Perilous Christmas Reunion Read online

  Cold slipping through her limbs to freeze her stomach into a ball of ice, Lauren tossed aside the tarp covering the snowmobile and started to straddle the seat.

  “Wait.” Chris rested a restraining hand on her shoulder. “The minute you fire this up, they are going to hear it. We need to be ready to fly out of here.”

  “It’s already facing the door and can handle a few feet of concrete.”

  “But the door’s electric, isn’t it?”

  “There’s an override switch since I can’t get the remote out of the Jeep without the keys.”

  “Where?”

  Lauren indicated the door to the house. “Beside that.”

  As though poised to sprint, Chris balanced on the balls of his feet for a moment—a moment during which more shouts and crashes reverberated from inside. From the sound of it, the men were wrecking her house, her beautiful, private haven that had ceased being a sanctuary the instant someone shot at her and Ryan.

  Her heart twisted. No time to worry about that.

  Chris sprang off the balls of his feet and headed for the override switch. “Fire up the machine when I flip this switch, and head for the door. The instant it’s high enough, get outside.”

  “But you—”

  “I’ll catch up with you.”

  She hoped he could make the dash and leap with his wounded shoulder and head. She hoped she could drive with her fingers numb from cold. The afghan wasn’t much help, though better than nothing.

  “Go.” Chris flipped the switch.

  The door motor whirred to life. Lauren leaped aboard the snowmobile, released the brake and shoved the key into the ignition. The engine roared. She released the choke, and the machine surged forward toward doors not quite high enough. Her numb fingers fumbled with the brake, stopping her momentum seconds before she slammed into the steel garage door. In front of her, the panel seemed to creep up at half its normal rate. If the men hadn’t heard the engine fire yet, they would figure it out soon enough, or find her and Chris’s footprints on the garage roof, or...

  “Calm down.” Chris’s voice was deep and calm behind her.

  He had swung his leg over the snowmobile seat without her realizing it.

  “You’re going to hyperventilate.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. The action was necessary to keep him aboard once they started forward, yet the contact felt like comfort.

  She prayed for protection and mercy on them both, especially Chris. Once they headed out, his back would be vulnerable to gunshots, and he had left his Kevlar vest in Ryan’s room.

  No wonder he hadn’t argued about her driving.

  “I should have opened this door by hand.” Despite him telling her to be calm, Chris’s voice now held an edge.

  Behind them, the door to the house opened and someone shouted, “They’re getting away.”

  “Go, go, go!”

  Lauren didn’t need Chris’s shout in her ear to release the brake and send the machine sailing beneath the half-risen door. They ducked just in time. The bottom edge caught the frame of the windshield. No worries. They were through.

  “Go down the drive,” Chris shouted. “And keep your head as low as you can.”

  But they couldn’t take the most direct route to the road. A monstrous black truck stood sideways across the course.

  And behind them, gunfire exploded over the roar of the snowmobile’s engine. They swayed to the side to balance against the sharp turn needed to avoid crashing into the truck. And a bullet barely missed them, hitting the frame of the windshield. It bent but didn’t break.

  Lauren’s heart stopped for so long she feared it had broken. “We’re trapped.”

  “Head for the woods,” Chris called into her ear.

  His voice, firm, decisive, settled her heart to a fast but regular rhythm. She nodded and focused on the glare of light on the snow. That light pinpointed their direction, but then, so did the roar of the engine. Unless the men after Ryan, and now them, had a snowmobile as well, she and Chris might find shelter in the woods.

  Had Ryan, after he had been to the cabin?

  Her throat closed at the idea of her big brother freezing to death in the snow and trees, the sleet and wind. He had too likely chosen to follow their father’s path, whose business practices Lauren never trusted to be legal except on the surface. Yet Ryan had been a rock to her when her parents split up, when she was afraid of her own shadow, when she chose computer science as a career path rather than social work as her grandmother had once hoped or business as her father wanted. Ryan had encouraged her to follow her dreams.

  Lord, save his life tonight and forever.

  It was a familiar prayer for her brother, stronger now than ever.

  Ahead of her, her headlight beam caught the hulking pillars of trees. She steered between them, and another bullet crashed into the windshield from a weapon powerful enough the blast shattered the safety glass.

  “Don’t stop.”

  Lauren didn’t need Chris’s command to keep going, despite icy pellets and wind now dashing full in her face without the benefit of wearing goggles. She squinted against the impact and kept the machine moving, taking a turn between two trunks so close together Chris had to clamp his legs hard against the sides of the seat to not smash his knees. He didn’t complain. He understood what she was doing.

  “Good job.” His approval was like a breath of warm air pushing back the cold.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid her. That bullet had shattered her windshield, not the shield around her heart that had once loved this man with his arms encircling her.

  “Where are we going?” She turned her head long enough to project her query to Chris—and cried out.

  A solitary light blazed through the trees. A moment later, she caught the roar of another snowmobile.

  FOUR

  With his arms around her, Chris felt more than heard Lauren’s gasp of alarm over the roar of the engine. The double roar. Two engines. He risked a glance back, saw the bobbing light behind them.

  “Head for the road.” He tilted his head so his lips grazed her ear. “As best you can.”

  She nodded, shaking all over. He wished he could drive, grab the handlebars and send them flying through the trees. Foolishness. They could move no faster without the risk of slamming into a tree.

  “They can’t shoot while dodging trees with us.” He spoke as much to reassure himself as her.

  His still-aching back felt like a giant bull’s-eye. Which was why he would have insisted Lauren drive even if she hadn’t been more familiar with the landscape. She was safer in front of him, his body shielding her from any assault from behind.

  He couldn’t shield her from the freezing rain turning to snow, from whipping branches, from the impact that seemed inevitable at any second as trees seemed to leap into the beam of their headlight. A swerve to the left, a jerk to the right avoided collision with a spruce, a birch, a maple sapling. Roots popped from the ground, and they sailed over them, hitting the earth with a teeth-jarring slam, tilting. As one, they leaned the other way, preventing the machine from spilling them onto the snow like litter for the men behind them to collect.

  Too close behind them.

  On one swing to the right to avoid a massive evergreen, Chris caught the glint of the other headlight from the corner of his eye. Closer than before. Either the men knew these woods or they were simply following Chris and Lauren’s light. Likely the latter. Dangerous to have it on. More dangerous to travel without it.

  “How far to the road?” Chris shouted into her ear.

  Lauren shrugged. “Mile” was what he thought he heard, her voice drifting back on the wind.

  Maybe she said miles. Either would be too far if their pursuers gained on them further.

  Entirely possible. The path lay broad and straight ahead of them, glow
ing white despite the clouds and falling precipitation. If Lauren could drive faster, so could the men behind them. If their machine was more powerful—

  Chris brought that thought up short. Focus on the moment, on the straightaway as long as it lasted.

  On not shivering himself off the seat.

  He glanced back. The light in pursuit glared yellow, a monster with a single eye. Not nearer, not farther. Behind them, coming on in relentless pursuit.

  “Right or left?” Lauren’s voice, loud enough to hear above the engine, held a note of panic.

  Chris jerked his head forward. The path split in a Y. “You don’t know?”

  “This isn’t my land anymore and I’ve lost my sense of direction in the dark.”

  So had Chris.

  Some lawman he made, depending on a civilian to get him out of a jam.

  “Right. Cut the light and turn right.”

  That might delay the men behind them for a moment or two. Long enough to get Lauren and him to the road and his SUV before the cold killed them faster than the men with guns.

  They had been heading north. The road was to the east. Right should take them east if all their swerving and dodging hadn’t turned them around.

  The path remained wide. Surely a good sign. Hikers in summer and snowmobilers and cross-country skiers in winter would want wide, cleared paths.

  He glanced back again. Nothing. The men weren’t following for the moment.

  “They didn’t turn this way.” Chris spoke in Lauren’s ear so she could hear him. “At least not yet.”

  She nodded and flicked the headlight on again. A mixture of snowflakes and freezing rain reflected the thin yellow beam like a beaded curtain, more hindrance than help. Before Chris could suggest they might be safer without the light, Lauren switched it off. Now the world glowed eerily white with dark slashes of trees falling away on either side.

  Falling farther away on either side.

  The road. They must have reached the road.

  The runners tilted up ahead of them, and the engine whined with the strain to climb an embankment. Chris held Lauren tightly, prepared for a sudden drop into a ditch. If that happened, the snow should cushion the fall. They would be all right. He could keep her safe.

  Rocks rattled beneath the runners, shifting, tumbling away on either side, behind, before. Not the edge of the road. No rocks lined the highway.

  “I can’t stop now,” Lauren cried.

  Chris tensed, prepared to drag Lauren and himself clear if they flipped over.

  They remained upright. With a crack like rifle fire and a thud that rattled every bone in his body and scrambled his brains, they landed on a solid surface.

  Chris twisted around to see if the others had pursued them this way after all, had spotted them through the ice and snow, had risked a shot. Nothing behind them but the patter of the falling sleet. No sound of a following snowmobile. Little sound from theirs. Lauren had cut the engine. It settled into silence with a tick, tick, tick.

  “Chris, come on.” Lauren was scrambling off the machine and tugging on his arm. “We have to get out of here.”

  As the ticking and crackling continued, Chris realized what it was, understood the reason for Lauren’s panic.

  They had landed on the lake, and the ice was breaking beneath them.

  * * *

  Somewhere on their mad flight, Lauren had lost her sense of direction. Numb with cold inside her flannel shirt and the heavy but inadequate afghan, Lauren scrambled up the pile of rocks someone had left at the lakeshore, Chris behind her, and tried to think where her reasoning had gone wrong. She had turned west when she thought she’d headed east. That meant she had turned south when she’d thought she was headed north.

  “I’m sorry.” She slumped onto the rocks still poised at the edge of the water and speared her fingers through her hair.

  At least she thought she did. She could barely feel them.

  “Get up, Lauren.” Chris grasped her arms and lifted her to feet that felt more frozen than the lake. “We can’t stay here. We’ll freeze to death in minutes.”

  “I know, but I’m so disoriented now, I’m not sure which way the road is.”

  “Back the way we came and along the other arm of that Y?”

  “You mean the way those men after us—” she huddled deeper into the snow-encrusted afghan “—those men after Ryan went?”

  “I think so. But we have to risk it. We have to keep moving.” They started down the trail they had taken. “We must get to the road.”

  “And if they are on the road?” Lauren pictured that other snowmobile headlight pinpointed on the SUV Chris had said he left parked along the highway.

  All those men had to do was wait for them.

  “Should we go back to the house?” Lauren asked.

  The warm stove. Hot chocolate, dry clothes.

  A smashed window and broken-down doors. The quiet haven of her lakeside retreat had been ruined.

  Ryan, why did you come to me?

  To deliver the USB drive to someone he trusted.

  Then her smashed-up house and Ryan’s wound must not be in vain. She needed to help Chris get them to safety before they turned into human Popsicles.

  What of Ryan wandering the woods on foot? He had been dressed warmly, right for this climate and weather. Odd, that. He must have had the clothes stashed somewhere he could get to without being caught, which meant not in his house, or he had bought them. Or he had help. Still, he had been wounded. He could have fallen, frozen to death, not to be found until spring.

  Lauren shivered and lifted one end of the afghan. “Wrap this around you. It isn’t much, but it’s better than what you have on.”

  “It’s less for you.”

  “I’ll have a lot less if you freeze to death because I won’t share.”

  “Ah, Lauren.” A huskiness entered his voice.

  He brushed his fingers across her cheek, an action she saw more than felt with her face numb like she had been shot full of Novocain, but a shiver having nothing to do with the cold still traveled through her. Remembrance of their past love for one another. Memories of his ability to show gentleness when she had known too little before him. Fear that he could break her heart all over again.

  Not getting to warmth and safety should be a greater fear than her foolish heart. She was the one who rejected him with good reason—provable reasons now.

  “May I?” Chris held out his arm.

  It was a personal thing to do under most circumstances, a gesture between family members, friends, couples. They were none of those, but they were two people needing to preserve what little warmth remained in their bodies. Walking with their arms around one another made the most sense, as long as the path allowed them to remain side by side.

  “Yes, of course.” She voiced her approval.

  His arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist, they set out on the trail back the way they had come. The sleet had left a top crust their moccasins would have trodden without difficulty if the freezing rain had not turned to powdery snow. In minutes, they were maneuvering through ankle-deep sand in slippers. Snow caked on their suede footgear. Each of Lauren’s feet felt as though they weighed twenty pounds. Movement made the numbness leave her body. In its place, her legs began to ache with the effort of each step.

  “I haven’t been spending enough time on the treadmill.” She tried to make a joke.

  “That makes two of us.”

  Two of us. The two of them. But they weren’t two. They were one and one, not even one plus one.

  Chris stopped. “Hold this branch for balance and I’ll see what I can do to get the snow off your slippers.”

  Lauren gripped a stout branch jutting over the path. Chris crouched at her feet and removed one moccasin, gave it a hard slap against the tree trunk
, then replaced it on her foot before repeating the process with the other.

  “That’ll help for a little while,” he said.

  “Do you need my help?” Lauren started to ask.

  But Chris was already using the tree trunk to knock the accumulated crystals from his footwear.

  Shoes clear for the moment, they set out again, trying to match strides when Chris had nearly a foot of height on Lauren, trying to make as little noise as possible. Lauren listened for the purr of an engine in the woods, peered through the flakes sticking to her lashes for a glimpse of a headlight, for a break in the trees.

  She saw the break in the trees first, the widening of the trail indicating where the path had split into a Y.

  “Do we take the other arm or go back the way we came?” She didn’t trust her own judgment after losing her sense of direction earlier.

  “You trust me to decide after I directed you wrong before?” Chris’s voice held an edge.

  “We’ll both make a decision and see if we agree?”

  “Wait here.” Chris tramped forward, vanishing behind a white veil.

  She would recommend the wider path because she was cold and tired and it looked easier.

  Trying to locate Chris by sound, Lauren snuggled her face into the afghan and caught a familiar scent. Clean. Crisp. Masculine. So comforting.

  Except it was Ryan’s scent, not Chris’s. Chris was wearing Ryan’s shirts. Ryan had always been there to give her comfort when Chris left for his new job with the United States Marshals Service, and before that when her stepmother, her father’s third wife, walked away, when their father went to prison, when her mother abandoned her.

  What did Chris smell like? They had been engaged. Surely she had been near enough to him to inhale his particular scent. That she couldn’t recall left a hollowness inside her, a loss.

  “Lauren?”

  She jumped. “I’m still here.”

  He snorted, a sound more derisive than amused, and merely said, “I think we should go back down the main trail. Either one should lead us to the road or to your house and help us get our bearings. And the main trail offers shelter if we hear them coming.”