Perilous Christmas Reunion. Laurie Alice Eakes
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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.”
Lauren crossed her arms over her chest and grasped her elbows to stop herself from shaking—from cold or in response to the fury on Chris’s face, she wasn’t quite sure. “I know your gun was there. I felt it when I was helping you get up, but I didn’t take it.”
Chris pressed one hand to his head, where blood still trickled along his hairline, then bent to roll aside a log at the same moment a crack of gunfire reverberated from the trees.
“Get inside,” Chris shouted.
Lauren was already running for the open door. Chris caught up and grabbed her hand. Her moccasins slipped on the doorsill, and she landed on her knees. Chris edged past her, then bent to catch hold of her arms and haul her to her feet. A sharp hiss of breath through his teeth reminded Lauren he was injured, and she freed herself from his grip so she could slip her arm around his waist and propel him through the door.
It was two-inch-thick, oak with a steel core, meant to withstand a Michigan winter or the worst summer storm. Lauren slammed it and threw the two dead bolts into place. The storm shutters were already closed, save for the one over the front window. Chris lunged for that one and banged it shut. A moment later, another shot cracked, muffled by the cabin’s thick walls, but the walls weren’t so thick Lauren missed the thud of a bullet striking the window frame.
“What are they doing?” She flung herself to the floor below the level of the window. “Who is shooting at us?”
“Maybe you can tell me.” Pallor emphasizing the deep blue of his eyes, Chris sank onto the edge of the leather sofa. “Your brother?”
“But—” Lauren stood and leaned against the wall, her heart racing as though she had just finished swimming across the lake “—that wasn’t you shooting at Ryan?”
“I never saw Ryan. Where did he go?”
“He took off when the shooting started.”
Chris gazed at her with narrowed eyes, then glanced toward the steps to the bedrooms above and back to her. “You know, if you harbor a fugitive, you’re an accessory—”
“He isn’t here.” Lauren flung her arms wide, nearly knocking a poinsettia off a low table. “Go look for yourself, if you don’t believe me. I know that’s why you’re here. I should have known you’d come here first.”
“I was on my way to see my family when the news hit.”
“And your first thought was that Lauren would protect her brother.” She blinked hard against hot moisture in her eyes.