Page 138 of Present Danger (Rocky Mountain Courage 1)

A sound drew her attention. He kicked the box Terra’s father had given him and shined a flashlight into it.

A plastic Darth Vader mask.

Marcus growled.

“It doesn’t look like—”

“It’s not. Your father never had the artifact. I’m an idiot! I should have looked inside. But ... Argh. I didn’t want the others to see too.” Marcus let loose a string of foul words, shouting them into the night. He gasped for breath, then seemed to calm down. But his eyes narrowed and slid back to Terra. “I’ll keep you with me until I get it back. Get up. We have to leave the crash site.”

Should she fake a twisted ankle or broken leg? No. He’d just kill her. She climbed from the seat. “I’m going to need my hands free. I might need to climb.”

As Marcus shined the flashlight around, Terra recognized this part of the mountain.

“It’s fitting, don’t you think? This is near where my plane crashed fifteen years ago. Where the SAR team rescued me and an avalanche took them out.”

Terra fought to comprehend his words. “What? Are you saying—”

“Yes. It was my plane that crashed. Your mother and her team saved me, and died in the rescue.”

Stumbling, Terra dropped to her knees. Her father’s sudden appearance in her life, his business in all this, and now Marcus/Tony’s connection ... it was all too much to grasp. And yet, it was starting to make sense. All these secrets buried in the past had been unearthed and were coming to light.

Marcus approached and stared down at her, a twisted smile on his face. “I’d been on my way here to face off with your father for bailing on me back in Iraq. I thought I might even kill him. But I never got to see him. He didn’t even know I was still alive. Nobody did. They all thought Anthony Gray had died in the helicopter crash in Iraq on the way to the court-martial hearing. That reporting mistake was fortuitous for me—and I created a whole new identity in Marcus Briggs.”

Marcus took an audible breath and continued staring at her.

“After the plane crash here and my rescue, I learned Chris had lost his beautiful Sheridan when she’d saved me. Telling him that news would have been sweet revenge before I took his life, but then I realized he was worth more to me alive. He would suffer even more if I put him to work for me. I knew one day I would let him know the truth about who had cost him everything. Revealing that truth to him didn’t unfold like I had planned, what with his plane crash, but Chris knows I was the one behind all his misery. Behind forcing him away from his family. And I shot him, in the end. I got him.”

Tears surged. Oh, God, please let Dad live. Please don’t let him die. How she hated the man who stood over her now, who had disrupted her life from afar all these years. But she couldn’t hold on to hate. Somehow, she had to let it go.

“It was you, wasn’t it? You’re the one who destroyed the memorial. You targeted Mom’s plaque.” As if at this juncture, any of that even mattered, but she had to know the truth—all of it.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but that wasn’t me. Now get up. We have to go.”

“You’re a sick, sick man.” If held on to long enough, bitterness, grudges, and regrets created monsters.

She’d already lost too much on this mountain, and now she was here with a monster.