To the Xtreme (Xtreme Ops #2) - Em Petrova Page 0,1

work. He had to continually remind himself to unplug, shut down the internal grind of his mind.

When the sun reached high in the sky, he found a clearing in the trees and stopped.

Staring across the lowlands he’d just hiked, a sense of peace gripped him. Like having a hot cup of coffee on a frigid morning at camp before his teammates climbed out of their tents. Or knowing he’d gone the distance to serve and protect.

He reached out and gripped the tall, thin pine tree in front of him to get a closer look. The clouds were blowing away from Denali, revealing the majestic snow-capped peak.

Above his head came a loud crack and Lipton ducked, his body trained to find cover in an instant. His feet went out from under him, and he slammed into the bruising earth just as branches and pine rushed at him. He reached for his weapon out of instinct, but he never laid hands on it.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t register anything but the gritty scent of dirt and sap. Then a pair of warm green and gold eyes burned down into his.

Someone was trying to kill him. What else could have happened?

He must be losing his fucking mind. He couldn’t even take a vacation without fucking it up and conjuring some danger that wasn’t really there.

“Are you okay? Can you hear me?” The green eyes were attached to a voice, as soft as the whisper of breeze through the pines just before that blast sent him into full alert mode.

Lipton’s memory sparked in his temporal lobe, and he dug the heels of his hands into the forest floor to push upward.

“Don’t move fast. You could be injured.”

He turned his head to see more than the green eyes. A crunchy-granola type of woman sat there wearing all green. Her curly hair had one small braid tied with a gold thread at the bottom that brushed across the top of her breast.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m one of the park rangers here in Denali. It’s my job to help lost hikers…or lift the top of a pine off a big, muscled man.” She pointed to a pile of branches to the side of where he sat.

He shook his head, trying to make sense of what happened. “What the hell?”

“I didn’t see it, but I heard it. Looks as if that treetop snapped, probably weakened from high winds and snow, and it fell on you.”

He raised a hand and scrubbed it over his face. That explained the branches rushing toward him. Had he blacked out? What a damn sissy, he could hear his fellow Xtreme Ops team member, Hepburn, ribbing him now.

“I’m trained to check for concussion. Can you tell me your name?” the woman asked.

“No. I can’t.” He shoved to his feet, but the instant his boot tread touched down, his ankle folded.

He collapsed, hitting the ground hard again. A stick cut into his palm, and he issued a low growl of fury.

“Oh my God! Your ankle is clearly broken.”

“No way.”

“It went out from under you. I’m pretty sure it’s broken,” she insisted.

He shoved to a standing position again, leaning all his weight onto the opposite foot. There—he was up. Nothing broken. No—

As soon as he set his foot down, his ankle buckled again. This time, pain shot through him, and he grabbed his calf.

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