Winter Warning, page 1
“Get down!” he yelled, reaching over to push Holly’s head down toward the floor for cover. “Someone’s shooting at us!”
There was the plink again as another round struck the glass near where his head had been only moments before.
He grabbed his radio to reach out to 911 as he flipped on his concealed red and blue lights and the siren. “Shots fired. Shots fired. Near the corner of 34th and Main. Send all available deputies.”
There was the crackle of the radio and the 911 dispatcher’s response. Units were on the way.
He reached behind his seat and pulled out his rifle, then slapped the magazine to make sure it was seated. “Don’t move. Stay low and behind cover. I don’t want you getting hurt. You understand me?” He stared at Holly, who looked wide-eyed with terror.
“Who is shooting at us?”
He shrugged, but he had a feeling he knew exactly who was pulling the trigger—and who was about to go down in a blaze of gunfire.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book and all those in this series wouldn’t have been possible without my strong support team at Harlequin. They constantly strive to keep me growing as an author while making each book better than the last.
Also, thank you to the members of the Missoula Search and Rescue Team for taking the time to show me around the facility and responding to my many questions while writing this series. I couldn’t have done it without you.
WINTER WARNING
Danica Winters
www.millsandboon.com.au
DANICA WINTERS is a multiple-award-winning, bestselling author who writes books that grip readers with their ability to drive emotion through suspense and occasionally a touch of magic. When she’s not working, she can be found in the wilds of Montana, testing her patience while she tries to hone her skills at various crafts—quilting, pottery and painting are not her areas of expertise. She believes the cup is neither half-full nor half-empty, but it better be filled with wine. Visit her website at danicawinters.net.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Detective Ty Terrell—A sexy, hard-nosed detective who can’t stop acting against his better judgment after he and his Search and Rescue team find a beautiful skier who is a blast from his past.
Holly Dean—The incredibly professional and competent owner of Spanish Peaks Physical Therapy. She is as wild as she is stubborn, but no one can say she doesn’t live life to the fullest. Unfortunately, her cavalier attitude sometimes gets her into some sticky situations.
George “Moose” Dolack—An adventurous deputy at the Madison County Sheriff’s Office and a member of the Big Sky Search and Rescue team who has a mama who loves him more than life itself.
Valerie Keller—A member of the Big Sky Search and Rescue team who loves to help but has a horrible habit of never telling anyone no—especially when it comes to her sister.
Evelyn Keller—Valerie’s sister and a woman with a checkered past and an unpredictable future.
Robert Finch—A womanizer who has Holly squarely in his sights, even though she has repeatedly told him she isn’t interested.
Thank you to all who put their lives on the line to help others.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Excerpt from Campus Killer by R. Barri Flowers
Chapter One
The skier had been missing since last night. In these sub-zero temps, death had likely found the skier long before Search and Rescue had even been notified.
Ty Terrell could count on his fingers the number of times they had managed to pull people off the mountains alive after that amount of time. If he had to guess, the skier had gone off path and found themselves in a slide. Avalanches happened with striking regularity in the Spanish Peaks outside Big Sky, Montana.
If this missing skier had gotten wrapped up in a chute, then they wouldn’t be found until the snowmelt next spring—if then.
He blinked and an image of the last body he’d found in the thaw popped into his mind. The guy had been discovered still frozen, looking like a Peruvian mummy with his lips curled tight above his teeth, his eyes sunken and his skin browned by the ravaging effects of prolonged cold. He’d looked nothing like the pictures of the fifty-three-year-old man they had been sent to find. Aside from being freeze-dried, the guy had been in pristine condition. His wallet had even been in his back pocket, which had made identification that much easier.
Hopefully this SAR mission would be different, and it wouldn’t be a recovery, but a rescue—even if the feeling in his gut told him it was likely the former.
He checked to see that his black Trunab go bag was in the back seat of his pickup as he started the rig. It was a long drive up to the trailhead, one made longer by slick roads, which may or may not have been plowed this week. It had snowed last night, which would make this rescue even harder, but hopefully they could still pick up a track at the location where the skier had put in and then simply follow the ski marks.
The drive up to the Beargrass Trailhead normally only took about ninety minutes from his place, but today it took closer to two hours, even driving faster than he should have. Thankfully, until the last half mile or so, he had been able to keep it out of four-wheel drive even though the snow was more than two feet deep in some spots. Someone else had cut tracks through the fresh powder and as long as he stuck to them, he’d been good to go.
At the trailhead, Cindy DesChamps, Chad Tenley and George Dolack—who everyone lovingly called “Moose”—were already sitting there waiting for him with the sleds as he pulled up. They looked annoyed, or maybe it was that they were amped to get working and each passing second was another heartbeat closer to their victim expiring.
He pulled his truck up in front of their rigs, making sure not to block the trailers so they could get in and out as they needed. Moose walked up to his window. “I didn’t know I needed to call my mother to drive your ass up here.” He slapped his hand on the edge of the open window. “Could you have gotten here any slower?”
“Hey, man, you’re lucky I made it here at all. I just got off work,” he said, picking up his Search and Rescue beanie and slipping it over his slightly too long brunette hair. He needed to get it cut—if he ever had any down time.
“Did you get all the texts about our vic?” he asked.
In all honesty, he’d just heard they were looking for a woman who’d gone missing while skiing. That’s all he’d needed to hear. “Of course.” He waved Moose off.
Moose rolled his eyes but didn’t bother to ask questions. He knew Ty well enough by now that he didn’t have to worry. Ty always completed his mission. “A few members are already out there, working the bottom line.”
“I swear, I got here as quickly as I could.”
“Just because you’re some fancy-pants detective, you think it’s some kind of excuse for being half-informed and late,” he huffed, with a teasing laugh. “I see how it is.”
“You know I would much rather spend time talking to you and Cindy than chasing down felons and doing high-risk stops.”
“Yeah right, high-risk stops,” Moose repeated with a laugh. “The only high-risk stuff you’ve done in the last six months is testing your stomach at the little taco truck near the ski hill.”
“Those tacos are amazing.” He rolled up his window. The guy wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d been spending far too much time in his squad car serving warrants and answering repeat offenders’ assault calls. It was all pretty routine, although he would still have to say that everything he did came with inherent risk. Though, it wasn’t anything close to what most people saw on cop shows on television.
Big Sky was made up of mostly ski bums in the winter, hunters in the fall and fish heads in the spring and summer. Crime always came with people, but his little town didn’t have an abundance of either. He had to admit that he liked life just as it was.
He stepped out of his warm pickup and the cold stung his face. It was going to be a long day on the mountain. Going to the back of his rig, he grabbed his snow gear and donned up. There was no such thing as cold, there was only having the wrong clothing to deal with conditions. That being said, he hoped he’d brought the right coat and pants. According to the radar, it was supposed to dip into the double-digit negatives tonight and tomorrow, which would only be compounded by the wind speed on their sleds—it would easily feel at least fifty below in a matter of minutes. Hopefully they’d find this skier before having to worry about the nighttime temps.
The team had the machines unloaded and he clicked on the comms, which fed directly into his helmet. Cindy was on her sled and, after testing to make sure they could all hear each other, they hit the trail.
He turned on his heated gloves, trying to keep up wit
Maybe the skier was just going slower than anticipated. Or, she had gotten started later than she had intended.
They moved to the side of the tracks as the trees grew thicker. If the skier had been in this thick stuff the entire way, he and the team would have to work around the main area where she had disappeared, making large circular swaths where they could look for exit points instead of sticking exclusively to the trail. It would make their search far harder, but they would do what needed to be done.
If all else failed, they would have to come in on their skis, but it would make any sort of recovery more difficult. If things went that direction, he wouldn’t be surprised if they had to call in the helo team to airlift out their victim.
“I’m going to take the middle trail,” Moose said, motioning to the right with his hand. “I’ll meet you guys at our first waypoint.”
“You got it,” Cindy said. “We will expect you there in one hour. Let us know if you need assistance.”
“Roger.” Moose tipped his hand in acknowledgment before running his sled toward the bottom of the far tree line.
The run he was taking was far more treacherous than Ty was comfortable with, but he could understand Moose’s thinking. It was a perfect chute for a skier who wanted or needed to make a faster descent. Even though there was solid logic behind his decision, he didn’t like that Moose was going alone, but Cindy was the boss. Besides, Moose was the most experienced rider of the group, and if anyone was going to make that run, he was their best choice.
Thanks to the sound of his own engine, he could barely hear the roar of Moose’s sled as he rode off into the distance, but everything would be fine. Expanding their search perimeter was the best thing they could do, regardless of his personal feelings. They could get to Moose pretty quickly if they needed to; Ty just needed to stop being overly cautious.
He took a breath of the exhaust-scented air and pushed forward behind Cindy and Chad. These two had been dating for a while now, and they weren’t about to leave each other’s sides. He loved that level of commitment. He’d kill to have that kind of relationship, someday. He’d have to meet the woman of his dreams first, and to this day the only woman who’d ever come close was his very first girlfriend, Holly Dean.
They’d been fifteen when they started dating and they’d been together for most of high school—until she had decided to run off to college and leave him behind. He’d tried to fight the fight and tell her that he’d follow her, but she hadn’t wanted him. That had been that.
Everyone had told him that time would heal that wound, but all it did was serve as a reminder that losing love was the worst kind of pain.
He found the thoughts reawakening parts of him that were best left dormant, and he pushed the memories down.
After thirty minutes, the tracks reappeared near the base of the copse of trees. Cindy radioed, “Looks like we’re back on trail.”
“Roger,” Moose answered, “meet you below.”
He had definitely been overly cautious. Maybe he’d seen too many injuries and his line of work was taking a toll on him. Though crime wasn’t too bad around Big Sky, just last week he’d been first on scene for a man who had been smoking while installing a propane tank in his grill. It hadn’t ended well for his nose or his fingers. Hopefully the guy didn’t need all ten digits for his job.
Maybe Ty simply needed a vacation—somewhere tropical.
As he dreamed of palm trees the snow drifts grew around him, and to his left there was a large subalpine fir with a tree well so deep he didn’t dare to approach. If he had to guess snow here had to be at least ten feet deep in some spots. They were over the bottom limbs of the trees now. It was wild.
The tree growing by the large fir shook violently. He slowed down, braking. That was odd. As he looked closer, the base of the small tree was covered in something red. It wasn’t just red...no, it was ruddy and pink. Blood.
He stopped his sled. “Cindy, we have movement back here,” he radioed.
He didn’t want to move too close to the fir, and if there was someone stuck at the base of the shaking tree, he didn’t want to cause a cave-in. They’d have to be dang careful as to not cause further issues than those they already faced.
He turned off his engine and pulled off his helmet. As soon as he did, he heard a muffled woman’s cry.
“Ma’am, I’m on my way. I hear you!” he called, not so loud as to cause problems with avalanches, but loudly enough that he hoped she would know help was on the way.
He put his helmet down and climbed off. After grabbing his pack and his shovel, he did one last check that everything was there and easily reachable if there was a cave-in or other emergency. Her muffled cry grew louder.
Cindy and Chad turned to come back to him as he slowly moved toward the woman’s call.
He started to dig about six feet back from where the woman’s cry sounded. Cindy radioed Moose and the lower team to let them know they’d located their vic. Moose didn’t answer—they’d have to update him when they met at the waypoint.
After making the calls, Cindy and Chad parked back by his sled and grabbed their shovels. As they all set off to work, it didn’t take long for them to be waist deep in the snow pit. Cindy talked nonstop, reassuring the woman that they were coming and everything would be alright.
It was amazing how just simple communication could help ease a victim’s terror.
The woman’s voice grew louder as he neared her. He put his shovel to the side and started to scoop back the snow with his gloved hands. Two purple-gloved fingers poked through the snow to him. He took hold of her fingers and pushed back the snow. The woman’s helmet came into view. Even though her face was mostly covered, he recognized those blue eyes—Holly.
Before the shock of seeing her could settle in, he had to stay focused on the job at hand. “I’ve got you.” He’d always had her. Even when he didn’t.
She nodded, but her eyes grew wide as she recognized him, as well. “Thank you, Ty.”
“Don’t worry, we are going to get you out of here and to the hospital for care,” Ty said, trying to bring her comfort in this time when she needed it the most.
He reached down under her arms and pulled her back from the tree and into the pit his team had created. She fell back into his lap as he landed in the snow.
“How are you feeling? Are you hurt?” he asked, panicked.
She shook her head. “I’m fine. A little cold, but I’m okay.”
“Were you skiing alone?” Chad asked.
Holly was shaking, but he wasn’t sure if it was from hypothermia setting in or from the adrenaline of being found. She tried to remove her helmet, but her hands were barely functioning, so he helped her pull it from her head.
“It...being alone...it was a mistake.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I knew better.”
When she sat back, blood poured from her thigh. They had to get her to the trucks and warmed up and her wound looked at as quickly as possible—though they had found her, her life still hung in the balance.
Chapter Two
Holly had never been any good at following directions, especially when people told her to be quiet, to step back and let others take the lead, or to stay in her lane. To listen was to have her soul silenced, which was far worse than being reprimanded for having a voice. However, this was a lesson in humility.
She should have listened.
However, the conditions were perfect for the day on the slopes. Fresh powder and sunshine. What more did a person need?
Her co-owner at Spanish Peaks Physical Therapy, Stephanie Skinner, had told her that the slopes were looking treacherous, but no...she had to be headstrong.
Well, that had definitely come back to bite her right in the butt.
