Perilous Christmas Reunion. Laurie Alice Eakes
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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