Page 59 of One Last Stand

She shook her head.

“And then maybe you will see that you are?—”

“I know who I am.”

“Do you? Becauseyoucame to us. Twice. Even after trying to leave. You have the heart of a Black Swan.”

“Really? What is that?” She had found the remote control for the hearth, now converted to gas, and turned it on. It whooshed to life, the flames flickering orange and yellow. She sat on the curved sofa.

“A black swan is rare yet creates a great impact. A black swan can change the world with its courage and bravery.”

“I’ve read that black swans are bad luck.”

“You make your own luck, Laney.”

“I finish this, and I walk away.”

“With your mountain man?”

She glanced at the door. She’d sort of expected him to come over after he’d gotten settled.

“He was the one from the avalanche?”

She lay down, staring at the ornate ceiling with the medallion around the chandelier. “Yes. He practically tackled me, skis and all, into the chalet—a one-room building with a kitchen and bathroom. The avalanche hit us, and I’m not sure how, but he sort of threw me into the bathtub—this deep claw-foot affair—then the whole chalet exploded with snow. Terrifying. He started on top of me, to protect me, but ended up under the tub in a pocket there. I heard him shouting, and then he shoveled out a space for his hand. I saw it and we got him free and into the tub. We were in this pocket. Shep figured the vent to the fan had come down but kept an access to air. Anyway, that’s where we stayed for three days while his friends tried to find us.”

“And he never said why he was there?”

“He’s a skier, and he loves big snow—I thought maybe . . . but . . .”

“Lucky he was there.”

“Yeah. Real lucky.” She hadn’t really thought about that before—the fact that Shep, the one man she’d pined for, had showed up on the mountain to save her life.

Okay, she had thought about it, but she’d dismissed it as a crazy coincidence.

What if ithadn’tbeen a coincidence?

“Did you know that Shep was assigned to watch over me?”

Silence. “By whom?”

“Colt Kingston.”

A beat. “He works for the Caleb Group, a sort of off-books, behind-the-scenes, get-’er-done organization created by the current president. Not sure why they’d want to keep an eye on you, but—well, my friend Roy works for them.”

“Shep isn’t a spy.”

“People are not what they seem.”

“Shep is. What you see is what you get. And that’s who I need. Who I want.”

More silence.

“Listen, I’m over Ruslan. It was a long time ago. And Tomas wasn’t real. And Shep . . . he is both real and heroic. And . . . he’s here with me.”

She could almost see Ziggy’s expression, those dark eyes widening, then the frown. “You brought him to Montelena?”

“He refused to stay behind.”