Shirlee McCoy - Fugitive

“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 blowing snow, heading for the Jeep and the first aid kit she kept there. No matter what Logan had become, no matter who, she’d make sure he was warm and dry and safe because, once upon a time, he’d done exactly the same for her.

TWO

Cold.

Hot.

Logan wasn’t sure which he was, but he was shaking violently, his teeth knocking together.

He shouldn’t have sent Laney away. She had a Jeep, a way off the mountain. All he had were frozen fingers and leaden feet, but he couldn’t pull her into his troubles. Couldn’t risk her life in an effort to save his own.

Laney. Grown up and confident, her soft green eyes looking straight into his. It had been thirteen years since he’d handed her two thousand dollars and a bus ticket to Seattle, but he’d have known her anywhere. Her pretty face and solemn eyes. Her white-blond hair that had only darkened a little as she’d grown older. He’d seen her in the window of her parents’ oversize home the day that he’d arrived at Mildred and Josiah Mackey’s place. He’d been nearly fifteen and in so much trouble that a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere was the only place that would have him. He hadn’t been interested in the tiny little blonde with her perfect hair and perfect life. Until he’d realized that nothing about Laney’s life was perfect. Then, he’d wanted nothing more than to free her from the prison in which she lived.

He wrapped the blanket tightly around his shoulders, the memories more vivid than they should have been. Hypothermia?

Probably.

He’d warm up, though. Find some way to rid himself of the cuffs. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he had unlimited time. The police were already on the hunt. So were the men who’d run the cruiser off the road. He had to warm up quickly and get moving again. And come up with a plan to prove his innocence.

He grabbed a mug from a cupboard and poured hot water from the whistling teakettle into it, his hands burning as he wrapped them around the ceramic.

“Logan?” Laney’s voice came from far away, and he realized he’d closed his eyes and was leaning against the counter, the mug still cradled in his hands. He blinked, trying to bring her into focus.

No perfect hair now.

Curls escaped her long braid, falling against smooth, pale cheeks. She looked scared. She should be.

He straightened, setting the cup on the counter. “I told you to leave.”

“You have a pretty deep cut. You’re going to need stitches.” She ignored the comment and dabbed his temple with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

He smelled the fumes but felt nothing.

Not a good sign.

“What do you suggest? A trip to the nearest hospital?” He motioned toward his prison uniform, the cuffs on his wrists clanking.

“I see you haven’t outgrown your sarcasm.” She dabbed at the cut again, swiping a fresh cotton ball down his cheek.

“I’m afraid your parents were never quite able to beat it out of me,” he responded and regretted it immediately. He had outgrown sarcasm and his need for revenge. He had become what he’d always wanted to be, part of a community that he had loved, doing a job that he’d loved. Even, for a while, married to a woman that he’d loved.

An image of Amanda flashed through his mind.

Broken glass and her broken body and his own helplessness.

He pushed the memory away.

“I should be able to butterfly the wound closed, but you’re probably going to have a scar.” Laney rifled through a large first aid kit, her fingers long and delicate, the knuckles of her right hand scarred.

It would be so easy for those hands to break, so easy for the light in her eyes to be snuffed out.

“Laney, I want you to leave.” He bit the words out, forcing himself to move away. The cuffs on his wrists felt heavy and cold. His body also felt heavy and cold, but he had to get her out of his life.

“I can’t.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Weren’t you the one who once told me I had a million choices?” She pulled butterfly bandages from the kit. “Sit down so I can do this.”

“I could be a murderer. A serial killer planning to make you my next victim,” he spit out because it was all he had left, his last push to get her out of the cabin and to safety.

“In your current condition, I doubt you could make an ant your next victim.” She pressed the bandage to his temple, her eyes cool and calm, her hand shaking.