The Sharpshooter's Secret Son. Mallory Kane

      For Debbie and Lorraine

       Chapter One

      They called them ghost towns for a reason.

      Black Hills Search and Rescue Specialist Deke Cunningham wasn’t afraid of anything. Not anymore. But the late afternoon shadows spooked him. They moved with him, reaching out like gnarled fingers across the empty, dusty main street of Cleancutt, Wyoming. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it wouldn’t shake. Probably because today he wasn’t working a routine assignment to rescue a deserving but nameless innocent.

      Today he was searching for his ex-wife.

      He glanced at the GPS locator built into his phone, then at the two-story building with the letters H E L barely readable above the door. The O and the T had long since faded.

      This was it. The location where BHSAR computer expert Aaron Gold had finally managed to triangulate Mindy’s last cell phone transmission.

      Mindy. She didn’t deserve this. She hadn’t deserved anything she’d gotten for loving him.

      And he’d never deserved her.

      Deke approached the two-story building, doing his damnedest not to swipe his palm across the nape of his neck, where prickles of awareness tingled. He was being watched.

      No surprise there.

      He even knew who was watching him. The same person who’d kidnapped his ex-wife. Well—who’d ordered her kidnapped, anyhow.

      Novus Ordo. The infamous international terrorist who’d already targeted another member of the BHSAR team, Matt Parker.

      We’ve got your wife, the obviously disguised voice on the cell phone had said.

      Alarm bells had clanged in his head and his gut had clenched with worry. Still, he’d had to smile a little. Whoever the kidnapper was, he had no idea what he’d gotten hold of when he’d grabbed Mindy Cunningham.

      “Ex-wife,” he’d muttered, working to sound bored and uninterested. “And be my guest. You can have her.”

      “This is no joke, Cunningham. We’ve got her and we’ll kill her if you don’t do what we say.”

      “The only thing I think you’ve got is her cell phone and a death wish.”

      The kidnapper had taken the bait. He’d put Mindy on the phone.

       Deke Cunningham, don’t pay them one red cent! It’s a trap—

      Tough words. Exactly what he’d expected from her. But beneath her brave words he heard fear—a soul-deep terror he’d never heard in her voice before. And that, more than anything the kidnapper said, scared him to death.

      Something was wrong with her. Something beyond being kidnapped. While that alone would be enough to terrify any woman, his Mindy was made of stronger stuff.

      In the twenty years since he’d first spotted her hanging by her heels from the top rung of the elementary school jungle gym, he’d never seen anything she couldn’t handle.

       Except him.

      Her tight, strained voice, cut by static, still echoed in his head as he paused at the bottom of the dilapidated wooden steps of the only hotel in Cleancutt, Wyoming.

      He’d heard about the ghost towns of Wyoming all his life. Eighty years ago, Cleancutt and other coal-mining camps had been booming towns. But by the 1950s, underground coal mining had given way to strip-mining, so today Cleancutt was a ghost, a dying piece of history located near the city of Casper.

      A vibration started in his breast pocket. Damn it. His phone.

      As he retrieved it, he glanced around him, in case he could catch someone watching him, waiting for him to answer. But the display read Irina Castle, his boss, not Mindy. He pressed the talk button without saying anything.

      “Deke, where are you?” Irina asked.

      “I’m busy,” he said quietly.

      “You did it, didn’t you? You went after Mindy alone. I told you to wait until I could arrange a meeting with Aaron Schiff.”

      “Irina, do not get the FBI involved in this. It’s too dangerous for Mindy. I’ll handle it. Besides, you know the drill. They threatened to hurt her if I brought backup.”

      “And you know the drill. My specialists never take unnecessary risks.”

      “This one was necessary.”

      Irina blew out a sigh of frustration. “You told Aaron not to tell me where you are.” Her voice was accusatory.

      “It’s for your own good, and Mindy’s. You can’t know. It’s too dangerous for you. Besides, there’s nobody alive who’s better trained to run a covert rescue mission than me.” He’d meant the comment to be reassuring, but it hung in the sudden silence between them.

      Irina’s husband, Rook Castle, had been the best until he’d been assassinated by Novus Ordo two years ago.

      “Aaron and Rafe have my projected timeline,” he continued. “They know what to do. You’ve got to trust me, Irina.”

      “I