LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Jake Lohmiller raised the binoculars to his eyes and studied the group of women who moved along the rim of the canyon. Wind sent their colorful cotton skirts fluttering, so that they reminded Jake of butterflies, flitting among the wild roses that perfumed the air. The women were gathering rose hips and wild raspberries, the murmur of their voices drifting to him on the wind, their words indistinct.

      He shifted his elbow to dislodge a pebble that was digging into his flesh and trained the glasses on a dark-haired woman. Her long, straight black hair, high cheekbones and bronzed skin set her apart from the mostly fair-skinned redheads, blondes and brunettes around her. She seemed out of place, not just because of her appearance, but because of the way she carried herself. She moved slightly behind the other women, her movements both deliberate and graceful, her bearing wary. Jake sensed a tension in her, like a cat poised to spring.

      She stopped at the corner post of a falling-down fence that ran alongside the path the women were following, and turned to stare across the high desert landscape of rock, cactus and stunted trees, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare. Jake ducked down behind the rock outcropping he had chosen as his vantage point, though he knew she couldn’t see him. Not at this distance. Not when he had been so well-trained to not give away his position.

      He had been in the Curecanti National Recreation Area in southwest Colorado for three days, watching the women, learning their routines and habits, and planning his next move. The dark-haired woman turned away and hurried to catch up with the others, and Jake shifted his attention to the oldest woman in the group—a slight, very fair blonde with almost-white hair and light blue eyes. She went by the name Phoenix these days, the latest in a string of names and nicknames she had gone by over the years. He tried to read her mood, to guess what she was thinking or feeling, but at this distance he could tell nothing except that she looked fairly healthy—something that hadn’t been the case the last time he had seen her. He clenched his jaw, struggling against the mixture of love and anger that warred in him whenever he thought about her.

      He shifted again, focusing this time on the youngest member of the group, and his jaw relaxed. Sophie was growing up to be a pretty young woman, her long brown hair plaited in a single braid that hung to her shoulder blades. She laughed at something one of the others said, and Jake’s heart clenched, aching at the sound. The last time he had seen her, she had been ten and crying. Four years had changed her in so many ways, but it cheered him to see her looking so happy, especially since he hadn’t expected it—not here.

      The women moved on until they were out of the visual field of his binoculars. The silence of the wilderness closed in around him, with only the rattle of the wind in dry tree branches reminding him that he hadn’t suddenly gone deaf. He put away the binoculars, then stretched out on his back, the shadow of the boulder keeping the sun off his face. He ignored the hardness of the dry ground and focused on reviewing all the information he had gathered so far. It was time to complete his mission. He had to make contact with Phoenix and Sophie and persuade them to leave with him. But he had to do it without raising alarm. And preferably without attracting any attention from the local cops.

      A shadow fell across his torso, and the crunch of a leather sole on gravel had him lurching to his feet, reaching for the weapon at his side. “Keep your hands where I can see them!” a woman’s voice commanded.

      He held his hands out from his sides and stared at the dark-haired woman. Obviously, she had left the group and circled around, but how had she managed to sneak up on him? Had he gotten so rusty in the months since he had left his unit in Afghanistan? He must have, because, in all the time he had been watching her, he had never noticed the handgun she was aiming at him now.

      * * *

      CARMEN REDHORSE KEPT her weapon trained on the man who stood opposite her, thankful that he was cooperating with her orders. He was a big, powerful-looking man, young and strong, and he seemed at home here in this rugged environment. He held his hands at his sides, and his gaze remained focused on her, his manner calm, though it struck her as the calm of a predator who doesn’t feel a threat from a weaker opponent rather than that of a man who has nothing to worry about. “Who are you, and what are you doing out here, spying on us?” she asked.

      “Who are you, and why should I answer your question?” His expression and the tone of his voice betrayed nothing. She judged he was about six feet tall, lean and muscular. His erect posture, close-cropped hair and deep tan pegged him as a military man—either still on active duty or only recently discharged. An officer, she guessed—he had the air of a man who was used to being in charge.

      “I’m the woman who has a gun trained on you,” she said. “Trust me, I know how to use it.” Until she knew more about him and what he was up to, she wasn’t going to let him distract her. “I need you to very slowly remove your weapon from the holster and place it on the ground in front of you.”

      He hesitated, then did as she asked, his attention focused on her, though she couldn’t see his eyes clearly behind the dark aviator sunglasses he wore. He straightened, some of the stiffness gone out of his posture. “What is a cop doing way out here?” he asked.

      “What makes you think I’m a cop?” she asked.

      “I’m right, aren’t I? Everything from your choice of weapon to the way you handle it—not to mention the way you bark out commands—says law enforcement. And not a rookie, either.” He shifted his weight, still keeping his hands in view. “So what are you doing in Daniel Metwater’s cult?”

      His word choice—cult instead of group or, as Metwater preferred, Family—told her he wasn’t a fan of the trust-fund millionaire turned itinerant preacher, who was camped with his followers on public land. The women she had been foraging with were part of Metwater’s faithful. “What I’m doing here isn’t your concern,” she said. “And you haven’t answered my question—what are you up to? And I’ll need to see some ID.”

      “My wallet is in my back pocket,” he said.

      “Take it out slowly, and hand it over.”

      He did as she asked. She studied the Texas driver’s license. “Jacob Lohmiller,” she read. Twenty-seven years old, with an address in Houston. She glanced across at the Veteran ID. Army—so she had been right about that. And he had been discharged only four months before. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Lohmiller.”

      “Are you conducting some kind of undercover operation with Metwater’s bunch?” Lohmiller asked, accepting his wallet from her and returning it to his pocket. “Are they involved in something criminal?”

      The Ranger Brigade—a multidisciplinary task force charged with law enforcement on Colorado’s public lands—had suspected Daniel Metwater’s involvement in more than one crime, but so far they had found little evidence to support their suspicions. Carmen was ostensibly with the group now, posing as a new convert in order to verify that the group’s women and children were not subject to any kind of abuse. She had lobbied hard to take a closer look at the group after a young woman who had been associated with them had died. Her commander had agreed to give her a week, all the time he could spare from the Rangers’ other duties. Four days of that week had passed, and Carmen was

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