Going to Extremes

By Amanda Stevens

MAN OF ACTION

Aidan Campbell instinctively flew into the fray when the authorities rallied the troops to catch a gang of escaped convicts. Yet, as the adventurous bounty hunter scoured the storm-swept terrain with his teammates, he unexpectedly found himself rescuing a blond beauty dangling precariously from a cliff. His protective nature kicked into high gear when Kaitlyn Wilson’s fragmented memories recalled a grisly crime carried out by the very militia members he hunted. After Aidan spirited the fiercely independent investigative reporter away to a safe house, it seemed pointless to battle their potent attraction in the passionate afterglow. But when Kaitlyn’s nose for the news lured her to trouble, could a heroic, high-speed helicopter chase prevent a full-scale catastrophe?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781459228504

Amanda Stevens

Amanda Stevens is an award-winning author of over fifty novels. Born and raised in the rural south, she now resides in Houston, Texas.

Book preview

Prologue

It was done.

He’d killed the woman and buried her body in a shallow grave in the Montana wilderness. The wolverines would be at her soon enough, and then the vultures. By the time her body was discovered by some errant backpacker or trapper, her face would be gone, and if luck held, her fingerprints.

A DNA analysis would be required for a positive identification, and that could take days…sometimes weeks in this part of the world. Even if the authorities were able to trace her to the Montana Militia for a Free America, it would be too late. She could not tell them anything now.

Jenny Peltier had paid the ultimate price for her betrayal, and as Boone Fowler followed the stream through the woods back to his encampment, he felt no elation or remorse at what he’d done. He didn’t particularly enjoy killing, although he was good at it.

In war, people died. It was as simple as that.

And they were at war. A war to take back the country from the corrupt bureaucrats who contaminated the American way of life as surely as the pathetic junkies who infested the American street.

They would all be dealt with in time, those soft, greedy ingrates who knew not the meaning of honor and sacrifice. They would have to learn the hard way.

The bombing of a government building by the MMFAFA had shocked the nation, but that would be only one of the many shots that would soon be heard around the world.

The day of deliverance had dawned over Montana, and the winds of liberty would sweep down in triumph across the prairie states and march, like Sherman’s army, through the South, conquering nearly sixty years of malaise, apathy and moral decay. The avenging angel of freedom would stand victorious on the squalid doorsteps of the eastern cities and level, in God-like fury, the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah to the West.

Fowler drew a deep, quivering breath. No matter how many times he delivered that sermon to the faithful, the message never failed to stir him. He had a gift and he knew how to use it. His mother used to say that when he spoke with such passion, he could make people follow him to the ends of the earth. He was counting on that.

Pausing, he knelt at the edge of the stream to wash the blade of the hunting knife he’d used to slit the woman’s throat, and then he scrubbed his hands, even though they were already clean. His soul was clean, too. Virtuous.

He was so caught up in the righteousness of his mission that he almost missed the telltale rustle of dead leaves upstream and to his right. The sound was slight, a mere whisper in the wind, but it sent a chill up his spine just the same.

And then Fowler realized that he’d been vaguely uneasy for the last quarter of a mile or so. Even though his mind was preoccupied, his instincts had been warning him of danger.

He should have listened. Whoever was behind him had managed to get the jump on him, so that meant that the tracker was good. A professional. Someone who knew the Montana wilderness as well as Fowler.

He continued to rinse the knife as his senses came fully alert and his mind raced with possibilities. He had a semiautomatic tucked in his belt, but he’d have to wait for the right moment to draw it. A sudden move and the tracker might open fire on him.

From the corner of his eye, he scouted the terrain. When the sound came again, still to his right, Fowler pulled his gun and began firing in that direction as he simultaneously rolled to his left. Seeking cover behind a boulder, he unloaded his weapon without pause and then grabbed a fresh cartridge.

Drop the weapon!

Fowler froze. The voice hadn’t come from his right at all. Instead, the tracker was downstream and to his left. He’d circled his quarry and now he had Fowler trapped. The rustle of leaves had been a diversion. Pebbles tossed over his head perhaps. A trick as old as time itself, and Fowler had fallen for it.

It wasn’t like him to be so careless. While his guard had been down, the man who hunted him had moved in surprisingly close. So close Fowler could practically feel the bastard breathing down his neck.

Drop the weapon or I’ll put a bullet through your brain. The voice was deep, fearless, commanding. A man used to barking orders and having them obeyed.

To prove his point, he fired off a round, blasting to kingdom come a pinecone that had fallen not ten feet from where Fowler hunkered.

Fowler threw down his weapon.

The man came out of the woods then, a tall, powerfully built warrior with the darkest gaze Fowler had ever looked into. He’d killed before. It was there in his eyes. In the steadiness of his hand on his weapon. He’d kill again, too, if he had to. Without hesitation.

He was a military man. His bearing gave him away, and his tracking skills suggested someone with a Special Forces background.

Who are you? Fowler asked. What do you want?

I want justice, you son of a bitch. As he walked toward Fowler, rage contorted the man’s features, and in the split second it took for him to get his emotions under control, Fowler whipped the pistol out of his ankle holster and fired.

The punch of the bullet knocked the man backward, and he fell with a hard thud to the ground.

A clean shot, right through the heart.

His muscles began to twitch, and Fowler walked over to put another bullet in his head to finish him off. Kicking the man’s weapon aside, he lifted his own gun and took aim.

For the Cause! he cried in triumph.

Montana State Penitentiary

Monday, 0400 hours

BOONE FOWLER CAME AWAKE slowly. For a moment, he thought he was back in the Montana wilderness, facing off against an old nemesis, but as his mind began to clear, he realized that it had been nothing more than a dream. A recurring nightmare of being hunted. The scenery and the enemy sometimes changed, but the outcome was always the same. It was he who stood victorious under a clear Montana sky—not the hunter.

In reality, it hadn’t gone down that way, and now Fowler found himself confined to a six-by-eight prison cell. As he swung his legs over the cot and sat, head in hands, everything came rushing back to him. His capture. The trial. The past five years of his life spent in a hellhole called the Fortress. A maximum-security prison from which no one had ever escaped.

And all because of a man named Cameron Murphy.

While Fowler had rotted in prison for the past half decade, Murphy had recruited what was left of a Special Forces team he’d once commanded and turned them into the most successful bounty-hunter organization in the country. Although Murphy was the only one Fowler had met face-to-face, he’d made a point of finding out the other men’s names. He knew their backgrounds, their specialties, what made them tick.

But it was Murphy alone that Fowler still saw in his nightmares at night. Murphy’s face he saw when he’d beat another inmate almost beyond recognition.

His hatred of Cameron Murphy had helped him survive nearly nine months of solitary confinement in the Dungeon, and his thirst for revenge had kept his rage in check when he’d been placed back into the general population of the prison.

He’d kept his nose clean all these years because he had a plan, and for that, he needed his friends, contacts with the outside world. He needed money for bribes and favors he could call in. He needed all the help he could muster in order to accomplish what had never been done before: escape from the Fortress.

And thanks to a generous benefactor with an ambitious agenda, the moment was finally at hand. Tonight, at lights out, he would instigate a riot, the likes of which the prison guards had never before seen. During the pandemonium, Fowler and his compatriots would be led off to the Dungeon, where they would lay low until the plan could be set in motion.

If all went well, they would soon be free men.

And Cameron Murphy would soon be a dead one.

God help anyone who got in the way.

For the Cause! Fowler whispered as adrenaline surged through his veins.

Chapter One

Tuesday, 1400 hours

Ken, you’re breaking up! I can barely hear you! Pressing the cell phone to her ear, Kaitlyn Wilson tried not to panic. Rain beat like a war drum on the roof of her SUV as she slowly made her way west on Route 9. She’d turned the windshield wipers on high speed, but she still couldn’t see a damn thing. Are you still there? she asked desperately.

Major flooding…highway closed…

Static crackled in Kaitlyn’s ear. "Should I turn back? Dammit!" The phone went dead and she swore again as she frantically tried to call her boss back. But it was no use. She’d lost the signal.

Okay, situation not good, she summarized as she tossed the cell phone onto the seat and clutched the steering wheel with both hands.

Since she’d set out for the prison less than an hour earlier, Route 9 had been transformed into a lake. Kaitlyn could no longer even see the pavement. It was only by instinct and sheer dumb luck that she hadn’t yet driven off the road.

She could feel the swirling water sucking at the tires as she slowed the vehicle to a crawl, trying to decide what to do. Keep going…or turn back?

Did she really have a choice?

With near-zero visibility, turning the vehicle around without sliding into a ditch would be no easy feat, and besides, she had no way of judging whether the road conditions behind her were any better.

She was in the notorious dead zone on Route 9 where cell-phone signals from the nearest tower were blocked by the mountains. And now static had overpowered the radio so that she couldn’t even pick up a weather forecast. She was, in effect, cut off from the rest of the world.

And the water continued to rise.

Why, oh why, hadn’t she listened to Ken when he’d cautioned her not to start off alone in the downpour?

Are you crazy? he’d shouted. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the entire county is under a flash-flood warning.

I’ll be traveling on high ground for most of the way, and Route 9 never floods. And by now Kaitlyn knew her way to the prison with her eyes closed. If I leave now, I can get to the press conference before the heavy stuff hits.

"Oh, you think? And just what would you call that? A drizzle?" Ken had cast a wary glance out his office window, where rain continued to fall steadily from a bleak, gray sky. It had been coming down nonstop all day.

Kaitlyn had breezily waved off his concern. "You worry too much. Besides, if I don’t get to the press conference, we’ll be scooped by the Independent Record, and you know you don’t want that," she said, naming a rival paper.

Ken scowled. I also don’t want the Highway Patrol having to fish you out of a ditch somewhere.

At least he was gracious enough not to point out that it wouldn’t be the first time. I know what I’m doing, Ken.

His patience finally worn down, he sighed. Okay, at least take someone with you. Let me get Cudlow on the horn— He had reached for the phone, but Kaitlyn’s outraged screech stopped him.

Cudlow? She spoke the name with such utter disdain that Ken gave her a disapproving look. Kaitlyn didn’t care. There was no way she’d allow Allen Cudlow—the man who had almost single-handedly derailed her career at the paper five years ago—to accompany her to the warden’s press conference. No way in hell.

Her feud with Cudlow had started long before Ken Mellon had been brought in when the previous editor in chief had finally retired nine months ago. Kaitlyn had been ecstatic at the prospect of new blood at the Ponderosa Monitor because she and Cudlow, who was once the golden boy at the Monitor, were finally on equal footing.

If you truly want to avert a tragedy, you’ll put down that phone, she’d warned Ken.

He’d run his fingers through his thinning hair. Okay, okay. I get it. You and Cudlow hate each other’s guts. I don’t know why and I don’t much care as long as it doesn’t interfere with your reporting. A little professional rivalry can be a good thing. Up to a point. He gave her a warning glare over the top of his bifocals. But don’t carry it too far.

She shrugged. Just keep him out of my way and everything’s cool.

And anyway, Ken continued as if she’d never spoken, I really can’t spare Cudlow this afternoon. If you insist on attending Warden Green’s press conference, I’ll have to send him to the state capital to cover Petrov’s arrival tonight.

Kaitlyn’s mouth dropped. You can’t do that! I’ve been working on the Petrov piece for weeks!

Both stories are breaking and you can’t be in two places at once.

Kaitlyn hated it when he got all sensible. It usually meant that she was being unreasonable.

So what’s it to be, Kaitlyn? Petrov…or the prison break?

Decisions, decisions.

Kaitlyn bit her lip as she quickly weighed the possibilities. Okay, look. If you have to send Cudlow to the airport to cover Petrov’s arrival…that’s one thing. But don’t give him the story. I’m this close to getting an exclusive.

Ken’s gaze narrowed. How close?

Kaitlyn hesitated. I’ve almost got it wrapped up.

Not quite the truth, but thanks to some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by an old friend, Kaitlyn was inching closer to the get of a lifetime.

She might be a no-name reporter for a small-time newspaper in Podunk, Montana, but she had what even the network superstars didn’t have…an inside track with Nikolai Petrov.

Prince Nikolai Petrov to be exact.

The very sound of his name reminded Kaitlyn just how swoon-worthy the guy was. His good looks alone had melted feminine hearts all over the world, but since his impassioned speech before the United Nations, he’d reached near-rock-star status.

In a dazzling display of charm, integrity and sheer chutzpah, the crown prince of Lukinburg had implored the world community to step in and remove his own father from power for the sake of his impoverished and war-torn country. Then he’d embarked on a whirlwind tour across the country in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the American people in the event a U.N.-sanctioned, U.S.-led military invasion became necessary to overthrow King Aleksandr.

Each time the prince gave one of his heavily publicized speeches, his father would issue a stinging rebuttal from the safety of his palace in Lukinburg. The bitter family feud was being played out on the world stage, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher.

Working his way west, Petrov was due to arrive in Montana later that night as the VIP guest of Governor Peter Gilbert, and as luck would have it, Eden McClain, one of Kaitlyn’s oldest and closest friends, just happened to be the governor’s personal assistant.

Eden had been an invaluable source since Gilbert’s reelection campaign had entered its final weeks, providing Kaitlyn access to the governor’s inner circle that even reporters from some of the more prestigious papers in the state were denied.

In return, Kaitlyn tried not to cross boundaries that would strain her and Eden’s friendship, but with a Petrov exclusive on the line, she hadn’t been able to resist pressuring her friend to use her connections.

Kaitlyn gritted her teeth as she gripped the steering wheel. While she was stuck