Shirlee McCoy - Fugitive

He glanced around, searching for signs of civilization. He knew the area well, but that didn’t mean he could find his way to safety. This part of eastern Washington was sparsely populated, the mountains dotted with hunting cabins. If he could find a hunting trail, make his way to a cabin, he’d live through the night. If he couldn’t...

He refused the thought and kept slogging toward the top of the ridge, breath panting, body shaking with cold. The sirens faded, the wind’s howl the only sound in the deepening storm.

The handcuffs weighed him down, the freezing metal only adding to the cold bite of the wind. He was shivering convulsively, and he knew what that meant. He had to get to shelter, and he had to do it fast.

His feet were frozen logs, catching on every hidden rock and jutting root. He caught himself once, twice, fell the third time, going down hard. Winded, he lay where he’d fallen, the snow more comfortable than it should have been, the cold not so cold anymore.

He forced himself up, disoriented, not sure which direction he’d been heading or where he’d come from. Trees to the left, the right, up ahead...

He squinted, sure he saw a glimmer of light through the trees, distant but beckoning.

God, please let it be more than a hallucination.

He moved toward it, the trees blocking, then revealing, then blocking his view again.

Still there.

All he had to do was keep walking.

* * *

Gusting wind rattled the cabin’s windows and howled beneath its eves, the sounds shivering along Laney Jefferson’s spine as she bent over the cold hearth and built a fire. Outside, fat snowflakes fell from the purple-blue sky and lay thick on the roof of the Jeep. It was stupid to have made this trip in the dead of winter, but putting it off wouldn’t have made it any more appealing. Besides, Valentine’s Day was just a week away, and she’d rather spend it cleaning out her parents’ house than spend it alone in Seattle.

Stopping at William’s cabin on the way to Green Bluff had made sense when she’d been planning the trip to her childhood home. Clean out the cabin, clean out her parents’ house, clean out the cobwebs of the past that seemed to be keeping her from moving into the future. She’d been praying about the trip since she’d gotten the letter from her father’s attorney saying that she’d inherited Mackey Manor and the hundred acres of farmland that went with it.

She’d wanted to turn her back on the legacy, wanted to go on pretending that her life had started the day she’d left Green Bluff and run to Seattle, but she’d had no peace about it.

She’d spent three months planning and plotting and trying to convince herself that she should return to the place she despised. Those months had made her realize just how easily she’d shoved aside her childhood and how tightly she’d been holding on to the dreams she’d built with William. Dreams that had died with him.

Move on.

That had become her mantra.

So, it had made perfect sense to take a two-week vacation in the middle of February, make the trip back across Washington, tying up the loose ends of her life as she went.

She wasn’t sure how much sense it made now that the storm of the century was blowing through the eastern part of the state.

She shoved paper under the fire log she’d brought from home, struck a match and tossed it in. If William had been around, he’d have taken care of that. He’d also have braved the wind and snow to grab logs from the back porch. He wasn’t, so Laney went herself, pulling her hood over her hair and walking out the back door. Frigid wind cut through her coat and chilled her to the bone as she lifted an armful of wood from the neat pile that William had left on the covered back porch the last time they’d been there.

Two and a half years ago.

Had it really been that long?

They’d been married less time than that. Just eighteen months, and she’d thought they would have forever. Instead, she’d been without William for longer than she’d been with him.

She walked back inside, the wind slamming the door closed behind her. She ignored it as she chose the driest log and set it on top of the burning kindling. It was easy enough to make a fire. She’d learned the skill years ago, but doing this herself, here where she and William had once bent close and worked together, it hurt more than she’d expected it to.

She 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.