Buch lesen: «Perilous Christmas Reunion»

ONE

Lauren Wexler spied the man the instant he stepped from beneath the shadowing tree branches and into the clearing. Moonlight reflecting off snow lit him like a stage spotlight, highlighting the chiseled bones of his face and dark hollows of his eyes, his long form more skinny than lean.

Heart thudding hard enough to make her sick to her stomach, Lauren left the picture window and flung open the door. A gust of wind seized it from her hand, sending it slamming back against its stopper and flames hissing and roaring in the stove. Knowing the gusts from the coming storm would snatch away her words, she stepped onto the deck and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ryan Delaney, I told you not to come here.”

“Lauren, you’ve got to help me.” He started racing toward her, his footfalls crunching through the ice-topped snow. “Please.”

“I can’t.” She stepped over the threshold and reached for the door handle.

Ryan might be her older brother, but he was also a wanted man.

“You need to turn yourself in.” She started to close the door.

Ryan had nearly reached the deck. “But, Lauren, they’re going to—”

A shot rang out from the nearby trees, and Ryan landed on the deck’s bottom step, hand scrabbling at the ice-coated wood.

“Ryan!”

Wounded or making himself a lower profile for the shooter?

“Ryan?” She called his name again.

“Help me.” He tried hauling himself up the treads, but slipped back to the piled snow at the foot of the steps. “Help me.”

He must be wounded. She couldn’t leave him there in the cold, in danger. But she could get shot herself if she went to him.

Criminal or not, he was her brother, her half brother to be precise, and needed help.

Crouching below the deck rails to make herself a more difficult target, she crawled to the steps. Lying flat, she reached down the steps to grasp Ryan’s hand. “Can you crawl up the steps? I can—”

Another gun blast reverberated over the frozen lake and leafless trees. This time, she heard the buzz of a bullet not far enough over her head for comfort. Her heart stuttered.

Ryan grasped her wrist. “Go back inside before they...hurt you.”

“Who?”

“Get inside...now.” Ryan squeezed her hand, then scrambled to his feet and pounded across the lakeshore to the woods on the other side of the clearing. Even the clouds beginning to obscure the moonlight could not blot out the dark stain on the snow where Ryan had lain, nor the patches left in his wake.

He was injured and running for his life, leading the shooter away from her.

After he’d pressed something small and hard into her hand.

She shoved the plastic rectangle into her pocket and stared after her brother’s retreating form. She wanted to follow, to bind up his wound. She knew locking herself in the house made more sense. Sending away a fugitive brother was one thing. Sending away a wounded fugitive brother without offering aid first was quite another.

Two more shots in rapid succession decided her action. She started to rise enough to creep back into the house.

“Freeze! Deputy US Marshal.” The voice rang through the night, shooting into Lauren’s heart like one of the flying bullets.

Deputy US Marshal. Of course, they were hunting Ryan. Thousands of marshals existed. He could be any of them. It didn’t have to be him.

Heart racing, Lauren charged toward the still-open door. Bullets whizzed past her head. One slammed into the doorjamb, the other soared into the house’s interior. Lauren dived for the floor of the deck and rolled behind the woodpile.

More gunfire exploded.

This time not from the trees.

A whimper escaping her lips despite her best efforts, Lauren curled into a fetal position behind the cords of wood stacked at the end of the deck. She shivered so hard from cold and fright she feared her chattering teeth would chip. If someone didn’t shoot her, she was going to die from exposure. If only she had stayed in the house, closed the shutters, pretended she hadn’t seen her brother racing across the lakeshore...

“Drop your weapons.” Nearby, the authoritative voice cracked like breaking icicles—cold, sharp, familiar.

Silence fell. Lauren uncurled enough to peek around the end of the woodpile. She saw nothing but the trampled and stained snow where Ryan had run. She heard nothing but wind in the trees and the creak and crack of ice on the lake. Perhaps danger had moved on and she could return to the warmth of her house. Unable to feel anything but the warning tingle in her face, fingers and toes, Lauren crawled from behind the piled wood and started to rise.

Gunfire and shouts erupted across the clearing, one from the far side where Ryan had vanished, the other close at hand. Too close.

Before her shocked senses reacted, strong hands grasped her arms and dragged her back behind the woodpile. More gunfire. Louder. Closer. The man holding her grunted. One of his hands released. The other held tight, compelling her down, down, against the snow-coated wood. The logs rumbled and began to roll.

Lauren wrenched herself to one side, avoiding the avalanche. The man holding her wasn’t so fortunate. He landed hard, a deadweight with wood piling atop him.

A deadweight.

Lauren prayed he hadn’t been shot or killed, not for her sake. He’d had to rescue her because she was out trying to save her brother. If she hadn’t gone after Ryan, this wouldn’t have happened. Whether marshal or miscreant, she must help this man who had probably saved her life.

Conscious she was an easy next target, Lauren began to toss logs aside to get to the man beneath. He was going to be crushed. He was going to die. He might have been dead before the wood cascaded upon him. He had fallen against the cords of fuel immediately after the last gunfire.

Anxiety over the horror she might encounter didn’t stop her. In the event he still breathed, she couldn’t leave him there. She couldn’t take the time to call for help. Once she knew one way or the other, she would contact the emergency responders.

“Don’t let him be dead. Please, God, don’t let this man be dead.”

Removing another log, she saw he wasn’t crushed at all. Logs had tumbled in a pyramid over him, forming a hollow beneath. But he was injured. Blood marred the pristine snow, just as she’d feared. He had been shot.

The last of the wood sailed out of her hands and landed with a kerchunk atop its fellow sawed logs. Lauren got her first sight of the prone man from head to toe. He was tall and athletic, the latter obvious even through his bulky winter clothing. A rip in that clothing showed Lauren where the bullet had struck, yet no blood seeped from the hole. Instead, it matted his short dark hair.

For a moment, she stared at the hole in his coat. Then she touched it. No, the fabric was not absorbing any liquid. The wound was dry.

His head was another matter. If he’d been shot in the head, his situation could be dire. She needed to look, discover the extent and cause of the damage.

Not that she was much of a medic. Her skills lay in software engineering, not skull fractures.

Before inspecting the fallen man’s head wound more closely, Lauren checked for a pulse. Beneath his down coat, his skin was warm, his neck a little rough with a day’s growth of whiskers. But his pulse was strong. He was only unconscious.

And likely smothering in the snow. Somehow, she had to get him up and out of the frosty night before he died of hypothermia.

“Before we die of hypothermia.” Lauren spoke between teeth clenched to stop their chattering. “Sir, can you hear me? Sir?” She shook his shoulder.

He groaned.

“Sir, I need you to wake up and get into the house. I’m not strong enough to carry you.”

She was a small woman, and he was nearly twice her size.

“I can help you.”

Briefly, she recalled something about not moving someone with a head injury in the event their spine was involved. Moving the victim could cause more damage. Yet staying out in the cold would definitely cause damage—permanent damage, like death. Given the choice, she decided to do what she could to move him.

She curved one hand around the back of his neck and gripped his uninjured shoulder with the other to roll him onto his side. He groaned again and strong fingers inside leather gloves gripped her wrist.

“The other way.” He spoke in a raspy murmur, yet the voice was familiar—that authoritative ring, that masculine timbre.

Her heart squeezed at the idea of who this might be chasing down her brother, saving her from gunmen, making breathing difficult and speaking even harder. “You have a hole there. I didn’t want to grab the shoulder where you were shot and cause more harm.”

“Kevlar vest.” He took a deep breath and moaned.

Despite the softness of his words, she knew for certain who had saved her from a gunshot wound. Christopher Blackwell, the man she’d never expected to come near her again after how she’d treated him. And she was sure he wouldn’t have if her brother were not a fugitive and Chris weren’t a deputy US marshal.

If Chris weren’t a deputy US marshal, they would be married, not estranged.

As though nothing unpleasant had ever lain between them, he continued to speak. “Bullet didn’t go through, but hurts like...crazy. And my head...” He raised one hand toward his temple.

Lauren caught his wrist. “Don’t. You’re bleeding. You’ll ruin your gloves.”

She could play this we’re-just-strangers-caught-in-a-weird-situation-together game as well as he could.

“And I’m going to need them.”

He was right about that. Wind gusted off the lake, and clouds thickened across the moon.

The chattering of Lauren’s teeth increased too much to disguise, and she wished blood wasn’t smeared over her hands so she could free her hair from its nighttime braid to serve as a sort of cloak for her ears and shoulders.

“We c-can’t stay out-t here any l-longer.” She shuddered with the next blast of damp wind. “How can I best get you up?”

“Can you get one arm beneath me? You’re just a little thing, but even a bit of a boost should help get me going in the right direction.”

He had always referred to her as being “a little thing.” The memory stabbed her like an icicle to the heart. Slipping her arm around him, feeling the power of his body, the heat through his coat, would be like an entire eave’s worth of icicles piercing the wall of her chest—the barricade she’d erected around her emotions.

But her exposed skin had long ago begun to tingle, and if she didn’t want frostbite, she needed to get him up and into the house.

“Okay, ready?” Her face turned toward the woods, where the branches had begun to lash the darkening sky, Lauren slipped one arm beneath Chris’s shoulders. Her hand touched cold snow and colder metal, as she curled her fingers around the bulky muscle of his upper arm. Not until she heaved with all her strength did she realize the metal must belong to his gun. It had either slipped from his holster when he fell, or he had been holding it, ready to fire. Or...

She jerked her hand away. “Did you shoot my brother?”

Chris started to sigh in exasperation. Pain shot through his back, bruised, no doubt, from the bullet that had slammed into his vest, so he settled for a quick puff through his clenched teeth. “I did not shoot your brother. It’s quite likely the other way around.”

“Ryan would never shoot at either of us. Besides, he has never carried a gun.” Lauren spoke with the harsh defense of her brother she always had, though she knew he operated outside the law more often than not.

The same sort of defense that had driven a tractor trailer–sized wedge between Chris and Lauren five years ago.

Remembered anguish roughened Chris’s tone when he responded. “He stole one from the courtroom deputy today.”

“But that—”

“Save it, Lauren. Someone has been out here shooting, and they may be circling around for a better shot.”

“Someone shot Ryan.” She scrambled to her feet. “He fell. He was bleeding.”

If he was wounded, Chris had a better chance of capturing him. Maybe Ryan would be back in custody by no later than tomorrow, Christmas Eve, and no one else would have to sacrifice their holiday to continue the pursuit.

“Your head is bleeding pretty badly yourself.” Lauren’s tone softened. “Do you still need me to help you up?”

“No, ma’am.” Chris grabbed a stick of kindling from the disordered cords of wood and used it as a crutch to haul himself to his feet. He swayed, feeling as though each gust of wind from the oncoming storm could blow him over.

Lauren touched his arm. “Let me help you inside before you fall down.”

“I’m all right.” He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t bring himself to read anger or disgust with his work in her beautiful face.

“Sure, you’re all right. You always wobble when you’re standing still.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm, though she wrapped her arm around his waist. “Put your arm around my shoulders and we’ll get into the house before we turn into snowpeople...or get shot.”

“If I fall again, I’ll drag you down with me.”

He regretted the words the instant he said them. They were too much of a reminder of her words when she broke their engagement.

With the way people think, if my family falls, my credibility may go down with them, regardless of how innocent I am. And I would drag your career as a marshal with me.

“I’m sorry.” Chris slung an arm over her shoulders more as an apology than because he needed her physical support.

She said nothing. Head bowed, she trekked through the snow more slowly than he liked with at least one gunman possibly still lurking in the trees biding his time for—what? A better shot at the deputy marshal, if it was Ryan who had done the firing? For Ryan to reappear, if this was a separate gunman? Chris hadn’t seen Ryan, or anyone other than Lauren. He had seen only the muzzle flashes, heard the shots echoing from the trees and across the frozen lake.

Chris fought the urge to run. He wasn’t sure he could, and Lauren wore ridiculous slipper things on her feet that would probably make her fall at a faster gait. They didn’t have far to go along the length of the deck. Their footfalls made nearly no sound in the powdered snow blown across the boards. In contrast, the wind through the bare tree branches sounded like torrential rain. Ice along the shoreline cracked with the onslaught of rising waves. Although the first flakes of snow heralded the coming storm, Lauren no longer shivered. Chris understood why—maybe. Lauren’s nearness warmed him, and she might feel the same, despite the coldness that had frozen communication between them when he’d changed career paths.

The fifteen feet to the door felt like fifteen miles. So close to Lauren, Chris caught her scent, sweet and delicate like orange blossoms. He tried not to breathe. He tried not to remember how being near her had once made him feel.

They reached the house. Through the open door, heat from the wood-burning stove poured over them like hot syrup, along with the fragrance of bacon and fresh bread and sugar cookies.

“I’ll just grab my first-aid kit.” She called out her intent without looking back, then raced for the bathroom.

Chris closed and bolted the door, then headed for the stove with its radiating heat. It needed another log to really be effective. With a gunman probably still outside somewhere, he should close her shutters and—

He clapped his hand to his side. His gun. It wasn’t in its holster. He had removed it to fire back at the rifleman in the trees long enough for Lauren to get to safety. Riflemen in the trees. More than one shooter. He had made the rookie mistake of thinking all he heard behind him were echoes. Apparently another man had been behind him, shooting him in the back, and he had fallen, logs burying him and crashing into his head so hard he feared he lost consciousness for a minute or two. He must have dropped the gun when he fell.

Cautious, all too aware the fugitive was likely still armed from his daring escape from the courtroom that morning, Chris opened the door. Wind threatened to snatch it from his hand. He muscled the door shut behind him and paused to listen.

If anyone still lurked in the trees, the wind masked any sound they made. Scudding clouds and waving branches disguised anything else moving in the shadows. But he dared not leave his weapon in the snow. He might want it. Judging from how the night was going, he would need it.

Still dizzy from the blow to his head, his upper back throbbing with every breath, Chris braced one hand against the side of the house to traverse the fifteen feet to the woodpile at the end of the deck. He was partially sheltered there by the house and the stacked cordwood. No one raced along the lakeshore or across the frozen water. But those trees could hold any kind of menace.

He dropped to a crouch and began to hunt for his weapon amid the disordered logs. Nothing. No glint of waning moonlight on steel. No unmistakable dark shape against the snow. The place where he had fallen was clear of wood. Blood from his head wound was a dark stain against the white. Yet no gun lay amid the wreckage.

He guessed what had happened to it. Lauren had stopped while investigating his injuries and accused him of shooting her brother, most likely because she had found his weapon.

“Chris?” Lauren called from the doorway.

“Stop.” He turned and held up his hand, palm toward her.

She stopped on the threshold. “Do you need my help?”

“I need your help all right.” His insides as cold as the lake, Chris stalked toward the door. “You can help by telling me what you did with my gun.”

Lauren stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“My gun.” He gestured toward the ground where he’d been lying. “My weapon. It isn’t here.”