Cover Me (Elite Force #1)(3)
Author: Catherine Mann

Apparently they might well have to pull out all the stops after all. “And that second round of good news, sir?”

McCabe smiled, his humor resurfacing for air. “The volcano on Mount Redoubt hasn’t blown in a year, so we’ve got that going for us.”

***

A wolflike snarl cut the thickly howling air.

Kneeling in the snow, Sunny Foster stayed statue-still. Five feet away, fangs flashed, white as piercing icicles glinting through the dusky evening sunset.

Nerves prickled her skin, covered with four layers of clothes and snow gear, even though she knew large predators weren’t supposed to live at this elevation. But still… She swept her hood back slowly, momentarily sacrificing warmth for better hearing. The wind growled as loudly as the beast crouching in front of her.

She was alone on Mount Redoubt with nothing but her dog and her survival knife for protection. Cut off by the blizzard, she was stuck on a narrow path, trying to take a shortcut after her snow machine died.

Careful not to move too fast, she slid the blade from the sheath strapped to her waist. While she had the survival skills to wait out the storm, she wasn’t eager to share her icy digs with a wolf or a bear. And a foot race only a few feet away from a sheer cliff didn’t sound all that enticing.

Bitter cold, at least ten below now, seeped into her bones until her limbs felt heavier. Even breathing the thin mountain air was a chore. These kinds of temps left you peeling dead skin from your frostbitten fingers and toes for weeks. Too easily she could listen to those insidious whispers in her brain encouraging her to sleep. But she knew better.

To stay alive, she would have to pull out every ounce of the survival training she taught to others. She couldn’t afford to think about how worried her brother and sister would be when she didn’t return in time for her shift at work.

Blade tucked against her side, she extended her other hand toward the flashing teeth.

“Easy, Chewie, easy.” Sunny coaxed her seven-year-old malamute-husky mutt. The canine’s ears twitched at a whistling sound merging with the wind. “What’s the matter boy? Do you hear something?”

Like some wolf or a bear?

Chewie was more than a pet or a companion. Chewie was a working partner on her mountain treks. They’d been inseparable since her dad gave her the puppy. And right now, Sunny needed to listen to that partner, who had senses honed for danger.

Two months ago Chewie had body-blocked her two steps away from thin ice. A couple of years before that, he’d tugged her snow pants, whining, urging her to turn around just in time to avoid a small avalanche. If Chewie nudged and tugged and whined for life-threatening accidents, what kind of hell would bring on this uncharacteristic growling?

The whistling noise grew louder overhead. She looked up just as the swirl of snow parted. A bubbling dome appeared overhead, something in the middle slicing through…

Holy crap. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought. She ripped off her snow goggles and peered upward. Icy pellets stung her exposed face, but she couldn’t make herself look away from the last thing she expected to see.

A parachute.

Someone was, no kidding, parachuting down through the blizzard. Toward her. That didn’t even make sense. She patted her face, her body, checking to see if she was even awake. This had to be a dream. Or a cold-induced hallucination. She smacked herself harder.

“Ouch!”

Her nose stung.

Her dog howled.

Okay. She was totally awake now and the parachute was coming closer. Nylon whipped and snapped, louder, nearer. Boots overhead took shape as a hulking body plummeted downward. She leaped out of the way.

Toward the mountain wall—not the cliff’s edge.

Chewie’s body tensed, ready to spring into action. Coarse black-and-white fur raised along his spine. Icicles dotted his coat.

The person—a man?—landed in a dead run along the slippery ice. The “landing strip” was nothing more than a ledge so narrow her gut clenched at how easily this hulking guy could have plummeted into the nothingness below.

The parachute danced and twisted behind him specter-like, as if Inuit spirits danced in and out of the storm. He planted his boots again. The chute reinflated.

A long jagged knife glinted in his hand. His survival knife was a helluva lot scarier looking than hers right now. Maybe it had something to do with the size of the man.

Instinctively, she pressed her spine closer to the mountain wall, blade tucked out of sight but ready. Chewie’s fur rippled with bunching muscles. An image of her dog, her pet, her most loyal companion, impaled on the man’s jagged knife exploded in her brain in crimson horror.

“No!” she shouted, lunging for his collar as the silver blade arced downward.

She curved her body around seventy-five pounds of loyal dog. She kept her eyes locked on the threat and braced for pain.

The man sliced the cords on his parachute.

Hysterical laughter bubbled and froze in her throat. Of course. He was saving himself. Nylon curled upward and away, the “spirits” leaving her alone with her own personal yeti who jumped onto mountain ledges in a blizzard.

And people called her reckless.

Her Airborne Abominable Snowman must be part of some kind of rescue team. Military perhaps? The camo gear suggested as much.

What was he doing here? He couldn’t be looking for her. No one knew where she was, not even her brother and sister. She’d been taught since her early teens about the importance of protecting her privacy. For fifteen years she and her family had lived in an off-the-power-grid community on this middle-of-nowhere mountain in order to protect volatile secrets. Her world was tightly locked into a town of about a hundred and fifty people. She wrapped her arms tighter around Chewie’s neck and shouted into the storm, “Are you crazy?”

“No, ma’am,” a gravelly voice boomed back at her, “although I gotta confess I am cold. But don’t tell my pal Franco I admitted as much. My buddies can’t fly close enough to haul us out of here until the storm passes.”

“And who are these buddies of yours?” She looked up fast.

No one else fell from the clouds. She relaxed her arms around her dog. He must be some branch of the military. Except his uniform wasn’t enough to earn her automatic stamp of approval, and she couldn’t see his face or read his eyes because of his winter gear and goggles.

He sheathed his knife. “Air Force pararescue, ma’am. I’m here to help you hunker down for the night to ride out this blizzard safely.”