Rescued by the Ranger

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the three ladies who helped me make it shine.

To Karissa, who dropped everything when I asked,
stayed up all night reading my manuscript,
and wrote copious notes and suggestions as she went—
thank you for your help, your friendship, and for allowing me to adopt you as part of my family.

To amazing author and friend Sharon Struth, who has an extraordinary voice,
and whose books I read just to see how it’s supposed to be done—
I was honored to have you critique the opening chapters of this book.
Your input was honest, insightful, and spot on. Thank you for giving so generously of your time.

And finally, to my editor, Chelsey,
who I’m pretty sure poured her heart and soul into the editing of this manuscript—
thank you for all your hard work, your understanding, and your encouragement.
Thanks also for always being just an e-mail or a phone call away.

I feel fortunate to have worked with you. You’ve made it fun.

Chapter One

A
FAINT WHINE
from the shotgun seat jerked Garrett’s attention back to the narrow road hugging the side of a steep mountain in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Idaho. Gravel crunched beneath the tires as he came close to the drop-off on his right, and he immediately guided the Jeep closer to the white line down the middle of the chipped and broken asphalt. Clearly, either he was lost, or naming this strip of pavement a state highway was someone’s idea of a joke. Whatever the case, this wouldn’t be the best place to lose his focus. It was a damn-good thing Cowboy was watching out for him, as usual.

Garrett scratched beneath the chin of the German shepherd in the seat beside him, and the dog gave another worried whimper. With no words at his disposal, Cowboy still managed to convey his opinion about the last-minute road trip they’d embarked on late last night, and at this point, Garrett was tempted to agree with him.

“Relax, boy.” Garrett cocked his head toward the navigation system resting on the dash. “Matilda thinks we’re almost there, and she hasn’t gotten us lost in a long time.”

That earned him another whine and a hopeful thump of the dog’s tail. Cowboy’s tongue lolled from the side of his open mouth as he stuck his head out of the window and resumed his panting.

Maybe Garrett should have listened to his little brother Luke. Cowboy might have been better off staying with his father at the senator’s residence in Sacramento. But Garrett had balked when Luke brought it up. The dog belonged with him. Constant companions for the past two years—watching each other’s backs, eating together, sleeping together, flushing out Sunni militants together—Cowboy was the closest thing to a guardian angel Garrett would ever see.

When they’d both been injured in a firefight outside the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Cowboy had not only led them out of the ambush, but also stood guard over him and the other surviving member of their unit until help had arrived in the early hours of the morning. At the field hospital, Garrett had insisted the dog receive the best treatment available and, a couple of weeks later, had pulled out all the stops to secure the necessary approval to bring him home.

He knew what it was like to have someone you love suddenly and permanently disappear. And it wasn’t happening to Cowboy. Not if Garrett could help it. He hadn’t left the dog behind in Iraq, and he wasn’t going to leave him now. Unless he was able to pass the stringent physical requirements that would allow him to rejoin his Ranger unit. As hard as he’d worked toward making that a reality, the odds were against him. If by some miracle he did, his half sister, Shay, would keep Cowboy, but even thinking about leaving him made Garrett’s gut ache. So, for right now, they were staying together. Besides, he just might need some moral support if he was going to see this mission through to the end.

“Sorry, bud. Needed you with me on this one.” He rested his hand on the dog’s shoulder just above the ragged scar where a bullet had torn through muscle and tissue. Cowboy had recovered surprisingly well, but the wound had ended the career of the best military dog Garrett had ever been teamed with.

Cowboy’s big, brown, soulful eyes studied his for a moment before a barely audible
woof
broke the silence.

Garrett chuckled and patted the dog’s furry side. “Good boy. That’s right—use your indoor voice. You’ll need to be on your best behavior while we’re here. Shouldn’t be long, though. I can’t imagine there’d be anything to keep us here beyond the end of the day.”

Why
had
he come anyway?

Aunt Peg’s letter. His temper flared remembering the confrontation between him and his father after Garrett had stumbled upon the year-old letter in his dad’s desk drawer.

“Looking for something, son?” There’d been wariness in his father’s voice.

Garrett had dragged his gaze from the envelope in his hand to study the senator. “I misplaced Shay’s telephone number. I thought I might find it in here.” The call to his sister momentarily forgotten, he’d held the letter up so his father could see.

The senator had looked away, his expression shuttering over. “I meant to give that to you, but both you and Luke were out of the country when it arrived and, frankly, it’s not something you should worry about. You need to concentrate on getting well,” his father had said, but the way his gaze bounced around the room instead of meeting Garrett’s told a different story.

“Dad, I’ve been in the States for six months. Two months at the VA hospital and four months recuperating right here in this house. Luke’s been here a week. What were you waiting for?” Garrett had held the letter out in front of him. “ ‘Garrett and Luke Harding.’ ” He’d read the first line of the address out loud and then jerked the letter away as his father made a grab. “Peg Williams. That’s Aunt Peg, isn’t it? Did it cross your mind at all that Luke and I might be interested in what our mother’s sister had to say?”

“Your mother passed away a year ago. Peg invited you to the reading of the will. Hell, your mother didn’t have time for you while she was alive. Why
would
you be interested now? Hate me for it if you want—I took it upon myself to keep the letter from you. I didn’t think it was important twenty-nine years after she walked out on you boys.” Anger had hardened his father’s expression.

Garrett had sucked in a breath as the words pelted him, reopening a wound he’d thought long closed. After all, they hadn’t heard from the woman their father had said was a drug addict in nearly thirty years. Now she’d apparently left them something in her will—as though she’d have anything they’d want. Wasn’t that just the icing on the cake?

Garrett had straightened his six-foot-one frame until the muscles surrounding the six-month-old wound in his back protested sharply. “You had no right to make that call.”

“I had every right. I wasn’t going to let that woman hurt you again.”

Steel-gray eyes, so like his own, had stared back at Garrett. “Are you sure that’s the reason, Dad? Or could it have had anything to do with keeping the
senator’s
ex-wife off the front page of the newspaper?” Silence had stretched for at least thirty seconds, during which Garrett had had ample time to regret his words.

His father, ever the diplomat, had smiled faintly. “Let’s table this discussion until cooler heads prevail, shall we? You have your letter, and I have a meeting I’m going to be late for.” He’d grabbed several folders from his desk and hastened from the room.

Guilt had descended upon Garrett as soon as he was alone. He had no idea why the deception and his father’s explanation had gotten him so hot. He’d agreed with nearly all of what the senator had said. Hadn’t he been bitter and angry with his mother most of his life? Still, the questions he’d carried with him for a long time screamed to be answered, and a road trip seemed to be just what he needed.

He’d hoped to convince his brother to tag along since the letter was addressed to him too, but Luke, home on leave from the navy, opted to stay in Sacramento. With a wink, he gave a halfhearted promise to join Garrett if pretty girls or manual labor was involved. Though disappointed, Garrett had understood. Luke had been only three years old when their mother left and had avoided most of the bitterness, the loss, and the sense of worthlessness that had ensnared Garrett at the age of five.

So, he and Cowboy had jumped in his Jeep and typed Grizzly Gulch, Idaho, into Matilda’s electronic brain. The GPS had been named after his high school principal, Ms. Matilda Banks, because the snarky impatience in its computerized voice was a dead ringer for the woman who’d refused to give up on him even after he’d gotten himself kicked out of school. She still checked up on him now and then just to make sure he was staying out of trouble and on the right path. Garrett had enjoyed the idea of setting the electronic Matilda on his dash and letting her tell him where to go.

He’d driven seventeen hours, stopping only to sleep beside the road, fuel up, and grab a bite to eat. Now, as the only vehicle on a road looking like something from the apocalypse, Garrett was beginning to have second thoughts. He swerved to miss a pothole. Matilda said they were right on target so their destination had to be close, but this narrow mountain road had him wondering if he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe these winding backwoods trails had thrown Matilda for a loop.

Around the next sharp corner, the road straightened for about five hundred yards. On the left, a graveled parking lot surrounded a substantial log structure, its metal roof reflecting the light of the sun. One vehicle, a dilapidated pickup, waited out in front, engine running. A sign hanging from the eves over swinging double doors said C
OUGAR
R
IDGE
W
ATERING
H
OLE
.

He braked and pulled off the road as two men in the old rusted Ford pickup backed away from the building, turned, and started in his direction. They slowed to a crawl, both glaring with obvious malice as they drove by, then hit the gas and spun tires on gravel until they reached the two-lane ribbon of asphalt. Garrett would have laughed if he hadn’t been so damned tired. Cowboy added his sentiments with a his-ass-is-mine growl.

“Yeah, I wish, boy, but unless we start hearing banjos, we don’t want any trouble.” Garrett pulled into the spot the old Ford had vacated. “Stay in the Jeep, bud. I need some coffee, and I’ll find out if this is the best way to get to Aunt Peg’s lodge . . . in case Matilda doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.” GPSs weren’t infallible. Just a couple of months ago there’d been a story on the news. A family had become stranded on a snow-packed, impassable road after their navigation system sent them on the shortest, most direct route to their destination, rather than the most well-used, safest road. The father had gone for help and ended up freezing to death.

The dog’s whine turned into a grumble as Garrett stepped out of the Jeep and strode toward the swinging doors. The sun felt good on his back and thigh, which were still stiff and aching from two bullet wounds, courtesy of his last tour. After seventeen hours of sitting and sleeping in a vehicle, his muscles were all tied up in knots. He was going to wish he hadn’t skipped out on his P/T appointment yesterday. Stretching his upper body, he climbed the short set of steps to the open deck that ran the length of the building.

The second he pushed one of the swinging doors open and stepped onto the rough plank floor, the skin at the back of his neck began to crawl. He stopped as every muscle in his body tensed, and he slowly removed his dark glasses to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the dim interior. At first glance, the place appeared empty. His gaze leisurely swept the tables to his left, searched the length of the bar—made from a monstrous piece of old-growth pine—and stopped when he zeroed in on a man, a punk really, and a woman sitting at a table to the right of the burnished log. Apart from them, the Cougar Ridge Watering Hole was deserted.

He kept one eye on the couple as he stepped purposefully toward the bar. His gut had twisted into a massive knot, a sure sign something wasn’t right.

The male was a good-sized kid, no more than nineteen or twenty. Long, dirty hair slapped against his collar as his gaze followed Garrett farther into the room. The woman’s shoulder-length red hair framed an attractive face, and bangs, in slight disarray, slanted across her forehead. She sat ramrod straight in her chair, and a glimpse of amazing green eyes grabbed Garrett’s attention when she glanced his way before turning her watchful gaze back to her companion.

The kid gripped one of the woman’s hands, pinning her to the table in an awkward position. They were so clearly not just a boy and girl holding hands. Garrett would lay odds that the pretty redhead couldn’t bear the man’s touch.

So, what was their story? A lover’s spat? He doubted that. A domestic dispute? Something more sinister? Goddammit. Why did he have to walk into the middle of it?

“Bartender around?” Garrett leaned one elbow against the bar and glanced over his shoulder.

“Yes.” The woman was quick to reply and would have jumped to her feet if the jerk beside her hadn’t twisted her arm, forcing her to remain in her chair. A grimace of pain flickered momentarily across her features.

“No,” the guy growled. “There’s no one here but me and Rachel, so
you
might wanna be goin’.”

A wave of anger hit Garrett hard as he watched the red-haired woman school her expression into patient nonchalance, yet she couldn’t hide the fury that burned in those green eyes. Garrett, taking his cue from her, forced a smile and shifted his weight to one of the barstools. “Huh! They just left the place unlocked?” He stared directly at the kid. “Seems reckless. Any slimy piece of riffraff could wander in and sit himself down.” A faint smile crossed quickly over Rachel’s face, but apparently the idiot beside her was too stupid to take offense. Garrett would have to try harder.

The kid leaned back in his chair, and a black scowl twisted his features. “I won’t be tellin’ ya again to clear out. A fella stickin’ his nose in around these parts is askin’ for a beatin’ . . . or worse.”

Garrett’s gaze shifted to Rachel as she slowly lifted her eyes to his. She studied him curiously for a second before the slimeball squeezed her hand cruelly and she bit her lip, muffling a small sound. The tautness of her body and the determined set of her jaw telegraphed her intention ahead of her movement, and Garrett started toward them seconds before she jumped to her feet, sending her chair flying backward. Rachel fisted her right hand and flung a haymaker at the punk’s nose. Obviously quicker than he looked, the kid saw it coming and easily caught her wrist, yanking her arm behind her back. With one foot, he pulled the closest chair into position and forced her to sit, then turned to face Garrett with a make-my-day smirk on his face. Clearly enjoying himself now, he twisted Rachel’s arm higher, bending her over the table, and a cry escaped her this time. “As I was sayin’, it’s time for you to go.”

Garrett held his ground. The woman’s eyes still flashed with fire, but fear seemed noticeably absent, if the instinct to knock the kid on his ass was any indication. Maybe they
were
a couple and this was their idea of Saturday-afternoon foreplay. Damn. He hated getting involved in family matters, but he’d never been able to abide violence against women.