Montana Secrets. Charlotte Douglas

to protect her this time. A sob threatened to break loose from her throat. Ryan, unlike Snake Larson, would never be coming back to High Valley Ranch. The terrorist bomb in Tabari five years ago had made sure of that.

      They hadn’t even found enough of Ryan to send home to bury.

      Chapter Two

      At the same time Cat Erickson was having coffee in the ranch kitchen with her father, halfway around the world an infuriated Ryan Christopher burst into Colonel Barker’s office at the reconstructed Tabarian embassy. He slammed the door behind him and stormed the commanding officer’s desk.

      “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Ryan shouted.

      Cool under fire, the colonel, every inch the military man with his buzz haircut, freshly pressed uniform, lean physique and unflappable calm, motioned his unexpected visitor toward a chair. “Have a seat, Trace, and calm down.”

      Ryan gripped the front edge of the desk and leaned toward the colonel, eyes flashing, face flushed with rage. “My name’s not Trace, and you know it, dammit,” he yelled.

      “Stand down, soldier,” Barker snapped with authority. “You’re way out of line.”

      “You can’t give me orders.” The veins pulsed at Ryan’s temples, and his knuckles turned white where they clutched the desk. “My enlistment expired four years ago. I don’t have to answer to you or the Marines. But you damn well owe me an explanation.”

      Barker stood and drew himself to his full height, still several inches shorter than Ryan, but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in severity. He riveted steely gray eyes on the younger man without blinking.

      “Here’s the way it is,” he said with ruthless calm, one hand poised above the button on his intercom. “You can either sit down and talk this out quietly, or I’ll have you escorted to the brig. Which is it going to be?”

      Ryan struggled for self-control. His entire world had been thrown off-kilter just moments before, and he hadn’t yet regained his balance. After what had just happened, he doubted he ever would. Taking a deep breath, he eased himself into the chair in front of Colonel Barker’s desk.

      Barker resumed his seat, but the stiffness didn’t leave his posture. He eyed Ryan warily, as if his visitor were a bomb with a short fuse.

      “When did your memory return?” Barker asked.

      “This morning at the palace,” Ryan said. “I’d just finished dressing when I banged my head against an open cabinet door. My memories came back in a rush.”

      Until that moment, Ryan had believed he was Trace Gallagher, an American who’d been working for over five years as a bodyguard to Prince Asim. A man who’d lost his memory when a bomb exploded while he was guarding the prince, who was visiting the American embassy.

      “And everything came back?” Barker asked. “All your memories?”

      Barker’s tension had heightened visibly with his question, like a spring coiled too tight, and Ryan couldn’t help wondering why his sudden cure from five years of amnesia would place his usually ice-cool commanding officer in such an apprehensive state.

      The colonel leaned forward, seeming to hold his breath for Ryan’s answer.

      “No, sir, not everything. I can’t remember the last few days before the bombing.”

      “Damn!” Barker slammed his fist on his desk.

      Since threats hadn’t gained him the response he wanted, Ryan decided on a new tack. Politeness.

      “May I use an embassy phone, sir? When I told Prince Asim my memory had returned, he refused to let me place a call and demanded I report to you first. I have to call my fiancée.”

      Barker shook his head. “Sorry, Trace, you’ll have to be debriefed before you can contact anyone.”

      “But Catherine—”

      “No calls. That’s final.”

      Ryan slumped in his chair in exasperation. Earlier, when his memory had returned, his first thought had been of Catherine Erickson, his beautiful and endearing Cat, his Kalila with eyes the color of Montana’s big sky, hair the hue of aspen leaves in autumn and contagious laughter that made his heart sing. He’d had no contact with her since before the bombing, and he couldn’t wait to hear her voice again.

      Abandoned at birth, shifted from one stranger’s home to another throughout his childhood, Ryan had never felt he truly belonged anywhere—until he fell in love with Cat. Her acceptance of him with all his flaws, her unfailing ability to make him laugh, the dreams and goals they had shared together made him realize that wherever Cat was, was home.

      At this minute, he’d never been so homesick in his life.

      “If she’s waited five years,” the colonel said gruffly, “she can wait a few more hours.”

      “If she’s waited?” Ryan glanced sharply at the officer. “Doesn’t Cat know I’m alive?”

      Baxter leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across his barrel chest. “You’re not going to like what I have to say, but if you’ll hear me out, you’ll understand.”

      A premonition shivered down Ryan’s backbone. He’d already suffered one severe shock this morning, learning he wasn’t the man he’d thought he’d been for the past five years. What if something had happened to Cat?

      “Cat’s okay, isn’t she?”

      “As far as we know,” Barker replied, “but we’ll get to her later. First, tell me exactly how much you remember from before the bombing.”

      Ryan sat back in his chair, took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Among his recovered memories was his awareness that Colonel Barker had his own way of operating. Ryan would have to allow events to unfold at his commanding officer’s pace. As much as he wanted to know about Cat, to place that call and hear her voice, to reassure himself that she was all right, he’d have to answer Barker’s questions first.

      Ryan closed his eyes and tried to remember. “My last clear memory before the bombing was the day you met with Marc Erickson and me to alert us to a possible terrorist attack. You feared someone inside the embassy was in league with the terrorists and you wanted us to identify them.”

      “As it turned out, I was right. The attack was an inside job.” Barker rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That meeting was about ten days prior to the bombing. You don’t remember anything after that?”

      “There’s a huge gap, sir. My next memories are of hospitals and doctors. But Marc can tell you everything about those missing days before the attack. You know how closely we worked together.”

      Barker grew ominously still. “I’m afraid Marc can’t help us.”

      A sudden foreboding filled Ryan with dread. “Why not?”

      “Erickson’s dead.”

      Pierced with grief for his friend, Ryan sank deeper in his chair and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t block out the pain. He forced himself to meet Barker’s sympathetic gaze. “Killed in the bombing?”

      Barker shook his head. “Assassinated.”

      “What?” The officer’s response took Ryan by surprise, and he jerked upright.

      The colonel rose from his chair with obvious effort, as if the world lay heavily on his shoulders. He circled his desk and perched on its edge in front of Ryan. “The day of the bombing Erickson was in the bazaar. He called on his cell phone to alert me to clear the building. Said he’d fill me in on the details later.”

      His expression grim, Barker stared past Ryan toward the windows that overlooked the desert. “We began the evacuation instantly, but we didn’t have enough time to get everyone out before the bomb, already planted in the embassy, blew.