“Did you forget something?”
Asher’s voice snapped me out of my mental haze. “No. Sorry.” I slammed the door closed and buckled my seat belt. “Just a little distracted.”
“Have you ever been to Sedona before?” He pulled into traffic, and my hair whipped around my face in spite of my attempt to contain it in a ponytail.
“No.” I stared out at the enormous red rocks in the distance. “It’s even more beautiful than I imagined. Do you still notice the Red Rock mountains? I feel like every time I step out of my rental, I’m stunned all over again.”
“Happens to me sometimes, too, and I grew up around here. I don’t think you ever get used to it.” He made a right turn on a narrow street dotted with homes. “It’s like a constant reminder that our problems are really small in the grand scheme of things.”
“Exactly.” I nodded. “They add to the mystical quality here, too. Like even though we’ve got smartphones and Wi-Fi, all our technology is nothing compared to these gigantic wonders of nature.”
At the end of the paved road, he continued down a dirt road full of ruts. I grabbed the handle on the dash to steady myself as the uneven dirt road jostled us. Asher didn’t seem to notice. By the time we were in the valley, my seat belt was the only thing keeping me from bouncing right over the short Jeep door.
I looked up at the puffy clouds in the sky, and a smile crept up on me. My mom would’ve loved this.
Asher slowed the Jeep and finally stopped at the base of one of the mountains. It still towered over us, but compared to the others, this was a baby mountain. Perfect for a baby climber like me.
He opened his door and looked at me. “I’m going to grab the gear, and then I’ll show you how everything works and we can get started.”
“Sounds good.” I got out and stretched my arms over my head, then leaned from side to side to loosen my back. After the jarring ride out here, I was reminded that while I still felt twenty, my body was, in fact, forty-five. Once the kinks were out of my back, I did a couple of lunges to stretch out my calves and hips.
When I turned around, Asher had a coil of rope over his shoulder and a safety harness in his hands. Heat climbed up my face. “Sorry, I was just making sure I don’t pull a muscle before we even get started.”
“You’re fine.” He held up the harness. “I just finished getting the gear together anyway.” He handed the harness over with a smile. “Put this on and I’ll attach the safety line.”
I stepped into it and pulled it up to thread my arms through. This was starting to feel real. Adrenaline thrummed through me as I snapped the safety latch around my waist. “Not gonna lie, I’m having second thoughts.”
Asher laughed and shook his head. “You don’t need to prove anything out here. If it gets to be too much, just let me know and we’ll come back, no questions asked, okay?”
“Thanks.” I breathed out some of the tension and smiled.
I was one of the Bureau’s star profilers, but there was something about Asher that I couldn’t quite peg. A quiet strength and confidence that wasn’t conceit. He was at peace, and at the same time, he exuded leadership. Yes, he owned a business, but it didn’t seem to consume him. It was obvious he loved his tour company, but he somehow seemed to have escaped the usual state of constant anxiety that drove others to succeed in business and then end up losing everything else in their life.
Stop. Sometimes it was really difficult to turn the profiling off.
The short answer was, Asher seemed to have the zen I’d been searching for.
I followed him over to the rock, and he pointed to the top. “I’m going to climb up with the safety line first. I’ll be wedging in the pegs for you to use for your hands and feet when you start climbing. I’ll have your safety line, too, so if you get into trouble, just yell and I can lower you back down.”
I raised a brow. “You’re going to hold me up all by yourself?” Another dose of adrenaline raced through me. Asher looked fit, but he was no Incredible Hulk. Was I just supposed to put my life in his hands?
“I’m stronger than I look. Plus, I have this.” He held up some kind of manual cable winch. “I’ll be using it to help lower you slowly if it comes to that.”
“Am I the oldest person you’ve ever taken up there?”
“No.” He laughed. “I don’t know how old you are, but my oldest beginner rock climber was seventy-five.”
I sucked in a deep breath and let it back out again. “Okay. Let’s do this before I lose my nerve.”
We walked to the base of the mountain, and I tipped my head up and shielded my eyes from the sun.
Maybe sensing my nerves, Asher said, “It’s about four-hundred-fifty feet to the top.”
I did some quick math in my head. Maybe thirty or thirty-five stories? Far enough to plummet to my death.
Asher double-checked his gear and took out his phone. He frowned. “Can you excuse me for a minute? It looks like I better call the office.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” Asher walked a few feet away and got on his phone.
I shielded my eyes, looked way up to the top of the mountain, and tried to remember why I thought rock climbing would be a good idea.
CHAPTER 3
Miller
“Hey, Asher. Thanks for calling me back.” I raked my hand back through my hair as I paced my living room. “We have a problem.”
“I don’t have a lot of time, but I saw all the missed calls. What’s going on?” The wind whistled on his side of the line. He must’ve been out on a tour.
“I’ll keep it short. Senator Hanson knows Judge Jones is dead.”
Judge Mitch Jones sat on the State Supreme Court of Arizona and was one of the Collective’s emperors. He had injected himself with the super soldier serum and died while I was questioning him about the group’s ties to the senator. We’d tried to hide his death from the public record as long as possible to keep the senator from panicking that he could be the next target. Now that he knew that he was the last remaining emperor of the Transparency Collective, he was prepared to declassify the super soldier research on shifters, probably banking on the fact that we’d be feared and hunted like wild game. He surely hoped we’d be too busy hiding to risk coming for him.
“Shit.” Asher let out a breath. “Is he going to release the shifter experiments?”
“He’s threatening to, but I’m trying to stall him. You should prepare the pack for the worst. I’m not sure my bluff will hold for long, and I don’t have the leverage I need to keep him quiet yet.” I stared at my framed medals on the wall. “How soon can we meet?”
“I’ll be back at Wild Sedona by four o’clock.”
“I’ll meet you there.” I ended the call and went to the dining room table to open my laptop.
My e-mails were sorted between military and wolf pack contacts. I clicked on my pack address book and scrolled until I found the pack in Salem, Massachusetts. I opened the last e-mail chain I had with Mathias Munro. He was the oldest pack Alpha in the country and was a deep well of knowledge when it came to the history between the US government and the werewolf packs.