Page 70 of When the Silence Breaks

The words hit him so hard his ribs ached. Of course ... ofcourseshe had secrets. Ryder did too. But this changed everything. Ryder tried to comfort her, but the news came as a shock to him, though why, he had no idea. He didn’t really know Sarah or anything about her past and certainly hadn’t guessed she was protecting her own child. That information helped him to understand why she felt she had to find the truth and expose the bad actors. She was a mother, a widow, and a survivor. And now she’d been dealt another cruel blow.

And with this new information, Ryder was even more driven to end this, and he tightened his arms around her. This wasn’t about finding the truth anymore. It was about keeping her son safe. That’s why she’d been willing to risk everything.

Sarah eased away from him, swiping at her cheeks. “I’m sorry. That was ... unprofessional.”

As if ... He gave her what he hoped was a compassionate smile to let her know it was going to be okay. And now that he thought about it, he hadn’t actually thought of her as his client in at least a day. No, Sarah Ellison was much more. “We’re not professionals right now, Sarah. We’re just two people caught in the middle and trying to stay alive.”

She gave him a tear-filled laugh.

“Okay,” he said. “Technically I’m here as your guide. But I think we can both agree that this has grown beyond the original wilderness navigation. Our grandfathers tie us together.” Ryder felt much more than that too—for Sarah. She’d gotten under his skin so fast, it made his head spin, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. But here he was.

Here they both were.

Nodding, she stood. When she wavered, he caught her back and steadied her.

“I’m good,” she said. “Let’s finish this. Let’s find the crash site, figure out our next move. If that payload is even still intact, then what?”

And if it’s not?

“We’ll figure it out.”

Ryder used the satellite communicator to text another urgent message to Holt, letting him know the true stakes—Sarah’s son, Jeremy, had been abducted, ransomed for the vials.God, please let himget the message.He and his brother thought alike at the strangest times. Sometimes the most important moments. He hoped this was one of those and Holt would get back to him.

He started forward, welcoming the late-morning sky over the mountains. Unfortunately, the wind cut down from the rim, slicing into him through his coat, and of course, his shoulder fired up again. He smiled as if that alone would push back the pain and the utter dread of what they faced.

He prayed for just enough snow to slow their pursuers, but not enough to bury Ryder and Sarah alive. They needed to make headway and find the crash site first. They would be hunted down even trying to make it back to Mercy Ridge and would have nothing to show for their lives, and their certain deaths.

They were doing this.

Still, the harsh truth rattled him, weighing him down. Oncethey found the site, he wasn’t sure what to do next and needed to hear from Holt. If his brother didn’t get the message or location ping in time, he and Sarah wouldn’t be extracted and would have to find their own way off the mountain and stay ahead of the men chasing them. Could he find a way to destroy the rest of the vials? Would Sarah allow him to—given her son was being ransomed for them? He needed to know more about this Alpha-X. They had no hazmat suits—if even one of the vials broke open, they were dead. So he made sure to wrap the vial his grandfather had hidden in the deepest layers inside his pack. The vial had remained intact and lasted this long, after all.

And right now, as he trudged up the mountain on the break of the coldest morning in recent memory, he felt like a walking dead man. God willing, he would see this through and finish it, and maybe ... just maybe ... he would win. They would win.

He was doing this for the town of Mercy Ridge that sat at the base of this mountain, which all these decades had been sitting on deadly secrets. He would finish this for Sarah—strong, beautiful Sarah, and her son—and he would do this for the world. These jerks could never get their hands on this deadly toxic payload.

He didn’t know how this would end, but God willing, he would finish this.

Twenty-Nine

The endof theday.

“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 thesemonsters 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-secretinformation 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.