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Chapter One

Hope Algier preferred sunshine and fresh air to a stuffy office Except today

She spent most of her life outdoors Her father had tried for years to entice his baby girl into the boardroom of the family business with proes She turned theht now a leather chair behind a big desk sounded good

Trees towered over her and surrounded her on every side This section of land adjacent to West Virginia’s Cranberry Wilderness was called the Cranberry Backcountry for a reason It consisted of more than eleven thousand acres of hills and woods and little else

Animals skittered around her Leaves rustled as the summer wind blearm air under her ponytail and across the back of her neck Thick branches blockedher an eerie sense of isolation

No people, no houses and no easy way out

Turned out, this patch of forest nal, and she could only see peeks of blue through the canopy of suive anything for a second of heat on her face

She slipped behind a large trunk and leaned against it Her heartbeat hammered in her ears as she slipped the sat phone out of the pocket of her cargo shorts It er than a cell phone and fit in her palm The map she’d memorized earlier and carried in her back pocket pointed to a clearing up ahead She hoped she was close enough to catch a signal

Please let it work this time

She pushed buttons When that didn’t do anything, she sht about sainst the cushion of dirt and leaves under her hiking boots

She was about to repeat the hitting cycle when soain The sa on and off since she’d dove deep into the trees A squirrel, probably She repeated the co to reassure her brain and stop the sudden subtle shake h her hands She refused to think bear or, worse, predator of the two-legged kind

As she shifted, the stray branches scratched her bare legs and caught on the short sleeve of her cotton tee She balanced her head against the hard bark again and counted to five It took all of her control not to call out for Mark Callah, the vice president of finance for Baxter Industries