“I’m sorry you had to do that,” Cate said.

      Nick said nothing. What was there to say? He had taken lives today for the first—and he hoped last—time. Right now, he was pretty revved up and the anger was still ruling. Later, he suspected the impact of what he’d done would hit him.

      “You’re trained to save lives,” Cate said as if reading his mind. It was disconcerting. Hell, everything that had happened since she came back into his life had been disconcerting.

      She had shot someone today, too, he remembered. “Did it bother you?” he asked.

      “Yes, but there’s no choice. Well, there was one, but when it’s live or die, I’m gonna choose live every time.” There were tears in her eyes.

      He eased out of traffic, turned down a dirt road and parked behind trees. “Come here,” he said gently. She slid her arms around his waist, laid her head on his shoulder and held him tight. For several long moments, he simply held her close.

      Dear Reader,

      What do people do when they can no longer work in their chosen profession? How do they totally reinvent themselves? I’ve seen this done, up close and personal, and it’s no easy task, giving up that in-the-know status, that feeling of being right in the middle of life-changing events, doing everything you can to fix them. And suddenly, you’re on the outside of it all.

      As with any drastic upheaval in life, it helps to have a support system, but I wondered what would happen if that was also taken away. Here is the story of two individuals, dedicated to their jobs to the exclusion of all else, who are forced together by duty and circumstance. Can they help each other deal with the emotional trauma while dodging both danger and a passion they’ve denied for years?

      Read on to see how COMPASS Special Agent Cate Olin and neurosurgeon Nick Sandro tackle their demons after the fall….

      Enjoy!

      Lyn Stone

      The Doctor’s Mission

      Lyn Stone

      

      LYN STONE

      A painter of historical events, Lyn decided to write about them. A canvas, however detailed, limits characters to only one moment in time. “If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the other ninety thousand have to show up somewhere!”

      An avid reader, she admits, “At thirteen, I fell in love with Bronte’s Heathcliff and became Catherine. Next year, I fell for Rhett and became Scarlett. Then I fell for the hero I’d known most of my life and finally became myself.”

      After living four years in Europe, Lyn and her husband, Allen, settled into a log house in north Alabama that is crammed to the rafters with antiques, artifacts and the stuff of future tales.

      For my Al, master of reinvention, soul of inspiration and

       forever the very heart of me.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      Bernese Alps, Switzerland, November 6th

      Sunlight sparkled off the perfectly powdered slope. Thin, crisp air added to the euphoria zinging through Cate Olin’s veins as she looked out over the awesome peaks surrounding her. “On top of the world,” she sighed.

      Cate tossed her companion a smile. Werner looked almost as impressive as the scenery. Together, he and the Alps would make a terrific travel ad for winter fun and games. And she would spend no more time with him than she would with these mountains.

      He had approached her in the bar last night and asked her to dance. They’d talked, laughed, danced some more and then he had suggested they ski together the next morning. So here she was, having some much-needed fun, her reward for a tough mission accomplished.

      After a light breakfast at Le Chalet d’Adrien, they had caught a hop, then ridden the lift to the top of Col des Gentianes to ski off-piste. Werner said it was supposed to be a fun run. A friend of his had highly recommended it.

      Werner adjusted his goggles, then his gloves. She would love to know what he was thinking right now, but telepathy did not work on this guy. That was okay, too. That skill required concentration and mental energy. Her last assignment had taken a lot out of her and she badly needed a couple of weeks of nothing but recreation.

      He slid slowly to her side, their skis parallel as he leaned sideways to kiss her cheek. “Ready to rock and roll?”

      His Austrian accent was cute and he knew it. Cate took a second simply to enjoy the way he looked. She toyed with the idea of sleeping with him later. She might. And she might not.

      Sex without any deep emotional involvement would be a new experience for her and one she thought she might find more depressing than satisfying. She sensed Werner didn’t do deep.

      “Give me a minute.” She adjusted the bright red cap she wore and determined not to worry about anything today.

      Cate shook the tension out of her legs one at a time, lifting each ski as she relaxed her muscles. She shrugged her shoulders to loosen them, then set her poles and grinned at Werner. “Okay, let’s boogie!”

      “Take the lead.” He gestured broadly for her to go ahead of him. “I would like to watch your derriere!”

      Cate hesitated, then experienced one of those uh-oh moments when he gave her a playful shove and shouted, “Go, you little chicken!”

      Laughing, she wanted to glance back, but had to gain her balance and keep it. The bright morning sun had paved the powder with a slick-as-glass surface.

      Cate flew, unable to control her speed the way she wished. The slopes she had experienced before had been bumpy with the tracks of others, offering a bit of traction. And not this steep. She slalomed, attempting to brake, tried to snow-plow to no avail, then considered falling down, just to stop her rapid descent.

      After a harrowing run, the trail leveled out a little where it edged against a steep incline on her right. Suddenly she heard a distinctive crack, then another. A rifle!

      Ten feet to her left, the slope dropped off like a cliff’s edge. To her right, the snow-covered wall. Above, the rumble of an avalanche. No accident of nature.

      She dug in her poles, pushed hard and picked up speed, trying to outrun the fall, go perpendicular to it, get out of its way. To God knew what. But someone had skied this way earlier today. The trail led somewhere besides over the edge of an abyss. She hoped.

      Snow pelted her head and shoulders, slid down, obliterated her path. There was nowhere to go but over the edge, where the descending rush of snow would take her anyway if it didn’t cover and smother her here.

      Instinctively, Cate tucked her poles beneath her arms, squatted down and fell sideways. She snapped off her