Jean Barrett - Paternity Unknown

“You were having a nightmare.”

The voice was gentle, too. And deeply concerned. He went still, his fists uncurling as a blessed reality replaced the nightmare. The darkness of another night had wrapped itself around the cabin where he was sitting up on the mattress. Lauren had slipped off the sofa and was kneeling in front of him.

They had left one of the lamps burning on the table above them, its wick turned low. In the feeble glow, he could see her troubled face.

“It’s okay,” she assured him, “you don’t have to tell me about it, but it must have been some awful nightmare. You were shouting in your sleep.”

Awful? Yeah, just about as bad as it could get. His imprisonment in North Korea over a year ago had somehow gotten mixed up in his dream with what happened just days ago in Seattle. Only he was no longer in the service. There would be no one this time to negotiate his release.

Another cell. He couldn’t be locked away in another cell. After what he had endured in North Korea, it would destroy him. But it could happen. It would happen if—

“Your hands are shaking,” she said.

She must have sensed how desperately he needed her comfort in that moment. That’s why she did a wonderful, impulsive thing. Still clinging to his hands, head bent over them, she covered their backs with slow, soothing kisses.

He shuddered over the heat of her mouth on his flesh. She felt so good, so right. A lifeline of sanity in a world that had become demented for him. He didn’t know how he was going to bear leaving her when the time came for him to go.

“Lauren,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion.

She lifted her head and met his gaze. He looked into her eyes and read understanding there. She knew what he wanted, what was tearing him up inside: her. He needed her as he had never needed any other woman.

It was wrong of him to take advantage of her just because she was receptive to that need. He realized that. But, in her generosity to offer him what would bring him relief from his anguish, however temporary, he was unable to resist her.

With a groan of submission, snatching his hands away from hers in order to gather her into his arms, he reached for her. Hauled her softness tightly against his hardness, crushed his mouth over hers.

Alternately fierce and tender. That’s how Ethan kissed her, and how she responded with her own kisses.

They must have shed their clothes between those fevered kisses. He didn’t remember. He only knew that at some point they were both naked, that he was swollen with desire, his senses inflamed by the taste and feel of her.

He should have been beyond all hesitation by then, but some shred of conscience did make him pause. “It’s not too late,” he rasped. “We don’t have to—”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, we do.”

Her own urgency robbed him of all reason then, leaving him with only one scrap of responsibility. At least he had that much, he thought, his hand groping for his wallet on the table beside them.

Fumbling for the condom inside, slitting it open and removing it, he sheathed himself. There was no self-control after that. All the rest was a mindless, rapturous joining. Their two bodies consuming each other, straining for release and finding it in a roaring fulfillment.

Afterwards, holding her securely against his side as she slept, Ethan knew he should regret what had just happened. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

COLD WATER pelted his body, reviving him. He was able to think clearly as he soaped himself and turned under the shower spray.

The first light of morning had revealed that the storm had ended. That meant the plows would soon be out clearing the roads, maybe already were.

Ethan didn’t think there was much chance of one of them spotting his rental car down among the trees. It must be snow-covered by now. But there was always that risk.

And if it were sighted and its presence reported, it would be investigated and identified as a rental car. Its license would be easily traced to the agency in Kalispell. The police would be told who had rented the vehicle. They would run a check on him, learn he was wanted in Seattle. And since the sedan had been abandoned, and the cabin the only nearby shelter in the storm, it was only logical…

It can’t happen that fast. You still have time.

Okay, that was probably true, but he couldn’t waste that time. He was defenseless here. He had to get away just as quickly as possible. How? The rental was useless.

Lauren’s car, he thought. She had told him over dinner last night that she’d left it parked up at the mouth of her driveway where it joined the road, just as she always did whenever there was the threat of a heavy snow that made her lane impassable. He didn’t want to involve Lauren, but there was no other way. He’d have to ask to borrow her car, dig it out of the snow, and drive into Elkton.

Things would be all right if he could just reach Hilary Johnson. He would make them all right.

And then what? What was he going to do about Lauren? Running out on her after last night was unthinkable. But with what he was facing, how could he do otherwise? Anything else would be unfair to both of them.

And just how fair is it to go without a word of explanation, to leave her hurt and wondering? You can’t do that. She deserves to know.

Ethan made up his mind. He would tell her everything over breakfast. She might react very badly to the truth, order him out of the cabin and her life. He wouldn’t blame her if she did, even though it would kill him if she turned away from him now. No other choice, though. He would have to take his chances with her.

It was when he turned off the shower that he was able to hear a kind of reverberating noise somewhere outside the cabin. Sounded like machinery.

A snowmobile? he wondered. Had Lauren fired up her snowmobile?

Puzzled, he flung back the shower door and grabbed a towel. It wasn’t until he emerged from the stall and was swiftly drying himself that he realized what he was hearing was a heavy-duty vehicle of some sort.

The thing suddenly went silent, as if it had arrived at its destination. Seized by a grim understanding, his stomach lurched.

Ethan dragged on a pair of jeans. He didn’t bother with any other clothes. He could hear voices out in the living room. He knew there was no point in trying to make a break for it. He wouldn’t get ten yards.

His chest and feet bare, he left the bathroom, walked into the living room. He had been wrong in his judgment. Time had already run out on him.

There were two of them, both of them with faces like stone. Maybe they were state troopers, or maybe they were from the local sheriff’s department. He didn’t know, didn’t care. All that mattered was Lauren. She stood there staring at him with an expression on her face that chewed him up inside.

One of the uniforms held a gun on him while his younger partner approached him and began to cautiously check his jeans for any weapon he might be carrying.

The officer with the gun addressed him, solemnly intoning, “Ethan Brand, you’re under arrest as a suspect in the murder of Jonathan Mortimer Brand. You have the right to…”

Ethan didn’t listen to the rest, didn’t even look at their faces as he stood there without moving. The only face that mattered was Lauren’s. She still wore that stricken expression.

He tried to meet her gaze, tried to send her a silent message of appeal, imploring her forgiveness. But she turned away from him. He had never felt such a miserable sense of abandonment.

Eleven months later

IT WAS ANOTHER Montana. The mountains and the forests were still there, just as he remembered them. But they weren’t wrapped in deep snow. The gaudy colors of early October tinted them now, the hardwoods ablaze with crimson and gold against the drab green of the pines. The air was kinder, too, almost balmy and wearing a faint autumn haze.