style="font-size:15px;"> “What was that?” A flashlight beamed in his direction, but Cameron slid farther down the incline to avoid the light.
“Probably a rat,” Wally said. “The place is lousy with them.”
“I’m beginning to figure that out,” the other one said in a strange, hard-sounding voice.
Cameron started to slip farther down the slope, intending to make his way back carefully when he heard a strangled cry from the chamber.
“What the hell is this?”
“You’re the smart one. You tell me.”
“What, you going to shoot me now?” Wally’s voice was filled with a panic Cameron suddenly shared. “Come on, man. Put it away. Twenty-five percent of the cut is fine. I was just dicking around with you.”
“That’s your mistake,” the other man said. “I never had much of a sense of humor.”
Suddenly Cam heard a loud bang and then a scream that was cut off abruptly by another bang.
He gasped and instinctively scrambled down the slope, forgetting all about stealth and making far more noise than a good Navy SEAL should.
“Who’s there? Anybody there?”
So much for concealing his presence. He groaned to himself, his stomach in knots. He’d blown it, big-time. He could hear the killer making his way up the incline toward him. He had to hide. He couldn’t make it to the entrance without exposing his location.
Another shaft led off to the left, but he’d never gone that way and didn’t know what he might encounter. He had no choice, though. The man had already killed once. Somehow Cam knew he wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.
He made his way cautiously down the tunnel, careful to make as little noise as possible until he was far enough away that he thought it would be safe to run. He moved as fast as he could, until the night vision goggles were useless and the batteries had faded.
He slid down the side of the tunnel wall into the dirt, his breathing ragged and his heart still racing. He couldn’t think like a Navy SEAL now, on a secret mission to save the world from the bad guys.
For now, he forgot all about his dad, about terrorists, about pretending to be something brave and heroic.
As he stared through the blackness, he could only be what he was—a scared nine-year-old boy who suddenly wanted his mom.
Chapter 1
2:00 a.m.
Megan Vance arose with a jerk, not sure whether the echo of screams in her ears had been real or imaginary.
Fear knotted her insides, every muscle was contracted, and her breathing came harsh and fast. For one wild, panicky moment she was consumed by a single overwhelming need—to check on her children.
She listened intently but heard nothing except the summer rain clicking against the glass of her bedroom window.
After a moment, she sagged back to the pillow, embarrassed at herself. It was only a nightmare, nothing to send her into a panic. She forced herself to relax her muscles one by one and deliberately moderated her ragged breathing until it was slow and even.
She hadn’t had one of those in a while. Though already the details had mercifully faded and she couldn’t remember what had left her so terrified, she knew by the sick feeling still lingering in her stomach it must have been a bad one.
She sat up, scrubbing at her face while the last tendrils of the nightmare uncoiled from around her chest. After Rick had died, she used to have them nearly every night—gruesome, twisted journeys through her subconscious, full of monsters and demons.
She could remember a few of the more vivid dreams and they usually involved the horrible deaths of everyone she knew and loved.
Little wonder, she supposed. She had already lost so much. The roll call of people she had loved and lost seemed to grow longer all the time. Her mother—cancer when Megan was twelve. Her father—a cop killed in the line of duty a year later. Her baby brother Kevin—a New York City firefighter killed on 9/11 in Tower One.
And Rick.
Last month had marked two years since her husband’s death. She wondered when she would stop expecting his phone call in the middle of the night, telling her his SEAL team had been called up to some trouble spot or another.
I’ll be back soon, babe. Love you.
Oh, how she had dreaded those phone calls.
She had lost much but not everything. She still had Cam and Hailey, the joys of her life.
She rolled over onto her back and thought about them. Her children. Hailey, funny and sweet and girlie but with a tough streak that always took Megan by surprise. And Cameron, smart and stubborn and courageous even when he had to endure things no child should have to face.
They had saved her these last two years. The normal routine of mothering them—the car pools and soccer games and doctor’s appointments—had taken the wild edge off her grief and given her something else besides herself to focus on.
She sighed, praying again that moving them away from San Diego to the wilds of Utah had been the right decision for all of them. Her children needed family. She needed family and a support system, and her sister Molly was all she had left.
Moving closer to her and her noisy brood and strong, kind husband had seemed like a stroke of genius, in theory. Her job as a CPA was mobile, and she could find work anywhere helping small businesses with their payroll and accounting.
Rick used to tease her about her obsession with numbers. To a man who jumped out of airplanes and climbed every mountain he could find, she supposed it was an obsession. But Megan enjoyed what she did and was good at it.
In only the few short months they had been in Moose Springs, she had already built up a nice client list. Everything seemed to be working out just as she hoped.
Still, Megan couldn’t help worrying. Oh, Hailey seemed to be adapting all right, but Cameron had been angry about leaving behind all his friends, his soccer team, the climbing wall Rick had built for the children inside their San Diego home.
Most of all, he hadn’t wanted to leave his dad’s SEAL team members, who had taken the boy under their considerable wing after they had lost one of their own.
He would adjust, she told herself again. Lately he seemed to enjoy exploring the foothills around their house and once school started in a few weeks he would make new friends, find a new soccer team, develop new interests.
The wind rattled raindrops against the glass again and Megan sat up, reaching for her robe. She would just peek in on them. That didn’t make her a neurotic mother, just a loving one.
She automatically went to Cameron’s room first. His seizures tended to hit when he was awake but he’d had a few in his sleep.
In the glow of the night-light shaped like a soccer ball, she could see his form under the covers, the blankets over his head as he preferred.
