder her!”
“No! I didn’t! I didn’t shoot her!” Seth yelled. With a simple slip of the tongue he made his attempted disguise worthless.
Zack nearly chuckled through gritted teeth. “Oh, you didn’t, did you, Seth? But you did steal sensitive information from your own country for a quick and easy payday?”
“You have no clue what I did or why I did it!” Seth flicked his handgun’s safety switch off. “You stay away from me. You stay away from my sister. Or I’ll kill you.”
A muffled cry filled the air to Zack’s right. Female. Frightened.
There was somebody trapped under those rocks and screaming for help. Seth’s neck turned toward the sound. Zack kicked Seth’s knees out and sent him sprawling. The Glock fired into the air. But Zack wrestled the weapon from Seth’s grasp before he could fire again and leveled a swift blow to his jaw. Seth hit the pavement. His head snapped back. There was a chain around Seth’s neck. A small blue computer memory stick hung from it. The stolen government computer files? Zack grabbed it and yanked it hard, breaking the chain from around Seth’s neck. Then Zack ran for the rock pile. The voice
