Mara staggered backward at the blizzard’s assault. She clung to Tanner’s jacket as best she could while the wind sought to rip them apart. When she slid knee deep into the snow, Britta pulled her back in line.
Everything was a blur, Tanner and Britta’s arrival a surreal dream.
You’re not alone. Not anymore. The idea was strange and wonderful, and she clung to it, but it did not completely erase the fear. At any moment, a bullet could strike them down, Eli or his man firing from behind one of the thousands of trees that loomed around them.
Just hold on, she told herself. You made it this far. And now Tanner’s here. The man she’d thought about so often over the last seven months had put his own life at risk to come for her. Mara prayed he and Britta would not pay dearly for their bravery.
Her cheeks burned, flayed by icy flakes. Every step was an enormous effort until she feared she would collapse. After what seemed like forever, Tanner pulled her into the shelter of a fallen tree. The twisted roots cut the wind, a blessed relief. “We can rest a minute.”
She couldn’t make out his sandy hair or toffee-colored eyes in the gloom, but his voice was ragged with pain.
Pain? She touched his arm. “Are you hurt? Did Eli...”
“Healing from an injury. No biggie.”
“What kind of injury?”
“Gunshot.”
She swallowed a gasp. “You shouldn’t have come.”
He cocked his head, lashes glimmering with snowflakes. “I promised your brother I’d find you. He said I was the man for the job. Not gonna back down from a challenge like that.”
The mention of Asher swamped her with conflicting emotions. “When I contacted him after it happened, he didn’t believe my call or text and we were cut off before I could explain.” She’d called him from a pay phone right after fleeing the murder scene, gripping the receiver so hard her fingers cramped.
“Asher, I didn’t kill them.” She thought she’d heard a sound. He was coming.
“Where are you?”
“Running. Dad’s in danger I...”
“Mara, listen to me. You’re not acting logically. You have to tell me where you are right now. The evidence is piling up. An anonymous witness says he saw a woman matching your description shoot a young couple. Danica and Colt saw you there and you bolted. Your bracelet was found at the scene. You can’t handle this situation by yourself. You need to tell me your location.” His words were hard-edged, cold as a mountain winter.
“I...” It had occurred to her then in a flash of nausea that maybe her half brother did not believe her either. Her own flesh and blood...
Tanner’s expression was impossible to read in the swirling storm. “He wasn’t disputing your innocence. He was trying to tell you to turn yourself in and let the team sort it out.”
Would she have gone on and told Asher about Eli if she hadn’t noticed the strange man, hired by Eli, approaching the phone booth? If only she’d had her cell she could have sent him the chilling photo Eli had texted her of their father at the care home moments after he’d left the murder scene, but she’d ditched the phone battery since it would give away her location. Asher might have believed her if he’d seen that photo, the clear threat to their father. But she’d bolted from the booth outside that gas station and fled from any chance she had of going back. From there it had become a running for her life scenario. But the team knew the truth now, or most of it anyway. When she got back home she’d spend her every waking moment proving he was the killer.
Might be too late. The thought was bitter. Tanner touched her shoulder and brought her out of the past. “We have to keep moving.”
They plowed on, each step a challenge until they reached a flat sweep of snow between the trees, raised on either side to form a natural windbreak. The effort required was exhausting. Her muscles tingled with fatigue. Tanner got out his night vision binoculars. “I don’t see any tracks, so they didn’t come this way. That’s a good sign. My car’s just at the edge of the trees over there.”
He pointed to a spot that seemed impossibly far away. She tried to keep her voice from revealing her fatigue. “All right.”
He pulled a bottle of water from his pack. “Drink?”
“I’m okay.” But he held out the bottle anyway, insistent. He was right. She’d been conserving her remaining water so she wouldn’t have to go out in the storm to collect more snow to melt in whatever patch of sunlight she could find. Her mouth was parched from breathing hard. Still she felt a flicker of annoyance. Seven months...she thought. I’ve been surviving on my own and I don’t need to be babied now. It wasn’t the time to argue, though. Taking the water, she glugged some down. It restored her, she had to acknowledge.
A moment later they were plunging through the trees again. She realized what he was doing. Though the path straight through the clearing was more direct, it would make them easy pickings for Eli or the other man. The hatred in Eli’s tone as he whispered through the door...let me come in. If he’d had one more moment... Mara swallowed and tried to keep up with Tanner.
Onward they struggled and she fell twice. Once she scrambled up on her own. Tanner offered his gloved hand the second time with Britta yanking on her jacket sleeve. Cold pummeled her as if she wasn’t wearing a coat at all. The extreme chill made her eyes tear until she could no longer see the way forward.
Her lungs burned and the constant sting of driving flakes was disorienting. How much longer could they go on? Had Tanner lost his way? But what other choice did they have? She flailed and pushed until her body screamed for rest.
They made it to a clear path which she realized was some sort of road or trail. Tanner was holding her arm now, half pushing, half guiding her. The light bar of a police car swam into view, the vehicle buried to the top of the tires. She nearly cried in relief. They’d made it. They could drive to safety. Rescue, at last.
“Gonna dig it out. One minute.”
He pulled a collapsible shovel from his backpack and within moments he’d cleared a moat around the vehicle. She heard his muttered oath.
“What’s wrong?” How could there be anything amiss now that they could escape the murderous cold?
He groaned. “All four tires are flattened, and they bashed in a window and cut the radio.” He pointed to the slightly opened hood. “Looks like they took the battery for good measure. They made sure we couldn’t drive it out of here.”
“No,” she whispered as reality sank in. They couldn’t continue on in the storm. It would require all their stamina even to make it back to the shelter they’d recently left. Her mind simply wouldn’t fasten on any other solutions.
It took all her will to produce words. “We have to go back to the cabin. Barricade ourselves in.”
He shook his head. “We won’t make it. Storm’s not relenting, and we’d be traveling against the wind.”
“But we can’t stay here. He’ll find us.”
“Maybe not. Snow covered our tracks. They don’t know which way we’re headed.”
“They’ll figure we’d run for the car.” She heard the wobble in her own voice. “We can’t stay.”
“We don’t have a choice. No working radio and my portable hasn’t worked since the blizzard hit. We have to shelter in the car for at least a few hours. Eli will be battling the same storm we are, and he’s not going to be able to come after us until the wind dies down. I can get us some warmth.”
“How?” She shook her head. “Too risky.”
His hands were on his hips now. “Not arguing right now. There is no other option that doesn’t result in us dying from exposure.”
“If you want to stay, that’s your choice, but I didn’t survive seven months on the run to die here. I want to go home.” I want to see my father, my brother. She turned and started to trudge away; Britta whined high and tense. Tanner caught up and grabbed her forearm.
“Listen to me, please. I know you’ve been doing it solo all this time, and I can’t even imagine how hard that was. But now we have to do this together. We’ll shelter in the car. I’ll keep watch. If they come for us, I’ll see it and we can run. If not, we’ll take off before daylight and head back toward the main road where we can spot someone to help us or I can get a cell signal to call the team.” She barely felt his gentle squeeze over the growing iciness in her limbs. “Mara, you’re right,” he said softly. “You’ve survived too much to let Eli win now.”
She was cold, so cold, and weary to the bone. Her brain screamed at her to do something, anything to get out of the frigid onslaught. But getting into that car meant trusting Tanner with her life and she hadn’t trusted anyone but herself for seven months, probably longer.
He was still holding her arm, not pulling or squeezing.
“First, tell me one thing. Asher said my father was okay. Truly? Has Eli hurt him?”
“Your father is safe. Asher’s made sure of it. He moved him to a safe house.”
“Truth?”
Now he squeezed, gently but with conviction. “I would not lie to you.”
Every syllable was sincere. “All right,” she said through chattering teeth.
Decision made.
She could only pray it was the right one.
Tanner wrenched open the back door and urged Mara and Britta inside before he shut it and made his way to the trunk. His hands were almost useless, but he managed to pull out the bag and slam the trunk shut before bundling himself into the front seat. For a moment, he had to sit motionless, pushing air in and out of his lungs. His fingers burned as he squeezed them into fists to force some circulation. He felt comfortable enough that Eli couldn’t approach with the storm raging that he risked activating a flashlight and clumsily duct-taped a tarp over the broken window.
Turning, he found Britta snuggled up tight on Mara’s lap. She embraced the dog and they shivered together. He was shivering too. “Here’s a blanket.” He handed it through an opening in the cage that separated the front seat from the back. “Wrap it around you both.”
She did so.
Next he fumbled to activate two chemical hand warmers which she promptly held to her face with her free hand. “I never thought I’d be so grateful for such a tiny bit of heat.”
He activated two more. “These can go in your boots.”
He thought she might cry. “Do you have any for you?” she said.
“Yes. When I can feel my hands again, I’ll install the spare battery I keep in the trunk. Fortunately, they didn’t get that.”
“A spare battery? You’re a wilderness genius.”
He laughed. “No. I’ve just lived places where you don’t want to risk being stranded for too long. Dad taught me that trick.”
“What if...” She swallowed. “What if the snow keeps falling and we’re buried in here?”
“I’ll keep an eye on it and go out and shovel if it gets out of hand. Hungry?”
“Do you have food?”
He laughed at the thrilled squeak in her voice. “Hey, this is a full-service rescue operation, ma’am. I never go anywhere without it. We have MREs and such for emergency supplies, but here’s something better.”
He slid a frozen chocolate bar from his pack. Her expression when she took it sent him hurtling back four years to another face, a precious face who’d smiled just that broadly when he’d accommodated her sweet tooth. His fiancée, Allie, surfaced in his memory, her image clear and sharp.
Allie had accepted the bags of jellybeans he’d brought, with all the black ones removed since she didn’t like them. “Everyone else brings me healthy stuff, but I keep telling them candy is the best medicine.”
But it hadn’t been, nor had the treatments for lymphoma, nor his love and steadfast prayers. Someone told him the wound of losing her would scar over and it wouldn’t hurt anymore. After four years the pain had dulled to an ever-present throb, except for odd moments that sucker punched him. Like now, with Mara. For a moment, he couldn’t speak for the intense pain that bloomed under his sternum.
“What’s wrong?” Mara spoke with the candy bar suspended in her fingers.
“Nothing, aside from the obvious.” Britta shot a look at him, head cocked in that comical way. He’d never understood how she sensed his emotions, but she always did, happy, sad or otherwise.
He filled a little bowl with kibble and one with water. “Do you mind putting these on the floor for Britta?”
She did and Britta ate. Tanner was relieved to see his dog behaving normally. Extracting Mara from the cabin had pushed them both to their limits. Mara broke off squares of chocolate and sucked on them, since they were frozen too hard to chew. He did the same. Sweet and bitter as his memories. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t eaten a lot of chocolate since Allie died.
Installing the spare battery was pure torture but hearing the sound of the heater firing up made it all worthwhile.
“Heat,” Mara moaned. “I’ll never take it for granted ever again.”
The heater had begun to take the edge off the frigid cold when Britta finished her meal and climbed back up into Mara’s lap. Tanner twisted sideways in his seat, so he could scan the tree line which was where he suspected an attack would originate if there was one. His revolver was on the seat beside him. Ready. Mara was still shivering, but at least her teeth weren’t chattering anymore.
“Just being out of the wind...oh my word. I can’t even describe how good it feels.”
He concurred, the overworked heater partially restoring circulation to his half-dead limbs. “How did you survive for this long?”
She rested her head on the seat back. “You do what you gotta do, right? I had no other choice. Eli texted me a photo taken with my dad and a message that he’d hurt Dad or Asher if I came forward and I turned myself in. I had to run and buy some time.”
Tanner had admired her sharp, fact-based mind and he knew she wouldn’t drift aimlessly. “What was your plan?”
“At first, I thought I was going to make my way back, to watch Eli, continue investigating him and find some evidence to prove my own innocence, or maybe the team would get there first.” She sighed. “My detecting was what got me on his radar in the first place, why he set up the murders to frame me. I was scouting out a place to host a special birthday party for my father and I looked into one of Stacey Stark’s lodges. I saw Eli there, arguing with a man who was carrying heavy crates into the lodge. It was clear they were up to something. I thought I’d do some sleuthing on my own so I was going to take some photos of him, but he spotted me.”
Tanner grimaced. “You know it was a PNK9 weapon he used to kill them.”
“I don’t know how he could have gotten one.”
“We’re theorizing he knocked out the power to the station, snuck in and appropriated one designated for destruction, which is why it wasn’t issued to any particular officer.”
“I’m sure that added to the case against me, since I could have gotten access too. I had to run, or at least I thought I did. As long as I could keep him from hurting Asher or my father... I might have been able to elude Eli, but then he sent his guy after me. I couldn’t shake them, no matter what I tried or how far I ran.”
“Not surprising. Just before I left to find you the team uncovered some info on him. He’s a hired gun who goes by the name of Vinny and he’s worked for all kinds of bad people, spent time in prison. He’s as relentless as they come. His name came up a few weeks ago.”
“But how did you find out about the smuggling?”
“Stacey Stark’s diaries had been stolen in a different case. We got them back and found the smoking gun—Eli Ballard’s motive for killing her. Unfortunately, Jonas just happened to be with her when Eli took action.”
Mara hung her head for a moment. “What did Stacey write?”
“That she found out Eli was using the lodges to smuggle and she couldn’t abide it. She’d recently become a Christian and it was important to her to do the right thing. She wrote that she was going to confront him—and obviously she did. Scared him enough to silence her.”
Mara closed her eyes and said a silent prayer for Stacey and Jonas.
“That was enough to bring him in for questioning,” Tanner said, “but he vanished so the chief issued a warrant for his arrest.”
“I think about it all, how many times he almost caught me and how close I came to freezing to death and I know I made the wrong choice in taking it on myself to protect Asher and Dad.” Her eyes found his. “I’ve never been...great at opening up to people, except maybe Willow.”
Officer Willow Bates was her only close friend in the unit as far as he could tell. “I understand. Me neither.”
She frowned at him. “Really? But you seem so confident, fun loving.”
“Sure, but that’s all surface stuff. No one really knows me.” And he hadn’t wanted anyone to after Allie died. Except Mara. Maybe. He shifted. “Anyway, you made your decision and you kept yourself alive. Everyone knows Eli now for what he is.”
“I could hardly believe it when I got through to Asher and he told me they were bringing Eli in for questioning. If only I didn’t have to hang up so abruptly.”
“Asher was pretty desperate to find you right from the start, but he had to work within the system. Eli was crafty for sure. Fooled everyone and covered his tracks. Asher knew Britta and I had the best chance of getting to you, but even so he worried about sending us.”
“But you’d been shot recently. Wasn’t there anyone else who could come?”
“No way. The job had me and Britta written all over it.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re the best team in the squad,” he bragged, “and I knew you weren’t a murderer.”
She drew back a fraction and Britta resettled on her lap. “How could you know that?”
Great question. He felt his skin warm. Because he’d admired her no-nonsense style, her quiet, methodical manner, empathized with her struggle to express emotion. “Some things you know in your gut.” He was grateful when she didn’t press further. A crack from outside made him kill the motor and grab his gun. Britta pushed her squishy jowls against the window.
“Eli?” Mara whispered. Her face was pale as snow in the gloom.
He didn’t answer. The storm was buffeting the vehicle with such force he could hear nothing else. Even Britta couldn’t warn them of Eli’s approach with such a din. The moonlight was completely shrouded by the clouded night sky. “I don’t think so. They’ve got snowmobiles to get around, but they couldn’t operate them without lights in this mess. Lie down on the seat with Britta. Try to get some sleep if you can. I’ll wake you before dawn.”
“But what if it’s him?” He heard her gulp.
Then we’re going to have ourselves a little meet and greet, he thought, anger balling in his stomach. “I’m keeping watch. Get some sleep. We need to be ready to move out quickly.”
It would take all their reserves to complete their escape, especially without a working car.
He peered out into the night, praying that he’d have enough time to fend off an attack if it came.
No, when it came.
Eli and Vinny weren’t going to back down any more than he was.
Morning would be a long time coming.
Mara woke with a warm ball pressed against her stomach and velvety darkness all around. Blinking awake with a surge of terror, her mind filled in the gaps. She was in a car, Tanner’s car, and it was not yet morning, nor could she hear the screeching wind anymore. The interior was freezing cold but tolerable, which meant he must have run the engine periodically.
Britta scrambled out of her lap and onto the seat, leaning over Mara’s shoulder to peer out the rear window.
“Tanner?” She struggled to get her stiff body to cooperate. Thanks to Britta’s comfort and Tanner’s savvy at bringing a spare battery, she was functional. But Tanner must be missing the companionship of his dog.
She twisted to look out the rear window. A shadowy shape... Tanner. The scraping indicated he was moving snow. Squinting, she was able to make out the time on the banged-up wristwatch that used to be her father’s... 3:00 a.m. Another interrupted night’s rest was nothing new. She’d not slept solidly since her nightmare began.
Britta was happy to climb out with Mara. She realized she could only open the door because Tanner had cleared a spot, the mountain of moved snow a white tower against the night.
He looked up from his shoveling and waved a gloved hand.
“Hi,” she whispered, suddenly uncertain. What did you say to a cop who’d babysat you from the front seat of a car all night and was probably half-frozen? Britta greeted him with a happy wag and a gentle pawing before she shook herself and trotted away to find a place to do her business, returning a few moments later.
“Took everything I could from the trunk. We’d better get going.”
“Where?”
“The main road is our best chance to signal someone.” He handed her a protein bar and a bottle of water and returned to his digging. She hurried off to relieve herself behind a screen of trees, Britta standing near.
There was no escaping the doggie escort. Upon her return, Britta tensed, and squared her body in front of Mara’s. Shadows flickered all around her, plops of accumulated snow falling from the branches overhead. Wildly she scanned for Tanner, Britta immovable against her leg, growling low in her throat.
For another long moment she saw nothing, until Tanner appeared. He was moving toward her as fast as he could, turning to use the shovel to collapse the footprints behind him and obliterate hers and Britta’s too. She hurried to help him, using a fallen branch to whisk away the marks.
Tanner didn’t have to say a word.
They’d been found.
And he was desperately trying to cover their tracks.