Page 1 of Close Pursuit

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Katie McCloud ducked inside their makeshift shelter of a tarp stretched across the gap between two giant boulders and winced. It would be a tight squeeze in here for two people and their medical gear.

This trip is not about comfort.

But there was roughing it, and then there wasroughingit. She was pretty sure she hadn’t signed up for this degree of primitive in her accommodations.

What are a few scorpions in your boots, the odd cobra, and some dysentery for good measure? You’re helping people who desperately need medical care.

Nope. The pep talk wasn’t working. She was exhausted, sore, hungry, and just wanted a decent bath. Heck, she’d settle for a cold shower. The incessant winds in these arid mountains drove fine, gritty dust into absolutely everything, from her clothing to her food, and she constantly felt dirty. She didn’t think she was ever going to get the acrid taste of dust out of her mouth again.

The mysterious man who’d made her an offer she couldn’t refuse—he would pay off all her nursing school debts if she would take a job with Doctors Unlimited for a single summer—had assured her it would be the most rewarding work she ever did.

Sure, it would be a little off the beaten path, he’d said. She should think of it as an all-expense paid camping trip to an exciting, exotic location.

Too bad he failed to mention his idea of an exotic location wasHell.

Still. She couldn’t believe her luck. She’d expected to be paying off student loans for years to come.

There were three rather bizarre caveats to taking this job. First, she was forbidden from mentioning the existence of her anonymous benefactor. Second, she had to agree to have a small tracking device inserted under her left shoulder blade for in case anything went wrong. Not that the stranger anticipated any problems. It was just a precaution.

Third, she had to swear not to tell the doctor she would be working with that the benefactor or the tracker existed. Violating any one of these would result in him not paying off one penny of her student loans.

The tarp dipped ominously overhead, brushing against her hair and startling her into ducking sharply.

“Alex! The roof’s caving in!” she cried in alarm.

“I’m aware,” came the dry response from outside. “And keep your voice down. I don’t need you getting shot on your first day out here.”

Shot?Shot?She’d thought that part of the in-briefing on this aid mission was purely hypothetical!

Holy crap. What have I gotten myself into?

“I don’t need me getting shot, either, thank you very much,” she replied nervously.

“Any chance you can help me with the tarp?” he asked.

She ducked outside just in time for a cascade of dirt and gravel to slide off the gray plastic sheet and rain onto her head. And go down the back of her shirt. And in her eyes. And in her hiking boots.

“Hey!” she squawked, batting the dirt and grit from her hair.

“Sorry.”

Coughing, she gave up swiping at her hair, bent over to let her mahogany hair—now ghostly gray—hang down and gave her head a good shake. She must look like a dog who’d just been for a swim. If only. She could go for a nice swim right about now.

At this time of year, Zaghastan was as barren and lifeless as the Moon, with vast stretches of gray granite mountains, wind-scoured valleys, and only the toughest of living things struggling to survive here and there.

She realized with dismay that her exposed skin was coated in gray dust. She must look like some sort of weird apparition.

Alex let out a snort that sounded suspiciously like laughter. She looked up quickly, and he wasn’t quite grinning, but that was a definite a smirk on his face.

She huffed. It was way too soon to pick a fight with the man who was supposed to keep her alive out here and get her back to civilization safely.

When the snow melted out of the high mountain passes in springtime, a short travel window opened, making the remotest regions of this country accessible to outsiders for a few months each year. Doctors Unlimited, a private international aid organization, sent a doctor and a nurse up into the mountains each summer to offer medical services to villagers and farmers with no other access to healthcare. But last year, there’d been too much violence to risk sending a team.

Anticipating the need for medical care would be even more pressing this year, D.U. had sent them in a full month earlier than usual and instructed them to stay as long as possible without trapping themselves in the mountains for the whole winter.

Resigned to her filth and determined to get along with her partner, she asked as pleasantly as she could manage, “Why did you push all that dirt and rock onto the tarp?”

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