Jean Barrett - Paternity Unknown

“I’ll go,” Ethan volunteered. “It’s about time I started to earn my keep.”

She looked down pointedly at his shoes. “In those? I don’t think so.”

Yeah, he thought, following her gaze, he’d been in too much of a hurry to leave Seattle to think of taking a pair of boots with him. “So I’ll get wet feet.”

“Just when I’ve got you on the road to recovery, you want to go and risk a relapse.”

“What? You think you’ll have to nurse me through something like pneumonia just because I get wet feet?”

“We’re not going to argue about it.” She headed for her coat and boots located beside the front door. “Besides, I know how to deal with that shed door and just where to lay my hands on the kerosene when I get inside.”

She was a stubborn woman. And, in her determination, also a damn appealing one. He was reluctant to let her go.

“You be careful out there,” he cautioned her.

“You forget,” she said, tugging on her boots, bundling into her coat, “I’m used to wading through drifts. Be back before you can miss me.”

She was gone then, out the door and clomping across the porch. And he already missed her.

Ethan was starting for the fireplace to lay another log on the blaze when he heard it. A slow rumble overhead that escalated to a rapid roar.

What in the name of—

His gut tightened on him as, beginning to understand what had just happened, he raced to a window that overlooked the side of the cabin. It was true! The snow that had been accumulating on the roof all day had surrendered under its own weight, sliding from the steep slope like an avalanche off the side of a mountain.

Worse than that, Lauren had been passing under it when it collapsed. He could see one of her arms sticking out of the mound. Nothing else. The rest of her had been buried.

He didn’t stop to snatch up his coat. Didn’t care how exposed he was to the unforgiving cold. All that mattered was digging Lauren out of that pile before she suffocated.

He never felt the wind that blasted at him as he tore out of the cabin and around the corner. Never felt anything but an urgency to reach her. Dropping to his knees when he got to the mound, he clawed at the snow, pulling it away in great handfuls.

The top of her head appeared. Then her face. And finally her shoulders. When he could get his hands under both of her arms, he heaved, dragging her up out of the mass that had imprisoned her.

Ethan staggered to his feet with his precious load, fought his way back to the front of the cabin, up the steps, across the porch and inside. Kicking the door shut behind him, he strode across the room and placed her on the floor close to the hearth.

And all the while, as he hunkered down in front of her, lifted her up and struggled to free her of her coat and boots, he was sick with fear.

God, she looked so white and frail, felt so cold and wet! He stripped off her mittens, seized both her hands and began rubbing her limp fingers. Her eyes were closed. Was she unconscious?

“Lauren, can you hear me?”

“Okay,” she muttered, her eyes drifting open. “I’m okay.”

His relief was immense.

He didn’t know when it happened. When his hands were no longer holding hers. When, instead, they were on either side of her head, his fingers in her silky hair. The two of them were face-to-face now, mere inches apart.

There was a long silence, her eyes searching his, questioning. It wasn’t a total silence. He was dimly aware of the crackling blaze in the fireplace behind her, the muffled hum of the generator somewhere out back.

“Ethan?” she whispered.

It wasn’t a question as much as it was a plea. That’s how he chose to read it anyway. And he answered it, surrendered to the thing that had been thrumming between them all day.

Head angled, he brought his mouth down to hers. Kissed her, at first gently and then with abandon. Tasted her sweetness, savored her flavor with his tongue.

He was aware of her scent, something as subtle as wild-flowers. Aware, too, as he deepened their kiss, that her lush body pressed to his was no longer cold. It radiated a heat that ignited his senses.

Was Lauren the first to recover her sanity? Him? Or both of them at the same time? It didn’t matter. Either way, he felt the loss when they drew apart.

She stared at him, clearly shaken.

“It’s what happened,” she said, eager to explain the madness that had seized them. “Not just now with your digging me out of the snow and carrying me back inside. It’s the whole thing. Our being caught here like this together in the storm. It isn’t reality, so it’s done things to our emotions, made them reckless. You see?”

Ethan nodded. Agreed that their kiss had been the result of an irrational, temporary behavior, because that’s what she seemed to need. But he didn’t believe it. For him, it had been very real. In just a few hours, Lauren McCrea had become vital to him. And, with time running out on him, he could do nothing about it.

“Why don’t you confess, Ethan? Think of how much better you’ll feel after you tell me all about it.”

The voice that taunted him was as soft as silk. And as deadly as a cobra. It was also familiar. He knew that voice, didn’t he? But how could he match it to a face he couldn’t see? A face that was hidden in the blackness behind the glaring, white-hot lights that blinded him.

If only he could sleep. But they wouldn’t let him sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, they would rouse him. Sometimes by slapping or kicking him awake. At other times by subjecting him to those frigid showers.

The interrogation was endless. But he hadn’t broken. He had been trained not to tell them what they wanted to know.

“We already know the truth anyway, Ethan. Your hands told us the truth. Look at your hands.”

He looked down at his hands. Horrified, he saw that they were covered with blood.

“His blood, Ethan. You have his blood on your hands.”

This time, his tormentor thrust his face down into the light. Ethan recoiled from the sight of it. Koh!

So he had been right about the voice. But what was that monster doing here in Seattle? He had left Koh back in the bleak, North Korean cell where they had held him all those weeks of pure hell.

“Tell me you did it, Ethan. Tell me you killed him, and then you can sleep.”

Lack of sleep. It had him confused. Koh couldn’t be here. Not in Seattle. Whatever the explanation, he held on to his determination. He refused to talk.

His interrogator sighed with a regret that belied his brutality. “You leave us no choice, Ethan.”

He heard the sound of a door opening in the blackness. Then someone stumbling as he was pushed forward into the light. Ethan recognized the figure and was shocked. Hands bound behind him, the man’s face was a mess of bruises and raw cuts. They had beaten him.

It was Zach, of course, who had been on the reconnaissance mission with him. Who had been captured along with Ethan by the North Koreans. Why had they brought Zach to Seattle?

“Don’t tell them, Ethan,” Zach pleaded with him. “Whatever they do to you, don’t tell them anything.”

“Oh, but he will,” Koh insisted. “When he watches what we are going to do to you, he will talk. Won’t you, Ethan?”

Ethan had withstood it all, every punishment they’d inflicted. Was prepared to go on resisting them whatever they made him suffer. But to torture Zach while they forced him to watch—

“Bastards!”

Surging up from the hard stool, he struck out at them, fists swinging in an explosive rage…

“IT’S ALL RIGHT. Ethan, it’s all right.”

A pair of hands. He felt a pair of hands on his tight fists, striving to restrain him. They weren’t cruel hands. They were gentle.