Shirlee McCoy - Fugitive

She frowned, her hands tight on the steering wheel, snow swirling as she inched down the long driveway. She’d given herself two weeks to clean out the cabin and her parents’ house. Two weeks to get them both on the market and return to her interior design job and to her clients.

She hadn’t expected it to be easy, but she had expected it to go smoothly. She’d planned everything out—called the lawyer who’d handled her father’s estate after he’d died and asked him to have the electricity turned back on at the farmhouse, contacted a real estate agent and a contractor, asked friends to water her plants while she was gone.

Yeah, she’d planned everything out, but she hadn’t planned on Logan.

Hadn’t planned on having to turn her back on a part of the past that was suddenly very much in the present.

She flipped on the heat, trying to drive away the chill in her bones.

A light flashed somewhere below. It was just a glimmer that she wasn’t even sure she’d seen, but her pulse jumped, adrenaline streaming through her blood.

Just keep going, keep driving.

She wanted to, but her foot had a mind of its own, pressing on the brake so that the Jeep eased to a stop.

She sat for a moment, peering into the storm, her body tense as she waited for some sign that there really was someone else on the mountain.

There! Another glimmer of light.

The police?

Someone worse?

She thought about Logan, completely unaware of the threat closing in on him.

Just. Keep. Going.

But she couldn’t.

He’d done too much for her all those years ago, and she couldn’t leave without warning him.

She put her car in reverse and backed toward the cabin, her heart racing with fear. Logan had warned her that trouble was coming. He’d told her to leave. Alone, though, trapped on the mountain with no transportation, he’d die.

She couldn’t let that happen.

No matter how terrified she was.

* * *

Danger.

Logan could feel it coming as he put on a coat that he’d found in the closet and shoved his feet into hiking boots that were a size too small. He tucked the gun into one pocket of the coat and extra ammo into the other, then searched the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, grabbing matches and a slender paring knife. He shoved the first into his back pocket and tucked the other into his boot. This wasn’t his way, digging through other people’s things and searching for whatever he could put to use. He felt like the criminal the jury had said he was.

He doused the fire and turned off the lights.

He stood in the pitch blackness of the cabin and prayed that God would lead him down the mountain and to safety.

Headlights splashed across the front windows, and he knew that he needed to run. He wanted to run, but he felt weak, shaky, still disoriented, his body trying to thaw but still so cold that his teeth chattered.

Going outside to toss the jumpsuit had been risky, but he’d had to do it. For Laney’s sake. Maybe even for his own. He didn’t want there to be any link between the two of them.

He walked to the back door, his legs heavy, his mind sluggish. Another hour in the cold would probably kill him. He knew it, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Die trying to live, or give up and just die?

Footsteps pounded on the front porch, and he pulled the gun, waited as the doorknob turned and aimed as the door flew open.

Someone raced into the cabin, whirled in the darkness, hair swinging in a long pale rope.

“Logan?” Laney called, her slender figure silhouetted against the gray night revealed by the open door.

“Do you know how close you just came to dying?” Logan growled, his legs weak from what had almost happened. If he hadn’t served as a police officer for a decade, he might have pulled the trigger before he realized who was on the other end of the barrel.

“You can lecture me later. I saw lights down the mountain. We have to get out of here.” She grabbed his hand and yanked him out into the storm.

He let her because sending her alone toward whatever was coming up the mountain felt like sending a lamb into a lion’s den.

“Are you sure you saw lights?”

“Yes. I’m not sure if they were on the road or in the woods, but they shouldn’t have been there. There’s nothing between here and the highway but trees.” She opened the door of her Jeep, motioned for him to climb in then ran to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. “Should I head down or up? The road goes both ways.”

“How far up are we talking? Can we get to the other side of the mountain or will we hit a dead end somewhere?”

“I don’t know. William and I never walked to the end of the road. The farthest we ever went was a couple of miles.”

“I think we’d better try it. Worst-case scenario, we’ll get out and walk down the other side of the mountain.”

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but he’d rather ride away from certain danger than into it.

“Okay.” Laney pulled away from the cabin, the Jeep crawling along the driveway, the headlights off. Snow lightened the road they turned onto, swirling down into a valley far below. The wind had died, and the trees were still and quiet. Nothing but the snow moved, and that made Logan nervous. The Jeep shimmying from side to side as Laney inched up the road made him nervous, too. If they tumbled off the side of the mountain, they wouldn’t have to worry about running out of road or running into trouble.

He shifted in his seat, searching the area behind them, probing the woods. A light pierced the darkness, too bright to be a flashlight, too still to be headlights. The cabin? Another light appeared. Windows illuminating the darkness. His heart jerked.

“Think we can go any faster?” he asked, and Laney tensed.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice was tight, her grip white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

“It looks like there’s someone at the cabin.”

“The police?”

“No.” There’d be flashing emergency lights, more motion and action.

“How much of a head start do you think we have?”

“If they’re on foot, plenty.”

“What if they’re not?”

“How about we just keep moving forward?”

“Funny. That’s why I came to the cabin this weekend. To move forward,” she said quietly, her voice shaking.

“Yeah?” He wanted to keep her focused on the conversation rather than her fear and the threat that was following them.

“My father left me the family property when he died. I’m supposed to be in Green Bluff tomorrow night so that I can clean out the house and get it ready to go on the market.”

“You’re selling your parents’ place?” The property had been sitting vacant for twelve years. Logan had driven past it several times a week when he was on the force. Every time, he’d thanked God that the Mackeys had gotten what they’d deserved and that Laney hadn’t had to suffer for their crimes.

“Like I said, I’m trying to move forward. Strange how I finally made the decision to let go of the past and one of the biggest parts of it is suddenly in my life again.” She laughed a little, but there was more sadness than humor in the sound.

“I’m sorry, Laney.”

“For what?”

“Coming back into your life.”

“It’s not like you planned it, Logan. It happened the same way as the first time you did. God worked it out. Who are either of us to say that it’s not for the best?”

She had a point, but that didn’t change the fact that Logan had endangered her or that every minute that they were together the danger grew.

They rounded a sharp curve, the car fishtailing and sliding toward the two-hundred-foot drop to their right. Laney wrangled the vehicle back into the middle of the road, her breath coming in short quick gasps.