Thomas shivered now. The forecast had been unusual for winter in New England, with lows in the mid-fifties, which felt far less warm in this cold, soaking rain, without his jacket or pants or boots.
The helo they’d been scheduled to take from the airfield to the resort had been in use for a medical emergency.
Allegedly in use. He had to add that, now.
The backup helicopter had had a rather massive mechanical failure—also allegedly—so he and Tasha had opted to just get it over with and make the long, slow, winding drive up into the mountains.
Three hours in the small space that was an SUV backseat would’ve been a challenge for anyone.
Tasha had been arguing with Thomas as they’d rounded one of the many curves along the mountainous road.
What else was new?
She was still embarrassed. Despite his jet-board attempts to smooth things over by going point-blank. Or maybebecauseof his attempts.
Tell me about Ted,he should’ve said.Tell me you’re happy. I just want you to be happy.
Instead, she’d been questioning his authority as her bodyguard, starting immediately after the sound of an explosion penetrated the high-end vehicle’s cone of silence. It had to have been relatively close—or massively large—for it to have been that loud.
Tasha had been in the middle of leaving a voicemail for Tedric, but after thatboomshe frowned at her cell phone. “That’s weird. I just lost all bars.”
Thomas immediately looked to their driver—white, mid-thirties, receding hairline—a man whose picture ID blandly claimed his name was Robert Johnston. The man’s brown eyes met his in the rearview.
“We’ve got some granite quarries in the area,” Johnston said in his curiously accent-free voice. Most of the locals in this part of New England sported heavy accents, but he didn’t. “Maybe they’re blasting again.”
On a Sunday? That was clearly bullshit—that, and the fact that Thomas’s own device, a military-grade dual-mode satellite phone, wasn’t able to get a cell connection either made him say, “Pull over as soon as you safely can.”
“Oh, God, please, no.” Tasha groaned.
“My cell’s out, too,” he informed her.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she pointed out. “Service is spotty.”
“Which is why we need to stop and make sure I still have satellite access.”
She was from a career-military family—her uncle was an admiral who’d come up from the Teams—and she knew as well as any Navy SEAL that a SAT phone needed a direct line-of-sight to the satellite. That was close to impossible do in a moving vehicle, in the mountains.
Still, she rolled her eyes. “Thomas, come on, this is Maine, not Afghanistan. And you’re really only here because Uncle Alan is overprotective and probably a little insane—”
Thomas cut her off. “Why I’m here is irrelevant. I’m here. You’ve gotta let me do my job.”
She exhaled her exasperation heavily. “Unless the noise we heard was your satellite crashing to earth—hashtag,it wasn’t—”
“Look, I’m just following protocol.” Which meant that Thomas now had to confirm he still had access to communication.
“Again,” she said, “this is Maine, not—”
“I’m aware of that, thanks.”
“And if you can’t get through...?”
“We’ll need to find a landline,” he informed her.
“We’ll find a landline if we keep going,” Tash said. “At the ski lodge.”
“We’ll find one sooner, at that gas station we passed,” Thomas said.
“That was nearly an hour ago!” Tasha wasn’t happy.
