FIVE DAYS EARLIER
In the large tent that served as Thrillseekers, Inc.’s field office in the staging area on the edge of a Chizickstan village, Chase exploded in frustration. “That’s a stupid move, Lana. Why are you being so hardheaded?”
Of course, he knew the answer already. She confirmed it with her next words.
“It’s for the good of the show!” She braced her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “I’m doing my job. I’m doing what Thrillseekers pays me to do. Quite handsomely, I’ll add.”
Chase had said the same thing to his mother not long ago. I should have listened to her. “Tell me that’s worth it after you’re taken prisoner by these effing zealots and turned into a sex slave. Although, since you’re a celebrity they’re liable to go the rape-and-beheading route. Makes for better Internet fodder, I imagine.”
She inhaled sharply, drawing back as if his words had been a physical slap rather than a verbal one. Then her eyes narrowed, and when she spoke, she did so in a quiet voice. “I’m not stupid. I know we need more security, and I’m arranging for it.”
More security? Didn’t she realize that “more” wasn’t the issue? What mattered was the type of security. This was not an area to bring in a bunch of Hollywood bodyguards whose experience was with managing paparazzi and obsessed fans. This was the real deal. “You don’t need security to go into those mountains. You need an army.”
“That’s ridiculous. This isn’t Afghanistan or Syria or Yemen. People here have been wonderful to us. They like Americans. What would be stupid would be to go forward with the Hidden River shoot under these conditions. It’s been our bad luck that they’ve had a biblical-type flood.”
“Then we should pack it up and go home.” He had a bad feeling about this whole thing.
“We can’t! We’re committed. We still have two shows to produce and Thrillseekers has invested all of this money. We’d go way over budget, which we might be able to weather, but we simply don’t have time! Between the delays at the beginning of the schedule and the delays here—we have no choice but to go forward with an episode from Markhor Pass. If we don’t, they’ll cancel the show.”
“Would that be so bad?” Chase asked, his tone quiet and deliberate.
“Yes! It would be a disaster!”
“Or an opportunity for something new.” Chase touched Lana’s arm. “Maybe that should be the next adventure, Lana. Think about it. For you and me, life is about the adventure, right? What if we jumped off and did something seriously wild and crazy? Something you never thought you’d do?”
“Like what?”
“Well…” He hesitated, then floated the trial balloon that had been on his mind for weeks. “How about we go live in Eternity Springs for a little while?”
She jerked away from him. “Seriously? Now? You want to have this discussion now when I have to phone New York in”—Lana checked her watch—“fifteen minutes? I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for the past two weeks! Ever since you had that close call and almost drowned I knew this was coming. No. I am not going to move to Eternity effing Springs and I am not going to cancel the shoots at Markhor Pass, and if you don’t like it you are welcome to take yourself home to your cozy little mountain burg. I am going to save this show with you or without you!”
“You can be a real bitch sometimes, Lana.”
“We’re a fitting pair, then, because you can be a real ass sometimes, yourself.”
A muscle worked in Chase’s jaw, and frustration churned inside him. Afraid he’d say something unforgivable, he turned to leave.
The sunrise cast a golden glow upon the eastern sky, a scattering of clouds adding a splash of pink and purple to the dawn. The mild temperatures of the early morning would disappear with the sun’s ascent, but for the next few hours, the heat would be bearable.
Good thing, too, because Chase was plenty hot as it was. He decided he needed a good long run to burn off his temper, so he changed clothes and headed out, taking his usual route.
As his shoes pounded the ground, anger and frustration burned in his gut like acid. The woman’s damned ego was going to get them all killed. Just when had the damned show become the be-all and end-all for her? When had she gone from being a woman lucky enough to make a living from her play to a woman for whom the job played the primary role in life?
And why had he refused to talk to her? She’d been on the mark with that shot. Was it because he simply wasn’t sure about her anymore? About them anymore? He sucked at breaking up. Look what had happened with Lori.
Lori. Was that the problem? Was she the problem? Surely not. They’d settled their unfinished business that night at his folks’ house. Hadn’t they?
Maybe not.
No, Lori wasn’t the problem. Lana was the problem. He and Lana together were the problem. He’d sensed the change before the trip to Chizickstan, but the weeks of filming here had left no doubt. Lana displayed an intensity, almost a desperation, about remaining the star of the show. She said he’d changed? Pot, kettle there.
He’d known she wouldn’t take well to the idea of moving to Colorado, but for the crew’s sake, he’d had to try. She was completely ignoring the reports they’d heard from some of their local guys that bad stuff was happening in the Markhor Pass region. It would be beyond stupid to go forward with her plan. His sixth sense was screaming at him that it was so.
Someone higher up the food chain than Lana needed to know the truth about what was happening here. If he picked up the sat phone and reported what they’d been told, the powers that be would probably pull the plug. He’d put those odds at seventy percent. The chances that his making that call would end his already tenuous engagement with Lana stood at a firm one hundred percent.
He’d do it if he had to. Better to lose the show than to lose their lives.
He had one day to convince her to change her mind, but he knew her well enough to know she needed time to cool down. No sense even trying to talk to her for the rest of the day.
He’d been an idiot to throw out the Eternity Springs suggestion. If he’d taken half a minute to consider the idea after it popped into his brain, he would have bitten it back rather than roll it out. Where the thought had come from, he didn’t know. He’d never before considered the notion himself.
Not exactly like that, anyway.
As he headed back toward town, he heard a voice call, “Hey, Timberlake.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see his best friend in camp, helicopter pilot Bradley Austin, striding up behind him. “What’s put the torque in your jaw?”
“Don’t ask.” Spying the knowing look on his friend’s face, he quickly asked, “What’s on your docket for this afternoon?”
“Same thing as what’s on yours.” A grimace flashed across his face. “Boss wants us to make another run up toward Markhor Pass.”
“Why?”
“She wants more photos.”
“What’s wrong with the ones I already shot?”
“Don’t have a clue. I don’t think the call to New York went well. She gave me a list of what she wants. She said if you refuse to go, I should tell Frank he needs to do it.”
Frank was a great video guy, but his still shots sucked. “Let me see the list.”
Bradley handed it over and Chase scanned it. “Seriously?”
Bradley held up his hands, palms out. “Hey, she’s your lady. You ask her. She’s in the office working on her script now. I should warn you, though. She is on a tear.”
Yeah, well, so am I.
He almost went back to argue with her again. He’d given her damned good pictures the first time. This was Lana’s way of pulling rank.
In the end, he decided he didn’t have the energy for Round Two right now. He’d go take her blasted pictures and they’d be the best damned photos he’d ever shot.
Twenty minutes later, with his camera bag on his shoulder, he climbed up into the helicopter as Bradley flipped switches and powered up the helo. They were just about to take off when David Whitelaw, one of Lana’s assistants, came running up. Chase couldn’t hear him, but he read the younger man’s lips. “I’m coming, too.”
Once they were airborne, Chase sat back, shut his eyes, and tried to find some inner peace. He brought his mood to the photographs he took. Professional pride wouldn’t allow him to give anything less than his best.
Markhor Pass was a two-hour trip over a mountain ridge by air, but about a million miles by land and hundreds of years back in time. Some of the roughest country in the world, it was starkly beautiful and so remote that it made isolated little Eternity Springs look easy to get to. Under different circumstances, he’d be stoked at the notion of donning a wingsuit and BASE diving off those mountains.
Lana thought he’d lost his nerve after he came perilously close to drowning during a recent white-water rescue of a crew member. That wasn’t it. There was nerve, and then there was stupidity. This crossed the outright stupid line. The men who’d reported the intrusion of jihadists into the Markhor Pass area had been well and truly shaken by the stories they’d heard.
He brooded about the situation for the better part of the next two hours, listening with only half an ear to Bradley’s yammering on about his South Beach hookup over Christmas. Chase was glad to let Whitelaw keep the conversation rolling—until a light on the instrument panel flashed red and the emergency horn sounded.
“What’s wrong?” asked Whitelaw, sounding panicked.
“Not sure.” Bradley’s tone was all business as he immediately began the autorotation maneuver in order to make a controlled landing. He lowered the pitch, reducing rotation and drag, and the helicopter began to descend.
Chase was confident in his friend’s piloting abilities, however, they would need a full measure of good luck to locate a suitable landing zone in this locale. A landing zone needed to be flat, firm, and free of debris. Staring at the rocky, mountainous terrain below them, he muttered, “Wish we were in Kansas.”
“Iowa would be good,” Bradley added.
They had maybe half a minute at the outside. Chase studied the mountain ridge rising immediately ahead of them intently. Mentally, he sent up a short but heartfelt prayer.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl even as the ground came up fast. It was the longest half minute of Chase’s life. Bradley remained calm, cool, and professional—and yet still himself. Rather than say “brace yourselves” or “prepare for crash landing,” he drawled, “Pucker up, boys.”
Chase realized then that they weren’t going to make the valley floor, and a fog bank hid the mountainside below them, obscuring the view of any accessible landing spots. It’d be the luck of the draw, but the surrounding terrain that was visible didn’t look promising.
Chase thought of his parents, his brother and sister. He thought of Lori and wondered if this was the “life flashing before his eyes” thing. Then, as if an angel blew a breath at precisely the right moment, the clouds parted, revealing a miracle below—a relatively flat rectangle of ground. “Ten o’clock.”
“Got it,” Bradley said.
“Chances of reaching it?”
“Sixty/forty.”
With Bradley on the throttle, Chase would take those odds. Behind them, Whitelaw made a garbled noise.
The ground was a hundred feet away. Five or six seconds. We’re gonna make it. Bradley was a damned fine pilot and fate had wrapped up this landing area like a gift.
Filled with new confidence, Chase nevertheless held his breath as at twenty-five feet Bradley initiated an aggressive flare by pitching the nose up and reducing the collective. The rotor rpm increased significantly. At ten feet, he leveled the helicopter and applied the collective.
The helicopter hovered and touched down gentle as a butterfly. “Holy Moses,” David Whitelaw breathed.
Chase shot his friend a grin. “Sick flying, dude.”
“What can I say? I’m a sick pilot.” He released a heavy breath and added, “Now we gotta hope I’m a sick mechanic. Otherwise, we’ll be spending the night here.”
“Here” was a natural, unspoiled pasture of high grass that all but swallowed the helo. A behemoth of a mountain rose sharply to the south and west. The absence of cliff faces to the north and east suggested the downward slope not obvious from the direction of their approach.
“Spending the night?” Whitelaw repeated, anxiety returning to his voice. “We have a satellite phone on board, don’t we? We can contact camp.”
Alarm skittered along Chase’s nerves when he saw his friend wince.
“I screwed up. Lana’s sat phone wouldn’t power up today for her big call, and she took mine. I didn’t think to ask for it back. I do have my ex-wife, though,” he added, using his personal nickname for the pocket-sized GPS tracker that was a standard part of his gear.
“Good. I have mine, too, so we have a backup. You make the call, Bradley. Do we activate the emergency signals now or do we see how we make out with the engine first?”
“The engine. I’m a decent mechanic. With any luck I’ll figure out what’s wrong and have us airborne in ten minutes. No sense scrambling the forces if we can get ourselves out of this jam.”
“Then let’s get busy and fix this bird.”
“What can I do?” Whitelaw asked. “I don’t know anything about helicopter engines, but I’m a great assistant. Want me to hand you tools?”
“Sure.”
They went to work on identifying the problem. Chase knew a little about engines, but he ran through that basic knowledge quickly. The fast, easy fix they’d all hoped for didn’t happen. Bradley kept at it longer, and after half an hour of trying one thing after another, he threw in the wrench. “That’s it. I don’t know what else to try. Sorry, boss.”
“I’m not your boss,” Chase muttered. It was an old argument, and one he figured both men found comforting at this juncture.
“What are we going to do?” Whitelaw asked, subdued.
“Engage the GPS beacons and get to work setting up a camp, just in case.”
“Just in case,” Whitelaw repeated, his voice glum. The kid shoved his hands in his pockets and turned in a slow circle. “Do you seriously think we’ll have to spend the night here?”
Chase pulled up the GPS function on his phone and checked their position. “I think it’s a fifty/fifty proposition.” To Bradley, he said, “You have a paper map?”
“In the pocket on the side of my seat.”
A longtime map aficionado, Chase appreciated the ease of electronic maps, but when he needed to study one, he liked to stretch out a physical version.
He pinpointed their position and whistled beneath his breath. “If we hadn’t made it over that ridge, we’d have been screwed. We were damned lucky to find this spot.”
“It’s because you were with us. You have the damnedest luck, Timberlake. That’s why I like piloting for you when shooting the show.”
Chase’s mouth twisted and his thoughts flashed to Lori. “A friend used to say I have an angel on my shoulder.”
Bradley snorted. “I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t see an angel coexisting with those horns on the top of your head.”
Chase flipped him the bird, then folded the map and absently stuck it in the pocket of his camera case. “How much water do we have on board?”
Bradley leaned into the helo and flipped open a cooler. “Four.”
“You have your pack?” he asked Bradley, recalling that Whitelaw had boarded the helo without one.
“Of course.”
Chase never went anywhere without his pack, so they were well equipped for an overnight on this high flat if they needed to access their water filtration supplies. “We need to recon a water source.”
Whitelaw asked, “Want me to do it?”
The kid was like a puppy, Chase thought. Eager to please, but clueless. He recalled an incident during a shoot in Switzerland when the poor guy came close to walking off the side of a cliff. He was definitely no mountaineer.
Bradley’s thoughts ran along the same line as Chase’s because he shook his head. “Let Timberlake look. He’ll find water faster than either one of us. Gonna pick a campsite for us, too, or do we stay with the ship?”
“We need to shelter at the base of the mountain within reach of higher ground. Hard to know where the runoff goes in a place like this if we were to have a toad-strangling thunderstorm.”
All three men looked at the sky where ominous dark clouds built to the west. His tone subdued, Whitelaw asked, “What do you want us to do?”
“Gather whatever we might need or be able to use from the helo and be ready to move when I come back.”
Chase grabbed his pack and slipped it onto his back. Out of habit rather than conscious thought, he picked up his camera bag, hooked it over his shoulder, and added, “Hopefully, this won’t take long.”
He started to strike out through the waist-high grass toward the mountain looming like Mordor in front of him, but after half a step, he paused. “Any weapons on board, Bradley?”
His friend shook his head. “Just my knife. You?”
“Knife.” Chase would have liked something with a trigger.
“Weapons? Why would we need weapons?” Whitelaw jerked his gaze around frantically. “Oh, jeez. You think there’re wild animals up here? Are we in danger from tigers?”
“I’m more concerned about animals of the two-legged variety,” Bradley observed.
Whitelaw’s brow knotted. “Why?”
“There is some bad mojo going on in this part of the world.”
“Not in Chizickstan!” Whitelaw protested. “The locals love Americans. This isn’t Afghanistan.”
“No wonder you get along with Chase’s lady so well. Let me give you a piece of advice, son. You need to start thinking for yourself.”
Whitelaw turned a worried gaze toward Chase. “Chase? Do you agree with him?”
Chase thought of the warnings that had precipitated today’s argument with Lana. They were still over a hundred miles away from Markhor Pass, and the last village they’d flown over had been in a valley over five minutes ago by air. This wasn’t a spot any mujahedeen were likely to be wandering around while they waited for the searchers to arrive. And yet …
“Chase?” Whitelaw repeated.
Damn, he looks young. And scared. Chase attempted to reassure him. “Considering our particular landing spot, I suspect that the most dangerous thing we’re liable to encounter while we’re here is a mountain goat. That said, they can be inquisitive sonsobitches. Don’t forget they own the trail. Go at least fifty yards away to piss.”
“Fifty yards? Why?”
“They like the salt.”
With a wave, he headed out. Just before he disappeared into the high grass, Bradley called out. “Hey, Timberlake.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“I decided what I want as my prize for whipping your ass in darts last week.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I want a pan of your mother’s lasagna.”
Chase grinned. Bradley had accompanied Chase on a visit to Colorado a year ago, and of course, Mom had cooked for them. Bradley hadn’t stopped talking about her lasagna since—especially once he learned she sometimes sent frozen lasagna packed in dry ice to Chase in Manhattan.
“I can probably beg her to send some.”
“No. I want your mom’s lasagna fresh. I want to go to Colorado and have it there. With salad and hot bread and tiramisu for dessert.”
“Sounds like a plan.” It would make his mom crazy happy, Chase knew. She always loved it when he brought friends home to visit.
With a final wave, he moved into the grass. He traveled as quickly as was safe, physical exertion helping to chase the chill from his bones. The cold wind whipping across the grassland easily penetrated the T-shirt he’d pulled on that morning. Like him, Bradley would have a survival blanket in his pack, but with two blankets shared by three men, it likely wouldn’t be a pleasant night. He’d need to pick a spot out of the wind—and hope the direction didn’t shift in the middle of the night.
The grass was thick, difficult to penetrate, and higher the closer he got to the cliffs. Progress proved slower than he’d anticipated. He completely lost sight of the helo. The grass finally ended about twenty yards from the rock face, but the stretch of cliff directly in front of him offered less than ideal shelter.
He followed the perimeter of the grassland over truly horrible terrain and eventually identified a viable shelter and source of water. He turned around and wasn’t surprised to see that he would need to climb higher to view the helicopter and chart the best way back to it.
He needed to go about twelve feet up. No big deal. He identified a path up, but when he lifted his boot to take the first step, he hesitated. What the heck? Chase had climbed hundreds of mountains in his life, scaled his share of sheer rock faces. Relatively speaking, making this ascent would be a piece of cake. But for some weird reason, the climb filled him with dread.
“Don’t be stupid, Timberlake,” he muttered. And he climbed. Two feet. Six. Ten. A glance over his shoulder. Nope. The slight rise at the center of the grasslands meant he needed to take it a little higher.
Four feet would have done it, but he spied a ledge at six. Gaining it, he found his balance and turned around.
Oh, God. No.