Shirlee McCoy - Fugitive

“You doing okay?” he asked.

“This is crazy, Logan. We could be navigating switchbacks for hours, and in this kind of weather, it’s just not safe.”

“Want me to drive?” He’d driven in worse conditions, and he wasn’t as nervous as she seemed to be. At this point, that could only play in their favor.

“Yes.” The Jeep rolled to a stop, trees pressing in on one side, a gray expanse of nothing to the other, the road barely visible ahead.

“Hold on.” Logan grabbed Laney’s wrist before she could open the door. Her pulse throbbed rapidly beneath her skin, but her face was cool and composed.

“What?”

“I’ll come around. You can just slide over. No sense in both of us going out in the cold again.” He didn’t give her time to argue, just got out of the Jeep.

Snow crunched beneath Logan’s feet as he rounded the car, the scent of pine and the crisp winter air reminding him of home. It had been eight months since he’d been back there. Eight months since he’d hiked the bluff behind his house and inhaled the cold clean air.

He wanted to go home. He wanted it so badly, he could taste it. Every cell in his body yearned for it. Home was all he’d ever dreamed of when he was a kid. He hadn’t wanted fancy clothes or toys or things. He’d just wanted that safe landing place, that soft spot where nothing mattered but just being.

He slid behind the wheel, taking one last deep lungful of air and catching a faint whiff of something sharp and bitter.

Fire!

He was back outside almost before the thought could register, scanning the forest below, searching for a spot of color, a plume of smoke, something to prove what his gut was saying.

“Logan? What’s wrong?” Laney appeared at his elbow.

“Maybe nothing.” But in the distance a black cloud billowed up toward the blue-gray sky.

“It’s the cabin, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What else could it be?” she asked, but he didn’t think she expected an answer.

“We’d better get moving.” He took her arm, leading her back to the Jeep and helping her inside.

She went without protest, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin against them. He wanted to take her back down the mountain before she got dragged any deeper into his troubles, but the fire would bring more emergency crews, more police presence, more of everything that Logan needed to avoid. If he turned around now, he and Laney would both be arrested.

Or worse.

Anyone could be waiting on the road behind them.

Hunted, herded toward something—that’s how Logan felt.

“I can still smell the fire,” Laney said as she shifted in her seat and looked out the back window. All Logan could smell was the subtle scent of flowers that floated in the air every time she moved.

“It may not be as bad as we think.” But Logan thought it might be worse. Someone had known that he’d been there. That same someone had set the fire. To keep him from returning to the cabin? To flush him out of hiding?

“How can it not be? It will take time for the fire crew to get to the cabin in this snow. By the time they do, all William’s hard work will be gone. He built the cabin two years before we got married. He did most of the work there himself. He loved that place.” The wistfulness in her words made Logan want to squeeze her hand, tell her again how sorry he was that he’d come back into her life.

“Did you love it?”

“I loved how happy he was when he was there. He always said he did his best work when he was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by God’s creation.”

“What kind of work did he do?”

“He refinished woodwork in old homes and built custom cabinets. He carved some really beautiful wood sculptures that he sold in art galleries in Seattle and San Diego.”

“That explains the shop then.”

“Yes. I wonder if they’ll burn that, too.”

“There was only one smoke plume.”

“That’s something.” But it didn’t seem like enough. Not to Laney. Not yet. She rubbed her arms, trying to chase away the chill that flowed through her blood.

“How long were you and William married?” Logan asked, and she knew he was trying to distract her, get her mind off the burning cabin. She let him because thinking about all of William’s hard work burning to ashes made her eyes ache with tears she didn’t want to let fall.

“Just eighteen months. We were friends for three years before that.”

“Friends?” He kept his eyes on the road, but she could feel the weight of his judgment. As if being friends wasn’t enough to build a marriage on. That had been what her closest friends had told her. That building a life on liking someone wasn’t the same as building it on love.

“I loved William,” she said a little too sharply.

“I wasn’t questioning that.”

“Then what were you questioning?”

“Usually people say they were dating for a certain amount of time before they were married. Not that they were friends.”

“We dated for six months. That was enough.” She pressed her lips together, stopping more words from flowing. She didn’t need to defend her relationship with William. Didn’t need to explain it. She didn’t even think Logan was asking her to. Somehow, though, in the darkest part of her mind and in her deepest moments of sadness over William’s death, she’d always wondered if loving him more would have saved him.

“I can understand that. I dated my wife for two years. We married the day after we graduated from college. People we knew said we were crazy, but...we just knew it was right.”

“This must be hard on her. She’ll be frantic when she hears that you’re missing somewhere in the mountains in the middle of a snowstorm.”

“Amanda died three years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Such a lame thing to say, the words so powerless and futile.

“Me, too.”

“Did she—”

“This might be the end of the road.” Logan cut her off, the car easing to a stop a few inches from a fallen tree. “Let me see if it can be moved.”

“I’ll help.”

“Wait until I figure out how big the tree is.” He jumped out, the engine still humming, the harsh scent of smoke filling the vehicle. Laney wrinkled her nose, trying not to think of the cabin burning but unable to think of anything else. All William’s hard work—the floors, the table, the cabinets—all of it gone.

She blinked back hot tears and got out of the car. It was silly to cry about things. They could be replaced. Besides, she hadn’t planned to keep the cabin. She’d planned to sell it, and she could still sell the land it sat on.

If they ever got off of the mountain.

She grabbed hold of the small pine tree that Logan was tugging toward the side of the road, her arm brushing his as they moved it out of the way. The air was tinged with smoke, the scent of it stinging her nose and eyes. She knew she shouldn’t look down the mountain, but she looked anyway, searching until she found the dark plume of smoke she’d seen earlier. This time she could see a splash of gold in the gray-black world.

Would there be anything left when the fire crews finally got the fire under control?

“You okay?” Logan slid an arm round her waist and pulled her close. He felt warm and solid, and she thought about the years when he’d been the only person she could count on, the only one who knew the truth about her life and her parents. She’d trusted him then, but she knew little about him now. Not where he’d lived before he went to prison, not who his wife had been or how she’d died. Not whether he had children, a career, the kind of life he’d spoken about when he was a troubled teenager with big dreams.

“I will be.” She turned her back on the burning cabin and the woods and got in the Jeep. She’d come here to say goodbye. This was as good a time as any to do it.