The woman made a quiet noise and moved closer to examine him. Up close, he made out fat freckles across the bridge of her nose and slim gold hoops hooked in her earlobes.
“I’m going to radio for help. You can’t make it down the mountain alone in this shape.”
“Goddammit, I’m fine.”
She paused in reaching for her radio, arching a brow at him. “You sure about that?” She depressed the button on the side of the radio. “Moon Shadow to base.”
Lipton stared at her for a long minute. Had he hit his head? Did he just hear the green fairy nymph call herself Moon Shadow?
A voice came back to her instantly. “Go ahead, Moon Shadow.”
Lipton blinked.
“I found a hiker down with what I suspect to be a broken ankle.”
He issued a growl. He did not break his ankle like some fragile flower. He was a goddamn special operative. He hiked through treacherous conditions every day of his life, and a calm hike on vacation was not going to put him out of commission.
Seconds later, Moon Shadow—or whoever she was—stowed her radio on her hip again. She started stripping pine off one of the fallen branches.
“What are you doing?” Lipton couldn’t contain his annoyance, and it seeped into his tone.
She shot him a sympathetic look, ticking him off more. “I’m going to make you a crutch. We need to get you to the closest path for the ATV to pick you up and take you to the hospital.”
“My ankle is not broken!”
She went back to stripping the pine branch. “Uh-huh.”
“I’ll show you.” With a determined grunt, he launched to his feet once more. This time he placed his foot flat on the ground and it held his weight. At least until he took a step.
He landed on his ass, seated beside Moon Shadow. She trapped her lower lip in her teeth to hide her smile.
Lipton stared up at the snapped top of the trees, his mind locking in on the situation with the speed of a sniper bullet.
Dammit, he broke his ankle like some frail weakling trekking up a hill he wouldn’t even call steep. And he was at the mercy of a woman calling herself Moon Shadow who was deftly crafting him a crutch from a pine branch…and who wore slim gold hoops in her cute earlobes that he couldn’t quit staring at.
And now he had to figure out how and why the fuck someone had loaded this group of trees, on a hill in a national park, with C-4.
Chapter One
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.” Harris Lipton bit each word off between clenched teeth as the doctor finished applying a cast to his ankle.
In the corner of the hospital room, the captain of Xtreme Ops gave him a stoic look, but he saw the amusement in Penn’s eyes.
“You wouldn’t be laughing if it was you,” Lipton snapped.
“Am I laughing? We’re down a man.”
Lipton bit off another growl that had the female nurse glancing up with worry pinching her brows. Suddenly, he felt like an ass for being a surly grizzly bear of a patient. “Sorry,” he said to her.
She turned her attention back to the cast. “I like your choice of black for the cast.”
In the corner, Penn hid his chuckle behind his hand.
God, could this get any worse? He wasn’t six. He was a grown-ass man, a special operative, and now he’d be laid up for weeks due to his stupid mistake of slipping on that mountainside.
Of course, he had good reason to hit the deck.
Like a treetop loaded with C-4.
The guys were out there right now in Denali National Park investigating, and he couldn’t be there with them. It rankled and irritated him more than he could let on in the confines of a hospital, at least not without getting arrested.
The doctor applied some cotton around his calf and his toes to provide comfort. As if he could ever be comfortable in this fucking thing or sitting around on his ass while his team was out battling threats on the Alaskan landscape.
“When can I walk?”
The doctor glanced up at him but quickly dropped her gaze to his leg again. Was he imagining things or was she blushing? He glanced over at Penn, who had to leave the cubicle, probably to laugh his ass off.
“Well, since the fracture is on the minor side, I would say you can apply weight to it sooner than the six weeks we normally recommend. I’d say three is the minimum rest time before you bear weight.”
Three. Fucking. Weeks. No—just no.
He swiped his fingers through his hair, and both the doctor and nurse looked up to watch him. Then they quickly glanced down at his leg again.
“I can’t be off my leg.”
“If you want it to heal properly, you will. And I’m sure in your line of work, it’s more important to have your body in working order.”
“I’ll make sure he stays off it.” Penn had entered the space partitioned off by curtains and stood a few paces from the hospital bed. The nurse glanced at him, Lipton, and turned their attention back to his cast.
The doctor finished wrapping the material that would harden and stepped back from the bed. “Jill will finish by giving you instructions. Good luck, and if you have any problems, call the hospital or come in.”
A low noise similar to a growl emitted from him. How had shit gone so sideways? He was as sure-footed as a fucking mountain goat. Yet when he heard that crack overhead, he’d moved fast and next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground staring up into a pair of deep green eyes flecked with gold.
The woman who appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast confused him as much as how he was going to sit on his ass these next few weeks.
“Have any questions?” the nurse asked.
He hadn’t been listening past how to keep the cast from getting wet, but he nodded anyway. He had no damn intention of following recommendations. Those were for civilians and not special forces with several tours in the Middle East. He’d singlehandedly rescued a political figure from a hostage situation, for fuck sake. A broken ankle wouldn’t keep him down.
He nodded to the nurse and hopped off the bed. He started to set his cast down, but the nurse hurried to hand him a set of crutches. As soon as he had one in hand, he remembered the crutch that woman had fashioned for him out of a fallen tree branch.
“Take it easy,” the nurse told Lipton. She turned to Penn. “And keep him quiet.”
Penn gave her a solemn nod. The minute she was out of earshot, Lipton grumbled, “I’d like to see you try, Captain.”
Penn snorted. “C’mon. Let’s get outta here.”
Lipton wanted nothing more, but he still hesitated. “What happened to the fairy girl?”
His captain delivered a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about and a did-you-hit-your-head look in one go. “Fairy girl?”
“The nymph.” He wasn’t making any sense even to himself and shook his head. He tried again. “The woman who found me after I fell.”
“Oh. She went back to work. She’s a park ranger.”
“Yeah.” Moon Shadow was her radio handle. Or for all Lipton knew, it was her real name. It sure suited her carefree curls and that thin braid she wore tied up with a shimmery gold string like some gypsy mixed with hippie.
“I’ll talk to the park office and find her so I can thank her.” Yeah, he only wanted to extend his gratitude for her helping him get off that mountain, first stomping his way through the thick Alaskan underbrush of summer by way of that hand-fashioned crutch, and then to a trail, where he was picked up by an ATV and shuttled down the mountain to a park ranger vehicle waiting to transport him to the nearby hospital.