Hayley turned her head and absorbed most of her forward fall on her jacket-padded arms, yet her cheek still struck the porch boards a glancing blow. Pain slapped her face, but nowhere else on her body registered discomfort. Had she been struck by a bullet? Apparently not. In her rush to flee her murderous pursuers and gain the shelter of the cabin, she’d misjudged the height of the steps and caught her toe on the edge of the stairs. Perhaps the fall had actually saved her from being shot.
She started to scramble to her knees, but something grabbed the hood of her jacket and dragged her over the threshold into the cabin. The furry paws near her face revealed her rescuer to be Mack. Someone, probably Sean, slammed the door closed on the continuing cacophony of gunfire from the woods.
Male shouts from within the cabin and the smack of something hard striking flesh brought her head up, and she rolled into a sitting position. Sean stood over one scowling man who was on his knees and another clutching his head but flat on his back.
“Are you all right?” Sean glanced over his shoulder at her.
“Fine.” She didn’t bother to mention the bump on her cheek, though the flesh over her cheekbone was warm and starting to swell. “I’m not shot or anything serious, just clumsy climbing the stairs. Are you all right?”
“Doing good. But one of these yo-yos tried to scramble for his weapon when I took my eyes off him for a second to make sure you got inside. I had to hit him with the butt of the rifle.”
Hayley’s gaze fell on the man curled in a ball and cradling his head. The goon should be thankful Sean had merely struck him and not shot him. The fierce scowl on the other man’s face, the one on his knees, reflected no form of gratitude. This guy in the rumpled suit must be Patterson, the ruthless leader of the weapons smugglers. Hayley met his cold blue gaze and shivered. The man would like nothing better than to put Sean and her down like rabid dogs.
Not going to happen. Hayley struggled to her feet and returned Patterson’s glare.
“Look for the sat phone,” Sean said tersely.
“On it.”
Her gaze swept the bullet-riddled room. Major repairs to walls and replacement of windows and furnishings would be necessary. Her fists clenched. How dare these crooks barge into her home and wreak havoc? Not to mention threatening life and limb?
There! The satellite phone was on the desk. Hayley strode over and snatched it up. Finally, they could call for help. Then she paused. Should she call her brother first and have him contact Nenana or Fairbanks authorities? Or should she contact the authorities herself? With her brother’s friend Glenn turning out to be in Patterson’s pay, how could she be sure she could trust people at the Troopers’ headquarters?
“Call your brother and alert him and then get ahold of Fairbanks,” Sean said. “Patterson’s reach into law enforcement there can’t be too deep. This isn’t his usual stomping ground.”
Hayley jerked a nod in his direction and punched in her brother’s number. The call rang and then rang again.
“Who is this?” a familiar voice snapped through the headset.
Hayley’s heart soared. “Craig, it’s me.”
“Thank the Lord.” The relief in her brother’s tone weighed a ton. “I’ve been so worried.”
“You still should be. A federal agent and I are under attack by a gang of smugglers at our cabin.”
“Attack!” The word exploded through the speaker. “Two nights ago, Glenn assured me you were fine, but then you didn’t pick up my call again last night. I tried to reach Glenn once more, but he didn’t pick up either.”
A lump grew in Hayley’s throat. Her brother was going to be devastated about his friend. “That’s just it.” Her tone came out hoarse. “Glenn’s working with the crooks.”
Silence answered her pronouncement, then a strangled gurgle. “Are you sure?”
“He’s been the lead tracker for the gang while the agent and I were on the run from them in the bush for the past two days. Only minutes ago, we retook the cabin, but the battle isn’t over. There’s a crew of them outside trying to overrun us. We need help!”
“I’m on my way.”
“No, we need help immediately. Not whenever you can get here from Seattle.”
“And I mean I’m literally on my way right now. I left Seattle last night, and I’m in the air on the last leg of the journey to the cabin. I’m about twenty minutes out with a trooper from Fairbanks.”
A fist squeezed Hayley’s heart. “Are you sure you can trust the guy?”
“I imagine we’ll soon discover the answer. How long can you hold out?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to—”
A noise from the kitchen halted Hayley’s words. She turned to discover the source of the sound. A man’s head was popping up through the kitchen floor hatch. Their enemies had discovered the cellar entrance. She should have thought to blockade the trapdoor before she made her call.
Heart hammering against her ribs, Hayley dropped the phone and brought her gun up. Her finger froze on the trigger as Mack scrambled past her, snarling and snapping at the intruder. The dog’s bulky body blocked her line of fire. However, the gang member wasn’t about to brave a ferocious dog attack, and the hatch thumped shut as the man retreated.
Hayley commanded Mack to come to her, and the dog obeyed, even as whatever enemies were in the cellar opened fire, peppering holes in the kitchen floor. Had Mack not obediently left the room, he would almost certainly have been shot. Gritting her teeth, Hayley returned fire toward the cellar. A muffled human yelp drifted upward through the boards, and the assault from the cellar ceased.
Now the gang members would think twice about attempting to come up through the hatch. Would they retreat into the yard?
“Help me tie up these guys,” Sean called. “Then we can both turn our attention to holding off an attack.”
Unintelligible squawks were coming from the sat phone she’d dropped. Hayley scooped up the handset and shushed her brother’s near-hysterical questions.
“We’re okay so far, but I’ve got to go,” she said. “Just get here. Fast! And call in more help. Medics, too.”
She ended the call and shrugged out of the pack weighing on her shoulders. Minor rummaging inside its contents produced rope suitable for binding their captives. Within minutes, she had both the weapons traffickers securely trussed up. Touching them sent her heart pounding and her skin crawling. Except for the man who shot her sister, Hayley had never been in close contact with anyone who literally wanted to kill her and would do so if given half a chance. For that reason, she tied them extra tight to the tune of curse words from the pilot, who had a lump growing on his forehead from the blow he’d received to subdue him. Patterson remained silent as she bound him, but his reptilian stare chilled her to the core.
“Good job.” Sean gave her a nod. “Now we hang in there for twenty minutes.”
A raucous laugh came from the man in the suit. “You don’t have twenty minutes. My people will flank you on every side and rush in here.”
Hayley’s breath snagged, and her gaze darted toward Sean.
The ATF agent snorted. “I doubt that very much. They know we have you.”
“But they also know I’m not a proper hostage.” The kingpin thug sneered. “A fed can’t threaten to kill me if my boys attack.”
“He won’t, but I might.” The words growled from Hayley’s throat, and she lifted her rifle to point directly at him. “You’re the kind that will kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason or no reason.”
Just like the vile creature who murdered her twin sister. The pulse throbbed in her neck, and blackness edged her vision. The suited man’s wide gaze locked with hers, and his face washed pale. Hayley’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“Hayley.” Scarcely daring to breathe, Sean spoke her name softly and eased a step toward her.
She paid him no attention, her focus wholly on the man who had engineered the mortal danger invading her life. Anguish, fury and grief etched the planes of her lovely face. The human instinct for revenge had to be roaring through her, demanding retaliation in kind—not only for Patterson’s current savage injustice, but also the cold-blooded murder of her sister by the same type of man. Yet Hayley stood frozen, able to put that final millimeter of pressure on the trigger but not doing so.
“Hayley,” Sean gently said again.
Silent seconds ticked past. Gradually, tension ebbed from her frame and she lowered the rifle. Not all the way, but far enough.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sean caught Patterson’s stiff figure suddenly sagging as if his muscles had turned to mush. Justice was surely served in the man tasting the sort of terror he callously inflicted on others. Further justice would have to wait for the court to decide.
Hayley’s wide-eyed gaze met Sean’s. “A part of me wanted to do it...but I couldn’t.”
“I know.” Sean offered a tender smile and allowed himself a full breath. “He would snuff either of us out without a second thought, but that’s not how you are. It’s all about the difference between his depravity and your decency.”
“Thank you.” Her words were a whisper, and she turned her head away from him, blinking rapidly.
“We need to prepare for an assault,” he said briskly. “First, we’ve got to verify that all windows and doors are secure.”
“You’d better do it fast.” Patterson’s overly cocky tone smacked of bravado in compensation for his show of fear a few moments ago. “The gang will be coming after me pronto.”
Sean narrowed his gaze on the man. “I’m not sure any of them like you well enough to risk their lives rescuing you. They just want to ensure Hayley and I aren’t available to testify against them in court.”
Patterson returned his glare. “I share that objective, and I don’t give two hoots what any of those half-witted goons think of me as long as they do what I say. I don’t run a fraternity—I run a business.”
“You run a gang of low-life crooks.” Hayley sniffed. “And you’re the lowest of them all. Any other assessment is delusional.”
Sean chuckled. “What she said.”
She turned away and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to check the upstairs windows, Sean. Why don’t you take a peek in the bathroom and make sure that window is barricaded the way they’ve done to the windows and doors on this bottom level?”
“I’ll keep an eye on that kitchen floor hatch, too.”
With one foot on the bottom step, Hayley turned toward him with a frown. “We have a lot of directions to keep an eye on.”
Patterson chortled. “Too many for two people. We’ll get you yet. The quiet out there isn’t going to last many more seconds.”
Heat erupted in Sean’s gut. “You aren’t going to think it’s so funny when you find out how I intend to cut off access to the front of the cabin.”
“One of your clever plans?” Hayley started up the stairs. “I like it.”
“You don’t know what it is yet,” Sean called after her as she disappeared onto the upper level with Mack at her heels.
“No matter,” she called back. “I already know I’ll like it.”
Sean’s heart expanded. He’d never encountered unconditional approval before. At least, not for a long, long time. His plan had better prove worthy of her trust.
He quickly checked the bathroom window and discovered the crooks had nailed boards across it, too, as they’d done with the kitchen window. Now that Hayley and he were in possession of the cabin, the defensive measures were flipped to their benefit.
Sean returned his attention to their captives. The pilot he’d knocked on the noggin seemed content to huddle sullenly against the wall and not say a word. Patterson still knelt with a sneer cemented into his face. Sean grabbed the roller-wheeled desk chair and rumbled it across the floor to the gang leader.
“Sit.” He pointed to the chair.
Huffing, the man staggered upright and settled onto the seat, spine rigid, staring straight ahead. Sean grabbed another length of rope and tied the gang leader’s feet to the horizontal crosspieces above the rollers.
“You’re taking me for a ride somewhere?” Patterson snarled. “I get it. You’re going to perch me atop the hatch in the kitchen floor.”
“That’s a thought, but not the one I had in mind.”
Sean hauled the chair backward toward the front door. He halted near a gun aperture carved into the plywood over the picture window.
“Trooper Glenn, are you out there?” he hollered.
“Don’t you go talking to the turncoat cop, you undercover fed,” Wade Becker’s harsh tones responded from somewhere out of sight in the trees. “The only reason we were following the dirty cop is ’cause he knows his way around the bush. I’m in charge out here. Make no mistake.”
“You might want to ask Patterson about who’s in charge.”
“As long as I get him out of there in one piece and shut you two up, I’ll be in his good graces. You ready to surrender yet? We’ve got you outgunned, and we’re about to come in blazing.”
“You might want to rethink that idea. I’m about to open the front door and perch your boss on the threshold. If you try to shoot up the front of the cabin, you’ll take him out.”
Silence fell as Patterson’s jaw dropped, and he began squirming against his bonds.
Sean grinned at him. “I see you’re not entirely convinced your faithful minions will hold their fire for your sake.”
He yanked open the front door and rolled Patterson’s chair into the opening. No shots answered the movement. Sean released the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He really didn’t want anyone to die on his watch, but if the ploy with the gang boss meant Hayley and he survived, it was a necessary risk.
“As you can see,” he called out to their adversaries, “I’m a man who means what he says. I’m telling you now, help is on the way for Hayley and me. Already en route from Fairbanks. Less than twenty minutes out.”
“You’re lying!” Wade snarled.
“Nope. It’s happening. So, we can all just hang around at a nice little impasse until they show up, or you might want to consider slinking off into the wilderness and trying to hide. I promise you the hunt is going to go the other way around soon enough.”
“Don’t listen to this guy!” Patterson roared. “It’s only two people coming in a good plane. We can take the aircraft and—”
Hayley’s figure darted past Sean and wrapped something around Patterson’s mouth. It was her neck scarf. Then she skittered away from the open door, eyes wide, face pale.
“We can’t let them overpower my brother and the trooper with him.”
“We won’t.”
She blinked at him as if she wasn’t sure whether to believe his assurance. The woman was nothing if not a realist. No one could make anyone else an absolute promise of safety, but he was going to do his utmost to make sure she didn’t lose a brother, too, on top of losing her sister—much less their own lives.
“I’m going to call Craig again.” She turned away and picked up the phone.
The conversation was brief with her brother, affirming they were less than ten minutes away.
“If the crew out there are going to try anything,” Sean said, “it will be soon.”
“I’ll go upstairs and keep a lookout from those windows. Mack can watch the kitchen trap. He’ll alert if anyone attempts that entrance again.” She gave a terse command, and the malamute took up a post with his eyes on the kitchen.
Taut silence fell. Minutes ticked past as Sean stood to one side of the open front door, gaze scanning the area. The cold breeze penetrated the cabin, battling the heat of the blaze in the fireplace. Then the distant buzz of a plane engine broke through the stillness.
Sean’s heart leaped, and he readied his weapon to fire. Patterson had suggested his guys attempt to take the plane. Hayley and he had to make sure that didn’t happen.
An airplane with the Alaska State Trooper insignia swooped low over the property, then began to circle around. Sean divided his attention between glances at the plane, attention toward his prisoners and the tree line where potential attackers hid.
“Attention below,” a voice blasted from a bullhorn above. “Surrender now, and you will be taken into custody unharmed. If you resist, be advised a helicopter carrying a SWAT team is on the way.”
Sean nodded to himself. Smart. The trooper didn’t plan to land until the suspects had shown themselves. Yet it was anyone’s guess if that would happen. Wade was a knuckleheaded bully, but bullies were usually cowards.
“Lay down your weapons and show yourselves with your hands over your heads.” The bullhorn voice spoke again as the plane performed another lazy circle overhead.
Movement came from the forest, and Sean tensed, ready to answer an attack. Figures trickled out of the woods, arms raised, except for one thug who stumbled forth with his arm in a sling. No doubt, the one Mack had savaged. That guy was probably feeling a whole lot worse than Sean with his bullet crease.
Next to him, Patterson was wriggling in his chair, spewing something unintelligible from his mouth against the gag. Cussing a blue streak, no doubt. The man was done for, along with his gang of weapons smugglers. A great weariness filtered through Sean, but he shook off the draining sensation. He had to stay alert until the last man was cuffed.
“I’ll keep my weapon trained on these guys out there until you’ve got them subdued,” Hayley called from overhead.
“Sounds good,” he called back. “I’ll leave Mack in charge of Patterson and his pilot.”
He grabbed more rope and headed out into the cold. While he bound the glaring, snarling thugs, the trooper plane came in for a landing and skidded up onto the beach. From the passenger side, a tall, slender man with dark hair emerged, bearing a rifle over a crooked elbow, and strode toward the cabin. From the pilot seat, a husky, middle-aged man climbed out and approached Sean’s location at a trot, one hand on the gun butt protruding from his hip holster.
Sean gaped at the second man. “Uncle Tate?” That was right. His mother’s brother had been a state trooper. Did the guy recognize him? “It’s me. Your nephew Sean.”
Tate halted several feet away and regarded him soberly. “Is it really Adele’s boy?”
Sean’s insides curdled. If his father was to be believed, his mother’s people didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
He squared his shoulders. “Sean O’Keefe in the flesh. I’m an ATF agent now.”
A tentative smile grew on his uncle’s face. “It’s good to see you.” He extended a beefy paw.
“Really?” Sean took the man’s calloused hand.
“You’ve been a stranger too long.”
Warmth spread through Sean’s insides as he met his uncle’s friendly gaze. He’d have to explore the meaning of this unexpected welcome after he put the necessary call in to his ATF handler.
“Where’s Hayley?” a voice cried out, jerking Sean out of mentally preparing his report to his superiors.
He looked around to find Hayley’s lanky brother running toward them.
“She’s in the cabin,” Sean answered.
“There’s no one in there except Mack and some guy with a bump on his head tied up on the floor.”
Sean gazed around at the smuggling crew subdued at his feet, and an anomaly hit him. Traitor Trooper Glenn wasn’t among them.
Mack’s throaty bark rang out from the rear of the property near the lake, but it was the roar of an airplane engine from that vicinity that yanked Sean’s head in that direction. The sound wasn’t coming from the plane that had just arrived. That aircraft stood in clear sight. No, someone was trying to escape in the plane he’d damaged with gunfire yesterday. Evidently, the aircraft wasn’t unmanageably crippled.
Heart in his throat, Sean ran toward the lake and as he swept past the cabin, the plane came into sight. It was already taxiing across the water for takeoff. Three heads were visible. Patterson in a rear passenger seat. Glenn in the pilot seat. And in the copilot’s position sat Hayley.
She was a hostage on the plane with Patterson pointing a gun at her head.