“Continue straight for nine-point-six miles. In nine-point-six miles, prepare to turn—”

“Sweet, merciful father!” Quinn Whitaker slapped at the volume control on the navigation unit. For the last two miles, the GPS had cut in and out, the unit restating its instructions each time it came online again.

All total, the device had refreshed seven times in less than three minutes, the constant repetition shredding her nerves. More than making Quinn a little crazy, the malfunctioning GPS worried her.

If the fault was with the rented pickup truck’s unit or the dense stand of trees the road twisted through, then her life wasn’t over. She had always been good at remembering routes. Most artists, even failed ones like Quinn, had great spatial memories. But, if the problem was a persistent issue with the area’s signal reception, then she might as well join some religious order where they promised to feed and house her in exchange for labor.

Seeing the screen blank on her again, she watched as the empty space filled with a CONNECTION LOST warning. Swearing, she beat her palm against the steering wheel.

“Please let it be the truck’s unit,” Quinn prayed as she patted around the center console for her phone. Fingers brushing the slim metal casing, she hit the power button and brought the phone up to eye level.

“Whoa…” Dropping the phone, she clutched the steering wheel as the truck entered a turn going too fast.

“Aye-aye, Captain,” she mumbled, bringing the vehicle under control again. “Message received loud and clear, both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road.”

She had never been one to play with her phone while driving. The suburbs of Los Angeles were as packed as the city’s center. Cars constantly zipped across lanes. One glance away from the road and mirrors in L.A. would end a life.

Combined, the pickup and country road were even worse. Knowing it would never handle the mountains on the drive from L.A. to Montana, Quinn sold her hand-me-down Volkswagen Golf that was three months older than she was. The truck she rented came equipped with four-wheel drive and a lift kit suited to the off-road terrain she was bound for. The two vehicles had massively different reactions to turns.

Coming out of the curve, she glanced at the navigation unit to find the screen still showing there was no connection.

Okay, first things first. Find a straight stretch of road, preferably without all the dumb trees, and pull over. Check the phone. Then panic. Do any of that out of order and she would wind up coming out of another curve and plowing into the back of some car or truck.

Not that she had seen any vehicles in either direction for the last fifteen minutes or more. She was officially in the middle of nowhere. The way her life was going, that meant there was a middle of nowhere kind of catastrophe lying in wait, like a moose or one of those fuzzy cow-not-a-cow things ambling down the center of the road.

“Just go slow and look for someplace to pull over,” she repeated.

Her cheeks flushed from how the stress of the trip and the last few months of life had her talking to herself all the time, even when she wasn’t alone. Normal people could get away with thinking out loud, but half of her gene pool was…well, far from normal.

To be honest, it wasn’t even in the same hemisphere.

Easing out of another curve, she emerged onto an open stretch of road—and immediately proceeded to freak out as she spotted a towering male straddling the center line, a duffel bag strapped to his back and a long axe in each hand.

She slammed her palm down on the horn and held it. Her head jerked left and right, her frantic gaze searching for the one way to steer that didn’t result in someone dying. The road had no shoulder on either side, just two narrow lanes and the crazy guy waving his axes. A truck as big as the rental filled the ditch on her right, half of the vehicle’s rear axle hugging the road and completely separated from the other half.

Quinn pulled into the oncoming lane. The maniac moved to head her off. The distance between his body and her truck rapidly disappeared. Hitting the brakes, she learned a second lesson in how completely different a vehicle that sat twice as high and weighed four times as much as her Golf behaved during an emergency stop.

The rear of the truck fishtailed. She fought the steering wheel, her shoulder wrenched to the point it would certainly be pulled from its socket. Ahead of her, the man leapt into the ditch, his face a picture of shock and disbelief.

For one terrifying second, the driver side tires left the ground.

The rollover didn’t materialize. The wheels touched down, the truck motionless except for a rough bounce as everything settled into place.

Numb with fear, Quinn looked around for the axe-wielding highway killer. She looked toward the ditch, not sure which ditch she was looking at after the truck had spun. Twisting in her seat, she stared out the rear window in time to see the man sprinting from the other side of the road.

Sliding one axe through the bag’s straps as he ran, he used his free hand to vault into the truck bed, moving like a gazelle despite his imposing size and bulging equipment.

After a quick check of the locks and windows, Quinn reached for her phone, hands patting around as she kept her gaze glued to the stranger. Finding the device, she hit the phone icon.

NO RECEPTION

True panic seeped into her bones. She had driven all the way to Montana to die on a deserted stretch of road, her life nothing more than a footnote in some FBI manual on serial killers and their victims.

Kneeling in the truck bed, his big chest heaving, the man tapped the rear window then held up his hand, the fingers splayed.

“Five miles,” he shouted, the glass only damping the growling voice.

Quinn glared at him in an effort to hide how badly her shoulders shook. Whatever this five-mile business was, she refused to start a dialogue. That’s what killers, con men, and other narcissists did. They got you to talk, then to unlock the door, then to turn your back on them.

She’d seen enough movies—and been to enough family reunions—to know how it would end if she offered the least bit of trust.

The man moved to the passenger side of the truck bed and tapped at its window, then held his index finger about an inch from his thumb in a pinching position.

He wanted Quinn to open the window a little.

She wanted him the hell out of her truck!

Shaking her head, she nodded at the axe he held. The man rolled his eyes, pulled out the axe threaded through his duffel straps and placed both weapons on the floor of the truck bed.

Quinn lowered the window an inch.

Head tilting, he spoke through the narrow gap.

“Ma’am, I really need to get to my fire team. There’s a dirt strip just five miles down the road on your left.”

Quinn stared, confusion parting her lips, her tongue pushing at the gate of her teeth. If the guy was a serial killer, he had to be the best-looking one ever, his hair as black as coal and his eyes the deepest shade of green she had ever seen. He was built, too. Naturally so, not like some gym rat injecting steroids in between masturbating to his reflection in the mirror.

When the law finally caught up to her unwelcome passenger, women would write him love letters in prison because the world was a twisted, bizarre place.

“Ma’am,” he barked, jabbing a finger in her original direction of travel. “Look out the window.”

Quinn glanced, her gaze jerking straight back to the man before she had a chance to notice anything other than asphalt. Even the glance had been foolish, she chided herself. He wasn’t going to get her with one of his serial killer tricks.

“Ma’am,” he repeated, an irritated warble infecting the rough baritone. “I said look—look at the sky above the trees.”

The next line of trees was maybe two miles ahead. She looked, really looked, this time. A heavy column of gray and black smoke drifted upward to stain the cloudless blue sky.

“I have to reach my rendezvous, ma’am. I’ll hop out when we get there and you can be on your way.”

Quinn nodded, shame at her overactive imagination churning her gut into oily knots. She pulled forward, to the edge of the road, turning as she did, then put the vehicle in reverse, backing up just enough to straighten the truck’s direction. Her passenger sat down, his back against the rear window, both of his thick, muscular arms stretched out to grip the sides of the truck bed.

With a glance at her odometer, Quinn started forward, her attention bouncing between the distance traveled and the left side of the road where he had said there would be a dirt strip. She drove through another dense stand of trees.

Leaving the woods, the road was met by a flat plain of tall grass and wildflowers in their final bloom of the year. Quinn checked the odometer. She had driven four-point nine miles.

Nothing about the left side of the road in front of her suggested there was someplace to turn, no hint of another road of any kind.

Her passenger tapped on the window. Slowing, she glanced in her side mirror and saw where he was pointing. She crept forward. There was no road, but the grass had been recently trampled flat by something, tires most likely.

He tapped her door window. She rolled it down half an inch, her body reflexively shrinking toward the center of the truck’s bench seat.

“Trust me,” he shouted. “This big old truck will make it through fine. You can see part of the strip from here.”

Squinting, she saw what could be a dirt road—or just a patch of dirt.

“There,” he said, his finger curving left. “That’s the hangar.”

Nodding, she pulled off the road, the truck down to a crawl until she reached the airstrip and turned toward the hangar.

Half a dozen vehicles were parked next to the metal building. Twice as many men were running around, all of them dressed in thick, tan colored suits that looked more like what a pilot would wear than a fireman.

Reaching the other vehicles, Quinn put the truck in park. Before she could turn the engine off, her passenger tossed his axes on the ground and jumped over the side. He landed, a small cloud of dust kicking up around his feet as he let the heavy duffel drop. He jerked the zipper open, pulled out a peculiar looking pair of pants and tossed them over his shoulder.

Quinn watched with mounting discomfort as her passenger shed his boots and shucked off the body-hugging jeans, his spectacular muscled bottom covered by nothing more than a pair of black briefs.

She’d have to be blind not to see the big bulge at the front of those tight black undies. Her mouth pursed because “undies” and “briefs” were poor descriptors for the fabric that clung to him like a second skin. The strip of clothing was more like what professional male swimmers wore, she thought, her mind flashing back to a pubescent fascination with the summer Olympics

“Looks like we lost the cellular tower!” a man shouted as he ran over to the truck carrying one of the tan suits and a hand radio. He thrust the outfit at Quinn’s passenger. “Fire must be rolling through the west ridge.”

Doing a double take as he noticed Quinn, the new guy pointed his radio at her.

“Hey, Barrett, don’t be rude. Who’s your ride?”

Barrett? Was that a first name or a last, Quinn wondered right before the man in question stripped his shirt away, short-circuiting her brain.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, not missing a beat as he stepped into the weird pants and drew them up long, powerful legs. “No clue. Axle sheared on my truck. Guess I rode it too hard last week.”

Grinning, Radio Guy stepped up to the window. “Hey, I’m Winston.”

“Stop drooling,” Barrett ordered as he shouldered the man out of the way. “Tell the guys I want everyone strapped in and ready to lift in four minutes.”

Quinn snapped her mouth shut, uncertain whether the drooling remark was meant for her or Winston. The passenger’s green eyes caught her watching him and he smirked.

“You finally ready to roll that window down the rest of the way?” he teased, stepping into the jumpsuit and zipping it up.

She hit the button for the power window.

“Where were you heading?” he asked, pulling some harness contraption from his duffel that had its own bags attached. He stepped into it, the pouches positioned in front and covering his stomach and lower groin.

“A relative’s cabin,” she answered. She hesitated on whether she should apologize for almost running him over and her initial refusal to give him a ride. Better not to, she decided. He had given his team four minutes to board the plane. It would take her at least ten to string the right words together.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere. I just have GPS coordinates, there’s no official road. His name is…or…was Jasper Carey.”

Realizing the fool rambling on was her, Quinn snapped her mouth shut.

A grin broke across Barrett’s face as he tucked his axes between his harness and jumpsuit in an X-pattern over his broad chest.

“You mean Jester Carey? You telling me you are Jester’s kin?”

She shrugged. The whole thing was a long story. She had never heard of the relative until two weeks prior when his estate attorney contacted her. The attorney, and the paperwork the man had faxed her, referenced a Jasper, not a Jester.

Mindful of the time limit Barrett had given his team, Quinn handed him a piece of paper with the GPS coordinates on it while she looked for the map printout she had made at the hotel.

“Yep, dang.” A fresh grin surfaced but was immediately wiped away. “Sorry, but there’s no way you can go up there. Based on the comms tower being down, I’d say the fire reached the property.”

“That can’t be,” Quinn groaned. “I have to…”

She dropped her head and stared at how her hands twisted in her lap. Just like that, fate had stepped in and ruined her chance at a fresh start.

“Hey…look, you can wait in the hangar with dispatch, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to give a SITREP on that location. Best thing to do is head to Willow Gap and wait for the fire to die down and the smoke to settle.”

Barrett reached into the pocket of the jeans he had just stripped off and pulled two cards from his wallet. He handed both to Quinn. One had his name on it, the other was for a woman named Siobhan. Both had the last name of Turk. Probably his wife, which made total sense. No man that hot was single, no matter what kind of partner he preferred.

“Get ahold of her and tell her you’re Jester’s kin. When I know the status of the property, I’ll get a message to her.” His hands wrapped around the window frame, his head ducking down to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

Quinn nodded, her tears kept in check until Barrett and his team taxied down the dusty airstrip.