REUNITED BY DANGER
Zack Keats broke Rebecca Milesâs heart when they were teens, but now heâs her only hope to stay alive. Trapped in the Canadian wilderness, Rebecca is a target from all angles: a dangerous gang, her treasonous stepbrother and the government who thinks sheâs also a traitor. The last person she expected to race to her rescue was the one who abandoned her years ago. Zackâs changed from the shy boy she knew into a strong Special Forces soldier who would do anything to keep her safe. But with threats coming from every direction, can she trust him to stay by her side until the end?
She felt useless. Like he thought she was nothing but some frightened waste of space.
A liability.
âI never shouldâve put you in this position,â Zack said. âYouâre hardly trained for any of this. Just swim back to shore, and Iâll figure out what weâre going to do from here.â
Rebecca took a deep breath and felt the comfort of air filling her lungs. Then she dived down again.
She could hear the distorted sound of Zack shouting echo above the water. She didnât stop. She didnât need to hear what he was saying. The look on his face had been clear. Zack thought she was some awkward klutz whoâd flailed around foolishly, made the truck sink and cost him their only chance at recovering the stolen material.
Zack and Seth might be fighting on different sides of a battle, but their opinion of her seemed to be the same. She was going to prove them both wrong.
MAGGIE K. BLACK is an award-winning journalist and romantic suspense author with an insatiable love of traveling the world. She has lived in the American South, Europe and the Middle East. She now makes her home in Canada with her history teacher husband, their two beautiful girls and a small but mighty dog. Maggie enjoys connecting with her readers at maggiekblack.com.
If we are thrown into the blazing furnace,
the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from Your Majestyâs hand.
âDaniel 3:17
ONE
Rebecca Miles dug her toes into the narrow crags of the Northern Ontario rock face, braced her legs against the granite and raised the lens of her video camera up to where jagged rock brushed against sky. Wind tugged her dark, shoulder-length hair free from its ponytail and sent it flying around her face. Something rustled in the trees far below her, but the quiver on the back of her neck told her not to look down. It was probably just the wind. Maybe an animal. But she couldnât imagine thereâd be another person around for miles. She grabbed hold of a stubborn pine growing out of the rock to her right and focused on searching for the falconâs nest.
The climb up the embankment had turned out to be a whole lot steeper than sheâd expected when sheâd been standing safely on the ground, watching a pair of peregrines soar above. The narrow road got so little traffic, she could come and go for days without seeing another vehicle. It cut straight through a hill not far from the tiny patch of land sheâd inherited from her mother. Sheâd left her camper and truck there, and hiked over. Now about fifty feet of steeply slanted rock and trees lay between her and the road below.
Something rumbled in the distance. It sounded like approaching thunder, but judging by the endless blue above, it was more likely a vehicle of some sort. Hopefully it wouldnât frighten off the birds. Falcons mated for life and at this time of year a circling pair often meant a nest. Good clear footage of fluffy white babies would cover both gas for her truck and basic groceries for a month or more. If she actually managed to catch a falcon family portrait, sheâd have a solid chunk to put toward her next overseas trip.
Lord, You know I have a list a mile long of charity projects Iâm hoping to film. But until then, help me just be thankful for everything Iâve got.
Freedom. Independence.
The ability to go where she wanted, film what interested her and have adventures on her own terms.
As a teenager, her happiest moments had been when sheâd managed to slip away from her claustrophobic home life, to wander aimlessly around the now decommissioned military base at Remi Lake, a few hours north from where she now stood. Her mother had spent the first several years of Rebeccaâs life anxiously waiting for word from Rebeccaâs fatherâan absent man whom Rebecca had never met and wasnât supposed to ask about. Then, at thirteen, her mother had suddenly married General Arthur Milesâa decorated and larger-than-life hero in Canadaâs small, tight-knit military community, whoâd encouraged Rebecca to call him âthe Generalâ and never âDad.â Theyâd moved onto the base, where sheâd found herself with a twelve-year-old stepbrother named Seth, whoâd never missed an opportunity to tell his gangly, awkward stepsister just how little he thought of her. Sheâd moved out at eighteen and hadnât seen the General since her motherâs funeral, two years later, from a prescription meds overdose. But distancing herself from Seth had been more challenging.