Off the Grid Christmas Read online

  She wasn’t sure they were going to get that.

  She could hear the snowmobile moving closer. More than one by the sound of it. She could picture half a dozen armed men and women speeding across the snowy landscape while she and Kane trudged along.

  “We need a vehicle,” she panted, surprised at how breathless she was.

  “True,” he responded.

  Short. Simple. Abrupt.

  “We need a plan to get one.”

  “Arden.” He stopped short, swinging around so that they were face to face. The snow had turned to pellets of sleet, and they pinged off his shoulders and hat. He had a strong face and gorgeous eyes; the kind of looks that most of her friends would have gone crazy over.

  The kind of guy that would never give a tomboyish computer nerd like Arden a second glance.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You need to save your breath. We’ve got a long hike ahead of us, and you’re wasting energy talking.”

  “If we had a vehicle—”

  “We don’t. We’re in the middle of the New Hampshire forest. The town is miles away.”

  “There are other places we could get a vehicle. We’re in the White Mountains after all—even though much of it’s national forest, there’s still a lot of acreage owned by private citizens. There could be vacation cabins nearby, active timber operations, campgrounds.”

  “You’re right, but without a map of the area we’re running blind. Without divine intervention, we could search this forest for days and never stumble on any signs of civilization. We don’t have time to do anything but stay the course. We need to keep moving until we’re certain it’s safe to angle back toward town. There’s no question we’ll be able to get our hands on a vehicle then.”

  “There’s always time to pray.”

  Kane smiled. “Right again. And we don’t need to voice our prayers for God to hear them.”

  She couldn’t help but smile back. “Point taken. I’ll save my breath.”

  He started walking again. Jogging really. His pace even more brisk than it had been. The ground and vegetation were slippery with ice. The temperature had dropped significantly since they’d landed. Maybe as low as twenty degrees. Thankfully, with the pace they were keeping, she’d warmed up. She imagined any wildlife that thrived in the brutal New Hampshire winters had hunkered down for the night, curled up against the storm.

  Right about now, she wished she were curled up with a nice thick quilt and a cup of vanilla bean tea. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, the best she could do was pray for divine intervention and, barring that, hope they’d be able to slip into town unseen and find a warm place to take shelter until they could rent a vehicle and get away.

  Kane pressed forward as Arden sent up her silent prayers. He was right, of course. They needed to conserve their energy.

  Well, she needed to. She wasn’t sure about him. He seemed to be moving along without effort, no gasping breaths or stumbling steps. Definitely fit. But why wouldn’t he be? The company he and Jace had started was all about training security forces and offering protection to a variety of clients. That meant being fit, smart and ready for trouble.

  She was smart. As for the other two things... She obviously would not get a job on their team.

  Which was fine. She had no desire to go into that kind of physical security. She was more interested in computers. The hash analysis she’d run yesterday had been something most people would have no clue about.

  She knew Randy took shortcuts in his work and she figured he’d used a public key system as the base for the second layer of the encryption program wrapped around the files. After running the hash analysis, she’d identified some known code that she’d modified and applied to her first attempt at a decryption algorithm. It hadn’t worked, but she believed she was almost there—a breakthrough was imminent.

  Randy and Arden had collaborated on a number of research projects and she understood his thought process like no one else. She also understood his weaknesses. His codes would be impenetrable for most analysts, but they would not hold up against Arden’s scrutiny.

  And they both knew it.

  It probably pained him to tell GeoArray’s CEO, Marcus Emory, that the files were in her hands. But she was certain Randy had told him because it hadn’t taken the company long to send someone to ransack her town house. There was no other person that could have recognized her operational signature so quickly.

  The snowmobiles were getting closer, the sound louder in the hushed stillness of the snowy forest. The sloping terrain was difficult, her feet constantly slipping on ice-crusted snow. Arden struggled to control her breathing.

  Kane reached back, grabbing her and pulling her along. He still wasn’t out of breath, and he still didn’t seem cold or tired.

  He dragged her onto a narrow deer trail that wound its way through thicker foliage. The ground had been trampled down and their footprints would be more difficult to see there. At least, that’s why she thought he’d headed that way. They sure weren’t going to be less difficult to spot. Not from the air.

  The deer trail was definitely easier to follow. Kane took advantage of this by pushing them harder. They were almost running through the woods. As much as anyone could run contouring up an icy, snow-covered side of a mountain.

  A sudden flash of light through the leafless trees in the forest below caught her attention. “They’re coming,” she panted.

  He looked over his shoulder. “I see them. They’re not going full speed and there’s definitely more than one. They haven’t spotted our tracks yet. But when they do, they’ll be able to follow them easily.”

  They raced through the woods, following the deer trail as it wove up the mountain. Within minutes, the snowmobiles were directly below them. Kane pulled her behind a tree while the vehicles continued to move steadily forward, the drivers shining handheld lights on the ground and into the trees.

  “They’re definitely searching for footprints,” he said quietly, leaning his head toward hers. The warmth of his breath touched her cheek. She felt comforted by that and by him. Odd, because she usually liked to handle problems alone. She didn’t care to have other people messing with her plans, and she sure hadn’t ever thought she’d need anyone to save her life.

  Right now, though, she needed Kane, and he needed her to keep her head screwed on straight. No panicking. No chattering. No singing. No running straight into more trouble. She had to be smart. She had to think.

  “It isn’t going to take them long to catch up,” was all she managed.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea.”

  “Good. Great. Want to explain before they arrive?”

  “That,” he said, pointing into the sky, “is my plan.”

  “What? Sprout wings and take off? We already tried the flying thing. It didn’t work out.”

  “Not flying. Climbing.” He stopped beneath the broad branches of an oak tree.

  She skidded to a stop beside him. Lungs heaving, legs trembling, thankful to not be moving.

  Until she finally saw where he was pointing.

  There was a structure in the tree. Some kind of wooden platform pounded into thick branches about eight feet off the ground.

  “That looks rotted. And dangerous.”

  “There’s no time to second guess. It will hold. They’re closing in fast, and we need to get off this trail before they follow our tracks right to us.”

  Icy snow was still falling, layering fresh white over their very visible footprints. He was right. This was their best chance.

  She followed Kane around to the far side of the tree. A few ice-covered two-by-fours had been hammered into the trunk, forming a makeshift ladder of sorts. The person who’d built it was obviously tall. The bottom rung was a good three and a half feet off the grou
nd, with the rung above it just out of her reach.

  She didn’t have time to ponder how she was going to get on the two-by-four. Kane grabbed her waist and lifted her up, setting her feet on the lowest rung. She felt her boot slip as she steadied herself, grabbing the slippery rung above with her gloved hand. Somehow, she managed to hoist herself up.

  She reached the last rung of the ladder and scrambled up onto the platform.

  Kane wasn’t behind her.

  He wasn’t climbing.

  In fact, he was moving away. She crawled to the edge of the deer stand and looked down. Sebastian let out an unhappy meow. Poor guy was probably hungry. He was always hungry.

  She patted his head, searching the area beneath the tree until she found Kane. “What are you doing?” she whispered as loudly as she dared.

  “I’m covering our tracks here so they can’t tell we left the trail. Then I’ll run up the trail a bit before curving off into the trees and circle back,” Kane replied. “There won’t be enough snow to cover our tracks completely, and I don’t want them to realize we bailed here.”

  “What if they catch you?”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not worried about me. Well, I am, but I’m also worried about you. They don’t need you. You’ll just be collateral damage.”

  “They aren’t going to catch me.” He sounded confident. He looked it, too, silhouetted in the gray winter night, his shoulders broad, his body muscular. He looked like a hero from one of those action movies she’d watched when she was a kid—tough and rugged and ready to walk through a barren wasteland to save the world.

  Only this wasn’t a movie. If GeoArray’s thugs were on those snowmobiles, he’d be killed. “Kane—”

  “No singing, Arden.” He’d already turned away, was heading back toward the trail. “No humming. No clicking your heels together. Stay quiet until I get back.”

  That was it.

  He was there and then he was gone. She thought she saw his shadowy form moving along the trail, but she wasn’t sure if it was him or trees blowing in the gusty wind.

  She shivered, pulling Sebastian a little closer, forcing her mind to something other than Kane—the computer system. The encrypted files. The headway she’d made.

  She started spinning programs through her mind, mentally testing variables, imagining their results on the encrypted file. The sound of snowmobiles grew louder. The snow fell in even heavier sheets and covered the trail and the trees and the little hunting stand where she and Sebastian waited.

  * * *

  Kane sprinted up the path, mentally counting his paces and tracking his direction of travel. He didn’t want to get lost. He couldn’t afford the time it would take to use his compass and get himself back on course. He also couldn’t afford to leave Arden for too long. She was smart, funny, quirky. Unpredictable. That last one worried him.

  He wanted her to stay where he’d left her.

  He wasn’t sure if she would.

  He also wasn’t sure how well she’d be hidden. The tree stand was great as long as the guys on the snowmobiles weren’t looking too carefully. If they shone searchlights toward her location in the trees, they might just see some of the tracks he and Arden had left as they ducked off the deer path. It had been impossible to obscure them all.

  He ran up the trail about seventy meters before taking a sharp left, leaping from the path into the thicker tree cover and doubling back. Jumping deadfall, breaking through the ice-covered snow, he sprinted all out.

  He found the base of the tree where he’d left her. Scrambled up, relieved to find her there. Her black clothes blended with the darkness, but her face was stark against the night, and he could see her eyes widen as he climbed onto the platform.

  “You made it,” she whispered. A smile curved her lips, softening the angles of her face.

  Something about that smile reminded him of all his childhood dreams of having someone to come home to. Someone who’d be happy to see him when he returned. It had never been that way with his parents. He’d always been the third wheel to their partnership, the unexpected surprise that had changed everything.

  He’d thought he’d finally found that someone to come home to when he met Ellen.

  He’d been stationed in Georgia for flight school. She’d been waiting tables in the officer’s club and studying accounting at the community college. Beautiful and outgoing, she’d had an infectious laugh. He’d fallen for her. Hard. They’d maintained a long-distance relationship during his first tour of duty. Gotten engaged while he was on home leave.

  But it didn’t take long for rumors to surface. When he’d confronted Ellen, she’d admitted she needed someone to be there with her, and for her, every day. Something he just couldn’t do. Not then.

  He’d joined the military to atone for Evan’s death. For Lexi’s. When push came to shove, Kane’s obligation to Evan’s family was stronger than his love for Ellen. His obligation to them was a driving factor in every decision he made.

  After breaking off the engagement, Kane had jumped from relationship to relationship, woman to woman, avoiding commitment. Afraid to put his heart into something that just wouldn’t last. After a while, he’d gotten tired of that.

  He and Jace had met by then, and Jace had set an example of gentlemanly honor, of respect, of work ethic. He’d talked to Kane about things that mattered—faith and hope and believing in a God who was bigger than every failure.

  Those things had sunk in deep.

  Kane had stopped playing the field, but never met the one woman he could share his life with. He figured he might never settle down with a family of his own. He was fine with that, but sometimes he wanted more than an empty apartment when he returned home at night. He wanted more than silences at dawn when all the memories woke him. Of Evan and Lexi. Of others lost later, in combat.

  He wanted something like what he saw in Arden’s smile.

  He frowned, pressing in close so that they were shoulder to shoulder. The tree stand was small but sturdy.

  “I can see their lights,” she whispered.

  He shimmied past her along the large branch that hung out over the trail. “They’re almost here. Get to the ladder, stay hidden and be ready to move when I do.”

  She nodded, carefully maneuvered her body around the trunk of the tree and lowered herself onto the topmost two-by-four. She waited, poised to descend at his signal.

  The hum of engines grew louder. The light from an approaching vehicle reflected on the adjacent trees just before it rounded the bend. He remained motionless, silently calculating the vehicle’s speed as it rounded the curve in the trail. It sped by the tree, the driver unaware of their presence.

  Kane watched until it disappeared around another curve in the trail. Moments later, a second vehicle approached the bend. He readied himself. He’d have to time his move perfectly if he wanted to pull this off.

  The snowmobile approached, this driver taking the curve more cautiously—clearly not as confident in his driving skills. The slower speed would work to Kane’s advantage.

  He waited until the guy was right behind them, and then he moved, launching himself out of the tree. The driver must have heard him. He looked up, reached for something beneath his jacket.

  Too late.

  Kane was already on him, the force of his movement sending both of them skidding across the snowy trail, colliding into a young tree. The other man took the brunt of the impact, his helmet glancing off the tree, his left shoulder taking most of the blow.

  With the tether switch ripped from the snowmobile, the engine cut off abruptly. The vehicle’s forward momentum carried it a few feet farther up the trail before it skidded to a stop.

  Kane pulled himself off the driver, who lay motionless in the ice-crusted snow—his left shoulder lodged aga
inst the tree. Crouching over the fallen man, Kane removed his glove and checked for a pulse. It was there, strong and steady. The man’s helmet, scraped on its left side, appeared to have deflected the initial hit to the tree.

  The high-end black tactical gear the man wore screamed of private security. There was no time to check for identification or to wait to see what they could learn once the man gained consciousness.

  Kane guessed he was a GeoArray-hired thug, but he couldn’t know. And he didn’t dare wait around to find out.

  Arden had already climbed on the snowmobile.

  Kane reached down and quickly unhooked the kill switch tether cord from the man’s belt and tossed it to Arden.

  Ahead on the trail, the hum of the first snowmobile abruptly stopped.

  “That’s not good,” Arden muttered, turning the key in the snowmobile’s ignition. The vehicle sprang back to life.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Kane hopped on behind her, sliding an arm under the cat carrier and around her waist.

  “Where to?” she asked, turning in a tight U and facing back the way they’d come.

  “There was a fork in the trail a while back. Go there. We’ll take the right branch and hope we can lose him on it.”

  “All right,” Arden responded. “Hold on.”

  She gave it full throttle, navigating the snowmobile back along the deer trail. Totally focused. No singing. No humming. No list of things that could go wrong or right.

  He imagined this was the way she did her job—with absolute dedication.

  She found the fork without any help from him, the snowmobile skidding to the right. The steep trail would bring them farther up the mountain and turn them back toward town. They’d lost some time backtracking, but they had a vehicle now. They’d ride the snowmobile as far as they could, then go it on foot. If they could stay ahead of their pursuer, they just might make it out of this without any blood being shed.

  Kane prayed that would be the case. He was prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep Arden out of the hands of GeoArray Corporation, but he’d rather avoid a shoot-out. GeoArray wasn’t the only entity after Arden. The FBI wanted her. Local authorities might be pulled in to apprehend her. At a distance, it would be impossible to distinguish the law from the lawless.