Читать книгу Perilous Christmas Reunion - Laurie Alice Eakes - Страница 14

Chris reached for his weapon. He had forgotten it wasn’t there. It had vanished somewhere during the moments when he and Lauren had headed for the house the first time. Or it had vanished with Lauren, and she had stashed it away somewhere when she said she was collecting the first-aid kit. Either way, the gun was gone. He had no way to protect Lauren or himself while someone slammed hard enough against the back door to make it shudder in its frame.

Chris glanced around the room for some sort of weapon. Other than chunks of wood too short and thick to use as clubs, nothing presented itself to him.

“Where is my gun?” Chris demanded, not expecting an answer.

“I don’t know.” Lauren gripped the edge of the table. “I felt it beneath you near the woodpile—”

“Ryan Delaney,” a man shouted outside the door, “open this door if you know what’s good for you.”

“Don’t—”

“Ryan isn’t in here,” Lauren shouted back before Chris could get out his warning for her to remain quiet.

“Come out, Delaney, if you want to keep your sister alive,” another man yelled.

“He’s not—”

Chris grasped Lauren’s hand and headed for the steps. “You can’t argue them into believing your brother isn’t here.”

“Wait.” Lauren held back. “I should get my cell phone. I’ll need it when we reach the road and have service.”

“No time.” Chris pounded up the steps, Lauren sprinting behind him in her moccasins. He hesitated for a moment at the landing, remembering the configuration of the house outside, and steered them toward the far bedroom.

Below, a window smashed. In moments, the men would manage to batter through the shutters.

Chris and Lauren dived into the bedroom. Once inside, he closed and locked the door, then started to drag the heavy chest of drawers across the room. His injured shoulder gave out, and his hand slipped from the edge, throwing him off balance. He stumbled and would have fallen, tripping on the edge of the throw rug, but Lauren’s arm encircled his waist and held him upright, held him close.

For a heartbeat, the contact felt right, natural. Then he got his feet under him again and shook off her touch. “Help me push this.”

“Yes, sir.” She saluted and marched around to the other end of the dresser.

“Please.”

She shoved the chest toward him. He pulled. Together, they slid the solid oak piece across the rug to block the door.

A crash and thud below warned the men had entered the house. Their shouts of “Where are you, Delaney?” confirmed Chris’s fears.

Lauren bowed her head. “God, please help Ryan if he is out there.”

“Help him what?” Pain and frustration sharpened Chris’s tone. “Help him avoid capture? Help him get to Canada to elude justice?”

“If my brother is guilty, I don’t expect him to elude justice.” Lauren’s tone was as icy as the sleet outside as she raised her head, but the glow of a night-light on one wall didn’t provide enough illumination for Chris to read her expression.

“‘If’? Lauren, he’s a fugitive. And now—” Chris broke off.

No sense in repeating the same arguments. She would never believe her big brother capable of armed transport of narcotics with the intent to sell. She had always thought the sun rose and set on Ryan, who did not in the least deserve her adulation, except that he had always treated her like a princess when the rest of her family neglected her.

“Do you think an innocent man would have thugs like these after him?”

Footfalls thudded on the steps.

“That chest won’t hold them for long.” Lauren’s face was pale, her pupils dilated.

“It only needs to hold them long enough for us to get out the window.”

“Out the window? But we’re not dressed for this weather.”

“We’re not bulletproof either.” Chris snatched up an afghan from the foot of the bed. “Wrap this around you.”

“You—”

“I’m fine.”

He wouldn’t be for long in this kind of cold, but a little frostbite sounded better than facing these men unarmed.

“We can get into the attic from here. If we open the window, they’ll think we left that way while we’re still inside.”

“We’d be trapped if they decided to hang out here, but misdirecting is a good idea. We can try to make them think we went into the attic. Can you pull that ladder down?” Chris strode across the room to the window and flung back the shutters. Sleet pinged against the glass, a substance nearly as deadly as the men bellowing and banging throughout the house. Neither of them wore outdoor clothing. Nonetheless, he shoved up the sash and leaned out. Pellets of ice struck his skin like a thousand frozen hypodermic needles. He winced where the wood had battered his scalp what felt like hours ago. “How far down from the garage roof to the ground?”

“Ten feet.”

“Can you get yourself down that far? With the snow, the landing shouldn’t be too rough.”

“I’ll be all right if you will.”

Chris hoped and prayed she was right. He didn’t want to see her hurt, especially with someone following them.

Following.

“Let’s go, then,” Chris said.

With ease, they stepped over the low windowsill and onto the garage roof. Their footfalls crunched through the sleet-covered snow, no doubt leaving a trail the men could follow without light. No help for it. They were committed to their route now.

“I’ll go first.” Before he could stop her, Lauren flopped onto her belly and eased herself over the lip of the roof.

A thud and gasp followed her escape. Chris didn’t waste time asking if she was all right. He mimicked her movements, landing in a snowdrift that wasn’t as soft as it looked. Winded, pain shooting through his shoulder and head, he lay motionless for a heartbeat—then two—all too aware of Lauren gasping beside him, but unable to talk for several moments and ask her if she was hurt.

And above them, a gunshot split the night.

“They’re going to get into that room soon.” Chris hauled himself to his feet and reached to help Lauren up. “Let’s get inside the garage.”

“I’ll drive. I know the terrain.” Lauren grasped his hands and hauled herself to her feet.

For a heartbeat, their eyes met and held in the snow-brightened night. Then Lauren jerked her hands free and spun toward the garage’s back door.

Lauren shoved open the rear door of the garage. “We have to take the snowmobile.”

“Why not the Jeep?” Chris asked.

“The key is in my purse inside the house. I should have grabbed it. I didn’t think—”

“No time for that now. We’ll take the snowmobile.”

On a hook beside the entrance to the house hung a key to the snowmobile. If ever she needed proof Ryan was in serious danger, it was the presence of the key and vehicle on runners. Ryan would have taken the snowmobile if he’d had the time. He knew she never locked the garage and always kept the key handy in the event a hunter or winter hiker got lost, injured or snowbound and needed to reach shelter. So typical of her nature—risk someone stealing the contents of her garage if leaving the attached building open might save a life.

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.