Page 57 of Montana Rain

“There was a signal on the sat phone. Not much, but I got through to Daniel.”

Suddenly Rayne’s focus turned on like a laser. “What?”

“Yeah. He caught me up to speed. I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

Chapter 25

Rayne

“I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

I winced. Somewhere deep inside, I had hoped there would be no bad news. “Good news, I guess.”

Cole picked me up and once more straddled me across his lap. Exactly the way we’d just been, but with clothes. It made me wish there weren’t clothes again.

Suddenly having sex—real sex—made me ravenous for it. Cole had just fucked me to an incredible orgasm, and I already wanted more. This was what people talked about when they mentioned the honeymoon phase. An insatiable need for each other that couldn’t be denied.

If we had power and infinite supplies, the month in the cabin he mentioned sounded nice.

“Good news is everyone is okay. Daniel said they had walled snow paths to the animals, but the town is just as buried as we are.”

“That’s the good news?” My stomach plummeted. It was, but as far as good news went in our situation, not what I was hoping to hear.

“That’s the good news.”

“I hoped there was more.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, gaze falling to my mouth. “Me too. Daniel got a hold of the FBI, but they’re being cagey and aggressive. Pretty much what we expected. They want to know more than we’re willing to tell them, given your role in things and how sensitive it is.”

Staring at him, I frowned. “Is that the bad news? Because it seems like fairly average news.”

Cole’s lips firmed into a line, confirming my fear that wasn’t all he had to say. “The call was tapped.”

“What?”

“Jude caught it, but we don’t know how much they heard or what kind of read they got on them. There’s a chance they know where we are. That’s why I was outside, setting up some early alarm signals just in case. It’s not much, but we don’t need a lot.”

My heart rate spiked, the same fear and panic from the night my house was broken in to washing over me in a tidal wave.

Cole took my face in his hands. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Rayne. Do you believe me?”

I did. Cole would do whatever was needed in order to protect us both. Opening my mouth to answer him, I suddenly didn’t have a chance.

A broken jangle of clattering metal sounded in the distance. Cole went still. “Get your coat and boots on now.” He set me on my feet and jumped into the wet jeans he’d abandoned. I wasn’t moving as fast as I could without my hurt ankle, but Cole was ready in seconds, helping me get the boot on my injured foot. I groaned at the pressure. “Sorry, princess,” he said. “Better than being dead.”

I didn’t disagree.

He took my face in his hands again. “I’m going to protect you, but this is going to be cold and awful. We’ll get through it. Promise. Where’s the flash drive?” I pointed over to the desk where I’d sat that first day of the blizzard pretending I didn’t desperately want to see him naked. He grabbed it on our way out the back. We were out in the snow less than thirty seconds after hearing the sound. While I’d slept, he’d planned this.

Cole lifted me over another string of kitchen utensils and cups, going around a larger rock and into the deeper snow. From this angle, they wouldn’t immediately see our retreating path.

“Where are we going?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer, focused on the path in front of us. My ankle screamed, my pulse pounding in it.

The sky still had a tiny touch of light to it, and the reflection off the snow left us able to see, but it was still dark. The snow was so deep it felt like wading through mud. We wouldn’t get far.

The dark seemed even darker when we reached an outcropping of rocks that was more free of snow than other parts of the mountain. I could see more pockets like this farther up the hill as the wind had cleared away the snow from the jagged boulders sticking out in the wind.

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