Chapter Three

      A beer bottle sailed through the air. Jason dodged the flying projectile and watched it shatter against the wood door frame behind him at Kitty’s Bar.

      He halted a moment to brush off some of the beer that had sprayed his jacket and quickly assessed the combatants of the fight he’d just walked in on. Looked like locals versus outsiders. Located on the outskirts of Moose, Wyoming, Kitty’s was usually a quiet hole-in-the-wall where a man could get a drink and meet a friend without running into too many people. But at o-dark-thirty on a Friday night, this place had more people in it than he’d ever seen—and half of them were throwing punches.

      “Stop it!” Kitty Flynn yelled from behind the bar as a table tipped over, spilling playing cards and poker chips over the warped floorboards.

      He spotted a familiar search and rescue ball cap sliding across the floor before zeroing in on a head of curly red hair. Sure enough, Marty Flynn, Kitty’s nephew and Jason’s coworker, was right in the middle of it, landing a punch on a blond guy in a three-piece suit before pulling a dark-haired waitress out of Blondie’s arms and pushing her toward the bar and his aunt. “You get out of there, Cathy, before you get hurt.”

      Marty shoved at a dark-haired twenty-something wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. That was one of the Murphy boys, twins who ran a gun shop with their dad. He never could tell Cy and Orin apart. The kid shoved right back, trying to get at a tall, lanky man who already sported a black eye. Jason pulled off his knit cap and shook the rain from the dark hair that dripped onto his collar. He never should have answered his phone.

       “Hey, Captain. I’ve got a woman we need to track down in the Tetons.”

       “Missing hiker?” Jason had asked, thinking the woman was a fool to risk going up into the high country in the spring before the upper elevations had thawed. But he was already grabbing his go bag to load into his four-wheel-drive truck. Night was the worst time to be lost in the mountains. And all this rain and snow, depending on where she was on the mountain, made this a particularly miserable night.

       “Not exactly.” Either the woman needed their help, or she didn’t. Jason waited for the younger man to explain. “Meet me at Aunt Kitty’s place. I’m not calling in anybody else on the S&R team because the guy who wants to hire us says this rescue needs to stay off the books. Hell, I’m not even filing a report with the boss, just getting clearance for a flight plan from the airport. I don’t think we need anybody else. And we could make some good money. A lot of it.”

      Jason didn’t care about the money. What he cared about was living with his conscience. Letting another woman die when he could do something to help was his Achilles’ heel. Letting anyone die in those mountains when he knew them better than just about anybody in a hundred-mile radius wasn’t something he could hide away from, although he tried damn hard to hide from the world as much as it would let him. He’d found that five-year-old kid who’d wandered off from his parents last summer. He’d tracked down a mountain biker who’d had a run-in with a cougar, carried the guy on his back to clear ground so he could be life-flighted to the hospital. There’d been skiers and snowboarders who’d needed his help, and he’d been there, too, for them.

      But it was never enough. The debt was still there. He’d lost too many lives over in Kilkut. No matter how far off the grid he got, that need to balance the scales—a life for a life—demanded that he answer Marty Flynn’s call. Maybe one day the score would be even, and the losses he’d suffered in the Corps, the anger and the guilt, wouldn’t be able to find him anymore.

      And so, he was here. At Kitty’s Bar on the outskirts of Moose after midnight, walking into the middle of a bar fight.

      Looked like Marty was actually trying to stop the fight, and was getting cursed and dinged up for his trouble. Four more locals, judging by their boots and jeans like Jason wore, were going after four guys in suits who seemed to be toying with them. One of the suits, an older man with a square face and silvering hair, hung back behind the tall guy and a bruiser with a handlebar mustache. Although he seemed mature enough to avoid duking it out with men half his age, he wasn’t above shouting orders, or answering taunts about getting the hell out of where he didn’t belong. Mustache Man had training. He blocked every punch, braced his feet when another drunk local charged him and used his attacker’s momentum to shove him off to the side.

      Blondie wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth and grabbed the older man’s arm, pulling him away from two men who knocked over a bar stool and toppled to the floor. “Stay out of it, Walter. Let the professionals handle these yokels. That’s what you pay them for.”

      “I’m not afraid of a fight.” While the older man didn’t dive into the thick of swinging arms and wrestling men, he did shrug off the young man’s grip, stepping forward while Blondie waved him off with a dismissive curse and pulled out his cell phone.

      Marty looked a little outnumbered, since neither side seemed interested in backing down. But Jason’s priority was the missing hiker, not bailing Marty out of a tough situation because someone had made a joke with the wrong person, or the city dude had made a move on one of the small-town country girls.

      Sure, Jason could handle himself in a fight. The Marines had trained him to do that better than most. And the fact that he was built like a tank and stood almost a head taller than anyone else in the room generally dissuaded all but the drunkest or most stupid from picking a fight with him in the first place.

      But he didn’t wage war anymore. Only the one inside his head. Not even for a friend from the Corps. Jason backed toward the broken bottle and swinging door. Marty could call in a different favor on another day.

      Jason was big, but he wasn’t fast. Not fast enough to make his escape, at any rate.

      “Captain! Jason. Thank God. This is the—” Another local boy with a dark crew cut and tats lunged past Marty, trying to get at the old man. He recognized Richard Cordes Jr., the son of a militia leader who’d led a remote compound in the area back when Jason had been a boy. “Damn it, Junior, I said back off!”

      “Mind your own business, Marty.” More glass smashed. “Eddington!”

      “Jase!”

      Putting every emotional survival instinct on hold, Jason squeezed his eyes shut, inhaled a deep breath and answered Marty’s plea for help.

      He grabbed the young man who was picking himself up off the floor and shoved him down in a chair with a warning to stay put. Kane Windisch—he was Junior Cordes’s cousin. Jason captured the next punk in a neck hold and twisted him out of