Christmas Undercover. Hope White
wanting to alert them to her presence, and made her way through the brush. Edging around a large boulder, she stepped over a fallen branch in silence. She needed to stay invisible, hidden. Something she was good at.
The men were no doubt having this discussion a safe distance away from the lead guide, Ned, so as not to wake him. It didn’t take much to wake Sara. Even in sleep, she was always on alert.
“It’s not right and you both know it,” David said.
“It was an anomaly, a mistake,” Ted Harrington said.
“A mistake that could kill people.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” LaRouche said.
This was it—the evidence she’d been looking for.
She pulled out her phone, hoping to record some of their conversation. If she could catch them admitting to their plan, it would go a long way to proving she was right, that she wasn’t just an “overzealous” agent trying to prove something.
She crept closer, shielding herself behind a towering western hemlock. Digging her fingers into the bark, she peeked around the tree. The three men hovered beside a small campfire, the flames illuminating their faces. LaRouche and Harrington were tall, middle-aged men, older than David Price by at least ten years.
“I’m not in business to hurt people,” David said.
“We’re helping people, sport,” Harrington said, slapping David’s shoulder. “Letting them sleep like they never have before.”
“And they don’t wake up.”
“That hasn’t been irrefutably proved,” Harrington said.
“Even one death is too many.”
LaRouche, a tall, regal-looking man, jumped into the conversation. It grew into a shouting match, giving Sara the chance to sneak even closer. She darted to another tree, only ten feet from the men.
She clicked off her headlamp.
Hit the video record button on her phone.
And held her breath.
“I didn’t sign on for this!” David said.
“Majority rules,” Harrington countered.
“Then, I’m out. I’ll sell you my share of the company.”
Harrington threw up his hands and paced a few steps away.
“If you leave, stock prices go down,” LaRouche said calmly.
“I don’t care. Some things are more important than money.”
“Like your family?” LaRouche taunted.
“Is that a threat?” David said.
“Sure, why not?”
David lunged at LaRouche. Harrington dived in between them. “Enough!”
The two men split apart, David glaring at his partners.
“Calm down. Let’s talk this through,” Harrington said.
“Talk? You mean threaten me?” David said.
“I like to think of it as persuading you, David,” LaRouche countered.
“No, I’m done.” David started to walk away.
It seemed as if the conversation was over.
Then LaRouche darted around the fire, grabbed David’s arm and flung him...
Over the edge of the trail.
The chilling sound of a man crying out echoed across the mountains.
Sara gasped and took a step backward.
A twig snapped beneath her boot.
LaRouche and Harrington whipped their heads around and spotted her. They looked as stunned as she felt. The three of them stared at each other.
No one moved. She didn’t breathe.
Heart racing, she watched the expression on LaRouche’s face change from stunned to something far worse: the look of a murderer who was hungry for more.
“It was an accident,” Harrington said.
LaRouche reached into his jacket, no doubt for a weapon.
In that millisecond, her only conscious thought was survival.
Sara clicked on her headlamp and took off, retracing her steps over the rugged terrain. She was outnumbered and couldn’t retrieve her off-duty piece quick enough. She had to get safe and preserve the video evidence against them.
Shoving the phone in her pocket, she hopped a fallen branch and dodged the boulder on the other side. As she picked up speed, she heard a man grunt as he tripped and hit the ground behind her.
“Where are you going? We need your help!” Harrington called.
Beating back the tentacles of fear, she searched for a trail, or at least a more even surface. She’d left everything at the campsite but the clothes on her back, so her odds for survival weren’t great, especially considering the cold temperatures in the mountains this time of year.
Stop going to that dark place, she scolded herself. She had to figure out how to contact her boss and report the murder before the men reported it as an accident.
Call her boss, right, the man who’d ordered her to take time off. He didn’t even know she was chasing a lead he’d proclaimed was a dead end.
“David fell and we need your help!” Harrington yelled.
David fell? Is that what you call it when you fling a man off a cliff?
She sucked in the cool mountain air, pumping her arms, trying to get a safe distance away where she could get a cell signal and call for help.
“Let’s talk about this!” Harrington pressed.
Like they’d “talked” to David Price? The memory of his desperate cry sent shivers across her shoulders.
She found the trail, but if she found it, so would they. They were taller than her five foot three, their strides longer. It wouldn’t take them long to catch her.
And kill her.
They’d probably fabricate a story about how she was responsible for David’s death. That would wrap everything up in a neat bow—just in time for Christmas.
No. She wouldn’t let them win.
A gunshot echoed across the mountain range.
She bit back a gasp. How would they explain her body riddled with bullet holes? Unless they hoped wild animals would rip it apart, making cause of death that much harder to determine.
Suddenly she ran out of trail. She peered over the mountain’s edge into the black abyss below.
“Think,” she whispered.
She realized her rope was still hooked to her belt. She hadn’t planned to drift off to sleep earlier, so she hadn’t taken off her gear. She wrapped the rope around a tree root jutting out from the side of the mountain below the trail and pulled it tight.
For the first time in her life, she appreciated Uncle Matt’s insistence that she take wilderness survival courses, along with self-defense. She used to think he’d forced her to take the classes because her small frame made her a target for bullies. She eventually realized it was because of the nightmares. He thought the classes would empower her, make her feel safe.
Sara had never felt safe.
She dropped to her stomach and shimmied over the edge. Clinging to the rope, she let herself down slowly, hoping to hit a ledge or plateau where she could wait it out. She clicked off her headlamp. At least if she could disappear for a few hours until sunrise, she might be able to make her way out of Echo