Present Danger by Elizabeth Goddard (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📗

“We had a deal! I brought you the package, now let her go. Leave us alone.”

Marcus dragged her along with him through the house.

“What are you doing?” She had to convince him to leave her. “You can’t get away with this.”

“I have a plane waiting at the airport. I’ll be gone, out of this country, before the police even arrive at the ranch. I’ll just have to find a different way to deliver the artifact now that Neva is gone. I had been planning to move my operations back to Morocco anyway.”

Uh-oh. Marcus telling her his plans didn’t leave any doubt as to his intentions. He would kill her when he was done using her.

He dragged her toward the meadow between the ranch house and the base of Stone Wolf Mountain, where a running helicopter waited.

Marcus pointed the gun at her. “Get in.”

“What? You can get away now. You don’t need me anymore. Let me make sure my father’s okay since you already stole him from me for half my life!”

“If you prefer, I can shoot you in the leg and you can suffer in agony, but you’ll still be with me. I’ll keep you alive until I no longer need you.”

Grimacing, she climbed into the helicopter, which was no easy task with bound wrists.

Marcus piloted the helicopter, which lifted straight up, then started west toward Stone Wolf Mountain’s silhouette, dark against a moonlit sky. Terra could only bide her time. When he landed at the airport, she would refuse to get on that plane. Others would be nearby. Even if he shot her for resisting, she could get help there. But her father was far from emergency services.

But please, God, oh, God, save my dad.

A warning signal blared, joining a blinking red light. The engine sputtered.

“What’s that?” Terra asked, a new fear winding around her heart.

Expletives poured from the man’s mouth. “We’re losing altitude.”

The rotors slowed. “What’s going on?”

“Shut up!”

“Engine failure? We’re going to crash?”

“Not if I can help it. Now shut up!” He pointed the nose of the helicopter downward.

Terra yelped.

They sped toward the ground, rotating as they went. At the last minute, would he pull the helicopter upward to land it?

Except there was no flat ground on which to land.

Only trees below them.

Terra glanced out the side window and looked at the starry night. Were these the last moments of her life? She took in the view below, barely illuminated by the helicopter’s lights. The trees, the ground, were much too close.

She twisted until she was able to open the door with her still-bound hands.

“What are you doing?” Marcus grabbed her. “You have a better chance of surviving inside.”

“But the trees. There’s no place to land.”

“Whatever happens, a crash is survivable. You hear me? I know from experience. I’ve survived both a helicopter crash and a plane crash, so don’t worry. This helicopter was designed to absorb the impact and protect you. That said, you need to brace yourself for a hard landing.”

This man who’d forced her here at gunpoint, who’d shot her father, who thought himself invincible suddenly had a heart?

The helicopter dipped until the rotors chopped trees and a path through them to the ground, screaming and twisting all the way down. Terra squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth, and prayed under her breath, her heart pounding like it would escape her chest.

The impact jarred her. Then she felt nothing. Saw nothing.

“Wake up. Get up.”

Terra fought off the words, the pain. Someone shook her.

She groaned, then opened her eyes. Marcus stood over her. She’d hoped that it had all been a bad dream.

“I told you it was survivable. Now get up.”

“Why do you care if I survive?”

“I need you more than ever now.” He took a step back.

A sound drew her attention. He kicked the box Terra’s father had given him and shined a flashlight into it.

A plastic Darth Vader mask.

Marcus growled.

“It doesn’t look like—”

“It’s not. Your father never had the artifact. I’m an idiot! I should have looked inside. But . . . Argh. I didn’t want the others to see too.” Marcus let loose a string of foul words, shouting them into the night. He gasped for breath, then seemed to calm down. But his eyes narrowed and slid back to Terra. “I’ll keep you with me until I get it back. Get up. We have to leave the crash site.”

Should she fake a twisted ankle or broken leg? No. He’d just kill her. She climbed from the seat. “I’m going to need my hands free. I might need to climb.”

As Marcus shined the flashlight around, Terra recognized this part of the mountain.

“It’s fitting, don’t you think? This is near where my plane crashed fifteen years ago. Where the SAR team rescued me and an avalanche took them out.”

Terra fought to comprehend his words. “What? Are you saying—”

“Yes. It was my plane that crashed. Your mother and her team saved me, and died in the rescue.”

Stumbling, Terra dropped to her knees. Her father’s sudden appearance in her life, his business in all this, and now Marcus/Tony’s connection . . . it was all too much to grasp. And yet, it was starting to make sense. All these secrets buried in the past had been unearthed and were coming to light.

Marcus approached and stared down at her, a twisted smile on his face. “I’d been on my way here to face off with your father for bailing on me back in Iraq. I thought I might even kill him. But I never got to see him. He didn’t even know I was still alive. Nobody did. They all thought Anthony Gray had died in the helicopter crash in Iraq on the way to the court-martial hearing. That reporting mistake was fortuitous for me—and I created a whole new identity in Marcus Briggs.”

Marcus took an audible breath and continued staring at her.

“After the plane crash here and my rescue, I learned Chris had lost his beautiful Sheridan when she’d saved me. Telling him that news would