Page 92 of When the Silence Breaks

She remained where she was and stared down at him with a dazed look, her eyes so beautiful. Then she leaned closer andplanted her lips on his. He responded and gently gripped her head, wishing he could feel her soft hair between his fingers instead of the insulated gloves.

Sarah Ellison. What are you doing to me?

Much too soon, she ended the kiss and rolled away. “Thank you, Ryder, for saving my life.”

“Oh, was that what the kiss was for?”

“Yes and no. Make of it what you will.” She stood and dusted off the snow and ice and dirt.

And he was frozen on the ground.

“That was close,” she said. “I could have died. We could have died.”

“Too close.” Yeah, she was getting far too close to him, getting even deeper under his skin, and maybe with that kiss, she’d already embedded herself like a covert operative into his heart. His voice had broken when he said it, and she hadn’t missed it.

“Are you okay?” She stared at him now, seeming to have composed herself, found herself again. Resolved to hike down the mountain and find her son.

I will be once I get over that kiss.He stood and got his bearings. They still had to make it down the mountain. He didn’t answer her but hung his head, closed his eyes.

“Ryder?”

“I couldn’t save my dad,” he whispered as he pointed. “I watched him fall right there. I didn’t make it to him fast enough. We crawled through the cave to get to this point. So that’s how I knew about it.”

Sarah stepped closer and took his hand in hers. “I’m sorry about your father, Ryder. But you saved me. You didn’t fail me.”

And you might just be saving me too,Sarah Ellison.

A few heartbeats passed. Then he finally snapped out of it and nodded. His nod hadn’t been meant for her, but it was moreto release a part of himself that had been stuck in time here on this mountain for far too long. And that silent part of him, the wounded part, had finally broken open ... and he was free now ... at least from the past that had held him for so long.

But he and Sarah and her family—Jeremy and Tessa?

They weren’t out of danger yet.

Thirty-Seven

When would this self-imposed mission be over? Her heart still pounded with the aftershock of the avalanche and the near tumble to the cave floor, which would have killed her, no doubt. Broken her back, her neck, or cracked her skull. And if it didn’t kill her, she would have broken something, and then how would Ryder get her off this mountain? Yeah, it would have killed her.

Exhaustion pressed down on her, and pain weighed heavy on her heart. It wouldn’t be over until the moment she held Jeremy in her arms. This nightmare wouldn’t end until he was somewhere safe. This incident brought her attention to the fact that her son might never be safe in her proximity. But she couldn’t think about that now.

All her focus had to be on finding him.I don’t even know where to look.

But that wasn’t true. She’d start by finding anyone connected to a rogue CIA operation run by Reid Maddox.

Ryder hiked ahead, descending the mountain now, and it seemed a lifetime ago that they’d started out on this venture to climb the mountain. They began at that trailhead—what was the name? Lost Signal Trailhead. That was the one. And that meant something to her now. The name struck her in a way ithadn’t before. It wasn’t just a marker on a map, but she and Ryder had lived it. They’d been cut off and tested. Stripped down to who they really were when everything else fell away. And until they found Jeremy, as far as Sarah was concerned, she was still in this grueling test of her soul, her life.

She followed Ryder along the snow-packed rim—the tree line down below them getting closer. Somehow she’d come to associate those trees with safety, but obviously that wasn’t true, and hadn’t been true for them in Ryder’s grandfather’s cabin, even. Still, getting closer to the forest meant they were getting off this mountain and were closer to civilization than when they’d been near the summit.

Closer to her son.

But the tree line she viewed disappeared as they climbed one final slope. Snow crunched under her boots and every muscle ached as she followed the guide she’d secured—and he’d become so much more than that, though she hadn’t figured out exactly what.

Maybe Sarah was alive right now because Ryder had refused to give up. She had a feeling he would have tumbled down the rock face along with her before he let go. And that settled deep in her heart.

At the top of the slope, Ryder paused and Sarah stopped to catch her breath. She glanced back at the cave they’d escaped—just part of the snowy landscape along an avalanche-scarred slope that had once again buried secrets along with more bodies. Some of those men might have escaped the avalanche like she and Ryder had been able to. They had better keep an eye out for them. Still...

“We made it,” she whispered, mostly to herself.

Ryder, ever the realist, started forward. “Not yet, we haven’t.”