Fugitive. Shirlee McCoy
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nudged the log deeper into the fire. Sparks flew, wood crackled and something banged against the back door.
She jumped, whirling to face the door and whatever was outside it.
The wind.
It had to be.
But her racing pulse said different. So did the hair standing up on the back of her neck.
Bang!
The door shuddered, the weight of whatever was out there seeming to press in, demanding entry.
She grabbed the fireplace poker and walked to the door. “Who’s there?”
No one answered.
She hadn’t really expected anyone to because she couldn’t imagine that anyone was wandering through the mountains during a winter storm. A tree branch must have flown into the door.
Two tree branches?
The wind was certainly blowing hard enough to tear off pieces of old pine trees, and there were plenty of those around the cabin.
She opened the door, determined to prove it to herself.
A shadow lurched through the doorway, white and gray and strangely dead looking. She screamed, and screamed again as the figure stumbled into her, knocking her to the ground.
Breathless, she twisted, fighting against deadweight and icy cold, then realizing suddenly that she was fighting herself. That her attacker was limp and heavy and motionless. She shoved him sideways and scrambled out from beneath him, her breath panting.
The poker! Where was it?
She snatched it from the ground, backing away, her heart pounding wildly in her ears.
Go! Now! Before he gets up!
She reached blindly, grabbing her purse from the hook near the front door, snatching her coat from the rocking chair and never taking her eyes off the motionless man.
The dead man?
Snow blew across his prone body, the back door banging against his legs and feet as the wind tried to push it shut. No response from him. Not even a twitch. Facedown, features hidden, everything about him still and silent.
She took a step closer, afraid he was dead.
Dark hair. Orange jumpsuit that looked crisp and frozen rather than wet. It had to be prison issue, which meant he had to be a prisoner. An escaped one. The state prison was twenty miles away. Had he walked that far?
Did it matter?
She needed to get out before he got up. Run before he recovered enough to take a hostage.
She turned her back to him, her hands shaking as she unlocked the front door. She’d head down the mountain, find a spot where she could get a cell phone signal and call the police.
“Help me.”
Two words. Raw and hot and rasping.
She wanted to ignore them.
She couldn’t.
She pressed her back to the door and kept her hand on the knob. “I’ll call for help as soon as I get far enough down the mountain to get a signal. You’ll be okay until the rescue crew gets here.”
“Don’t.” He raised his head, his eyes midnight-blue in his gray-white face. Dark lashes wet from melting snow. Blood seeping down his face.
His very familiar face.
“Logan?” It couldn’t be.
She knelt beside him, her hand shaking as she touched his cheek and brushed hair from his forehead, looking for the thin white scar near his hairline.
There. Just like she’d known it would be.
“What happened?” she whispered.
His eyes drifted closed, and he didn’t respond.
She grabbed a blanket from the trunk at the end of the bed, her throat aching with all the memories she’d shoved out of her mind and done her very best to forget.
“You have to get up. I need to close the door, and you’ve got to warm up.” She slid her arm around his shoulders, tried to nudge him into motion. He felt different. Thirteen years had built muscle and weight on his lean frame, made the twenty-year-old kid that he’d been into a man.
A wanted man.
She shuddered, the cold wetness of his jumpsuit seeping into her sweater and jeans as she tried to maneuver him out of the doorway. He rolled onto his back, his hand capturing hers so unexpectedly that her heart jumped. Cuffs clanked, the frigid metal burning against her arm, Logan’s grip tight and hard as he pulled her closer.
“Laney?” he rasped, his breath hot against her cheek.
“Yes.”
“Go.”
“What?”
“Leave. Now.” He released his hold, grabbed the edges of the blanket with dead-white hands and turned onto his side, closing her out in a way he’d never done when she’d been a little girl desperate for someone to believe in.
“Your hands may be frostbitten. We need to get—”
He snatched her wrist and yanked her so close she could see every fleck of silver in his eyes. He had blood on his cheek, frozen against his grayish skin, and blood on the front of his jumpsuit. “We don’t need to do anything. You need to go.”
His words were slurred, his body stiff as he released his grip and struggled to his feet.
She didn’t touch him this time. Didn’t try to help as he shuffled to the fireplace and dropped down in front of it.
Thirteen years was a long time.
He could have become anyone or anything in those years.
But she still couldn’t leave him.
She owed him too much.
She set the teakettle on the propane stove and took coffee from the box of supplies she’d left on the table.
“Did you hear me? I want you to leave,” he said, his back to Laney, the blanket shrouding his head and covering his shoulders. Melted snow pooled around him, tinged pink with blood.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not your problem.” He didn’t move, didn’t glance her way.
“There’s a first aid kit in my Jeep. I’ll—”
“You don’t seem to get it, Laney. Being around me is dangerous. You need to leave while you still can.”
She took another blanket from the chest and threw it over his shoulders. “Here. Coffee will be ready in a minute.”
Suddenly, he was up, looming over her. Cold, cold expression and fiery eyes, a stranger lurking behind an old friend’s face. She shivered and tried to step back, but he held her in place with his eyes and the sheer force of his will.
“I’m a felon, Laney. Tried and convicted. You want to spend the night in this cabin with me? You want to risk that?”
“I—”
“Drive off this mountain and forget you ever saw me.” He dropped back down in front of the fire, shivering beneath the blanket. Closed in and closed up and absolutely committed to chasing Laney away.
The small part of her, the remnant of the scared kid she’d been when she’d run from Green Bluff, wanted to give him what he wanted. The other part, the bigger part, refused to. He’d helped her all those years ago. If not for Logan, she’d never have gotten her college degree, become an interior designer, met William and married him. Without Logan, the Laney she was now wouldn’t exist.
She took the keys from her purse and stepped out into the