Saving Andi: St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS

by Raffin, Barbara

  SAVING ANDI

  A St. John Sibling Spinoff Series: FRIENDS

  by Barbara Raffin

  * * *

  Saving Andi, St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS © 2015 by Barbara Raffin.

  All rights reserved by author. The reproduction or other use of any part of this publication without the prior written consent of the rights holder is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Cover Art/Design: Covers by Rogenna.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. People and locations, even those with real names, have been fictionalized for the purposes of this story.

  * * *

  From award-winning author of the

  St. John Sibling series,

  a spinoff novel about a St. John FRIEND:

  Saving Andi by Barbara Raffin

  Cole McCall is shot, dives off a bluff, and hits his head. Now he has amnesia and can't remember who wants him dead or why. He doesn't even know which side of the law he operates on.

  Fortunately for him, Andi Johanson finds him at the camp he's broken into. Given her family history of being on the wrong side of the law, her distrust of lawmen, and a guilt she carries over her younger brother's death, she takes Cole home rather than to a hospital and nurses him back to health.

  But their attraction is jeopardized by their pasts, her secrets, and the fact whoever wants Cole dead has tracked him to Andi's cabin.

  WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT SAVING ANDI:

  "An addicting combination of romance and suspense that grabbed me from page one - don't miss it!" Stacey Joy Netzel, NY Times Bestselling author of the Italy Intrigue Series and the Colorado Trust Series.

  "Andi Johanson is a strong, independent woman but a bit of a loner since the untimely death of her younger brother. Cole, the handsome and caring, wounded stranger, nearly dropped on her lap, has Andi re-thinking her 'loner' status. The compassionate woman has so much to give, and deep down, wants to, but the constant ache in her heart sends her a continuous reminder of her past losses and pain. Cole somehow seems to know just how to hold her, and touch her emotionally. This is a sweet love story for two near-hopelessly lost individuals.

  Barbara Raffin does a wonderful job creating believable characters you can't help but care about and root for in an instant. Raffin had me flipping pages hoping Andi would find her happy ever after ending."

  By Valerie J. Clarizio, author of the Nick Spinelli Mystery Series

  Also by Barbara Raffin

  Contemporary Works

  Taming Tess: St. John Sibling Series: book 1

  Finding Home: St. John Sibling Series: book 2

  Craving a Hero: St John Sibling Series: book 3

  The Mating Game

  The Sting of Love (short story)

  Paranormal/Suspense Works

  The Scarecrow & Ms. Moon (novella)

  Jaded (novella)

  The Visitor

  Time Out of Mind

  Wolfsong

  Historical Works

  The Indentured Heart

  * * *

  LINK TO MY WEB SITE: http://barbararaffin.com/

  LINK TO MY BLOG: http://barbararaffin.com/barbsblog/

  FIND MY PUBLISHED BOOKS AT AMAZON

  SAVING ANDI

  St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS

  By Barbara Raffin

  CHAPTER ONE

  Andi Johanson scanned the snow-covered tree line stretching west from her lakeside cabin. It was something she did at least once a day, usually more. As caretaker of half a dozen seasonal hunting camps, it was her business to keep an eye out for unusual activity.

  The thick plume of smoke rising into the blue sky on this windless Valentine's Day, however, didn't alert her. This one she knew the source of. She'd built the fire in the wood stove creating that plume when she'd plowed a wide, neat swath in front of the Jackson family cabin so Kelly Jackson could have her winter wedding with Dane St. John on Angel Point where they fell in love.

  Longing pinched at her stomach. Romantic love was something she'd witnessed but never known herself. Hell, she'd experienced little love in any form in her twenty-eight years of life.

  Not that she doubted her mother had loved her. And she had loved her baby brother and he'd loved her enough to give his life protecting her, a fact that yet gnawed at her even after two years.

  But she still longed for the kind of love binding Kelly and Dane. A love for which a man would give his life and a woman hers, but with an added depth that made them of one mind and one heart. The kind of love Andi had long ago accepted she'd never know.

  Still, a tiny smile tugged at her lips as she thought of Kelly and Dane exchanging vows up on Angel Point. She was glad the late winter weather held a hint of spring in the air for Kelly. She liked Kelly, even if she was a woods cop. Andi's family had never mixed well with law enforcement of any sort.

  But Kelly had always been nice to her in school and, since following her old man's path as a DNR officer, had pretty much turned a blind eye to any poaching Andi did. Or maybe her Department of Natural Resources friend didn't know. Andi was good at covering her tracks—good at not putting Kelly in an awkward position. Besides, she took from the land only what she needed to survive on.

  No, that thick, white plume rising from the vicinity of the Jackson camp didn't bother her. But the thin, gray one to the north did. She raised her binoculars to her eyes and zoomed in as tight as their magnification would allow.

  There wasn't a vehicle tire or snowmobile track to be seen between the trees leading toward that camp. No surprise. The owners of the camp from which the suspect smoke rose were downstate Michiganders who used the camp twice a year. Autumn deer hunting season and a summer fishing trip.

  Even if they'd made an out-of-season trip to their Upper Peninsula camp, they'd have notified her to at least plow the road. They weren't the type to snowshoe the trek from the county road into their camp.

  She sighed, tucked the binoculars inside her fleece-lined jacket, checked the secureness of the sidearm holstered to her hip, sat down on the snowmobile she straddled, and fired up the ignition. Giving a sharp whistle to let Tuff Stuff know she was invited along, Andi gunned the sled across the two-lane highway toward the county road, the leggy malamute mix running at her side.

  #

  Andi approached the cabin on snowshoes, having left the sled at the bottom of the nearest hill. Riding in on a noisy sled wasn't the best entrance to make when checking out a break-in, especially if the person or persons having broken into the camp were still on site as the smoke from its chimney suggested. The northern most of Michigan's state prisons was less than fifty miles away and, though no breakouts had been reported, no sense taking chances.

  Tuff Stuff found the intruder's trail first. Blood drops coming from the direction of the bluffs. A light smear even where the intruder had fallen and dragged himself back onto his feet in the knee-deep snow in the woods.

  "Doesn't look good," Andi murmured to the dog.

  Reason told her she should backtrack home and call in the authorities. Let them handle this. But the last time she'd called in the authorities, her older brother wound up in prison and her baby brother dead.

  Andi winced. Whether because of that unfortunate turn of events or gut feeling, she didn't want to chance leaving someone possibly bleeding to death to wait out the arrival of the authorities.

  She crept up to the cabin. The curtains were closed over the windows except for the one in the door where the pane of glass nearest the lock had been broken.

  Cardboard had been pressed into the opening and the curtain left askew. It was enough for her to make
out in the dim interior a form bundled up in a sleeping bag by the wood stove. Big. Definitely man-sized. And not moving.

  "Not good," she muttered to the dog at her side.

  She removed her snowshoes, opened her jacket, and unsnapped the holster guard from her pistol. Slowly turning the doorknob, she commanded Tuff to wait. The hinges gave a squeak of protest as she opened the door.

  She stilled. The body in the sleeping bag didn't move. She waited a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the interior dimness, just in case the guy on the floor wasn't alone…or maybe what filled out the sleeping bag was simply bait for whoever made this guy bleed and might be tracking him.

  But there was no sign of another living soul in that one-room cabin. So she slipped inside, leaving the door ajar. Tuff could be counted on to come to the rescue, as long as whoever threatened Andi didn't know the malamute mix would more likely lick them to death than rip out their throat. Tuff Stuff 's sheer size was usually enough to back down any threatening stranger.

  Carefully, Andi approached the prone form. Still no movement.

  Judging by how thin the smoke plume was rising from the cabin's chimney, it'd been some time since he'd added wood to the stove. Unconscious? Or dead? Andi wasn't sure which she preferred.

  But she knew she preferred that hint of a barrel peeking out from the sleeping bag wrapped around the guy on the floor not to be a gun. She closed her fingers around the grip of her sidearm and, keeping herself clear of that protruding barrel should the man holding it be playing possum, she toed the sleeping bag back from the suspicious protrusion.

  It was a pistol and it was in the intruder's hand.

  Simultaneously, she drew her gun and brought her foot down on his wrist, then swatted the man's gun away with her free hand and called for Tuff. The intruder grunted but barely moved. Tuff Stuff stopped at her side.

  "He's in bad shape," she said to the dog, dropping her sidearm back into its holster, removing her foot from the man's wrist, and squatting at his side. Lifting the flap of the bag, she found a bloodstained hole in his shirt low in his side.

  She felt his pulse. Weak but steady. That was good.

  "It'll take an ambulance twenty minutes to half an hour to get here," she thought aloud, "and that's after I get back to the cabin and call them. Then it'll take them that long again to get through the snow to him."

  Andi looked at the dog. "Looks like we best get him out of here ourselves, and the first order of business—make sure he's stopped bleeding."

  A first aid kit sat on the kitchen table. Clearly, the guy had tried to patch himself up.

  Still, she cut his clothing away from the injury. The gauze he'd taped over his wound bore a small bloodstain. Rather than waste time re-bandaging him, she added another layer of gauze, in the process discovering a bigger hole in his back.

  "Exit wound," she muttered, glancing at Tuff, who sat to the far side of the stranger, tongue lolling. "Gunshot for sure. And whoever shot him had some heavy artillery for the bullet to go through him like that. They meant to kill him."

  She eased him onto his side for a better look at the exit wound. The gauze on his back was sloppily applied—no surprise—and soaked through with blood. But the wound beneath seemed to have stopped bleeding.

  She doused the wound with what remained of the hydrogen peroxide and re-bandaged it. Her intruder groaned and his eyelids fluttered. Damn, he had long lashes.

  But dry lips. Well-defined, nicely shaped lips, but dry. He needed hydrating big time.

  She stuffed a towel between his back and the blood-soaked sleeping bag, wrapped a heavy blanket around his upper torso, and zippered him into the bag. Strapping him onto the camp toboggan she'd retrieved from the storage shed, she skidded him down the hill to her snowmobile, then dragged him home.

  #

  He'd always pictured angels with blue eyes and blond hair, above which hovered a golden halo. His had dark eyes and was wearing an orange chook pulled down over her ears. Then everything had gone dark again.

  #

  "I should have left him on the toboggan out front and called an ambulance," Andi said to Tuff who stood beside her staring down on the man she'd dragged into her cabin and deposited between her couch and fireplace, toboggan and all. "My back's going to ache tonight."

  And I should have my head examined for even considering not calling the authorities about a gunshot intruder who had a pistol on him.

  She felt the weight of the handgun she'd zippered into one of her parka pockets and turned to the wall-mounted phone. No cell phone for her. They were unreliable in this neck of the woods anyway…except for folks who could afford the satellite version, which didn't include her.

  Ridiculous to take this on myself.

  She reached for the receiver, but her hand hung in the air just short of contact. Her hesitation couldn't be about her baby brother. She'd called for help before he was even on the ground bleeding out.

  She looked at Tuff Stuff who'd been her only companion—only confidant in the two years since… "What if he is a prison escapee?"

  Tuff tilted her head at Andi.

  "A felon," she said.

  Like my big brother.

  Much as she hated Dalmar, he was still her brother. Still a human being. A deeply flawed one, but who wouldn't be with the father that had raised them? The only thing that had kept her from sharing her older brother's inborn meanness was having been the lucky recipient of more of their mother's genes than their father's.

  And the only thing keeping her from calling the police was the fiasco her last call to them had resulted in. It'd cost her baby brother his life. Besides, the man on her floor wrapped in the sleeping bag might already be dead.

  Tuff Stuff woofed.

  Andi dropped her hand and faced the intruder. "I should check him. Should have done that before I put in all that effort to drag him inside."

  She knelt beside the stranger and pressed two fingers to the pulse point on his neck. "Wonder of wonders, he's still ticking."

  Tuff Stuff made a snuffling sound.

  Andi sighed. "If I'm not calling for help, I better deal with his injuries, huh?"

  She unzipped the bag, spread open the blanket she'd wrapped around him, and pulled off the knit cap she'd put on his head…her chook. Shaggy, dark hair sprang out from his head. It matched the stubble on his jaw.

  If he were an escapee, he must have been on the run for a few days, judging by the beard growth. But that didn't fit with the gunshot wound. A woman didn't hunt her own dinner without learning what a fresh gunshot looked like.

  Reminded of his wound, she retrieved her first-aid kit, one considerably larger than what had been at the downstaters' camp. Not that she needed to keep such a well-equipped kit anymore since her father and brothers were gone. But old habits die hard. Fortunately for her guest, they did.

  She cut off his shirt and undershirt. He had broad shoulders and nicely defined muscles.

  Prison-yard muscled?

  Not from what she'd seen the one time she'd visited Dal. But that didn't mean a lot.

  No crude, prison-applied tattoos, just one professionally applied to his upper arm. A military tattoo. The fallen soldier. Okay, so he was military and he cared enough about his fallen comrades to honor them with a tattoo.

  Judging by the scruffy condition of his hair and beard, she amended that to former military.

  The watch on his wrist had a military look to it, too…or at least an athletic look, what with its black composite wristband, oversized face, and numerous buttons. But it pretty much ruled him out as a prison inmate. Prisoners didn't need watches, not when someone else told them when to move. Then again, he could have stolen it.

  Or not, she amended as she unbuckled the watch from his wrist and noticed the tan line it left.

  If not an escapee, what did you do that someone should want to shoot you?

  She studied his face. Behind the paleness of blood loss was a face weathered by experience. Yet there was
something about him that suggested he wasn't as old as the gray in the stubble on his chin suggested. Late thirties, early forties?

  What are you that someone wants you dead?

  Firelight glinted off something around his neck. She fingered a gold chain from the crease in his neck, easing it out from under him. Its links were sturdy but slim for a man. Men who wore gold chains generally liked them big and showy.

  She held up the chain by what had been strung on it: a ring that looked like a man's wedding band. Removing the chain from his neck and ring from the chain, she tested it on the third finger of his left hand. It fit.

  But why not wear it on his finger then? Loss of the partner it linked him to?

  He groaned, his hand flipping toward his gauze-covered wound below his ribs.

  "I got better things to do than ponder what this means," she said, removing the ring from his finger, restringing it on the chain, and dropping it into the breast pocket of her shirt.

  Beneath the bandaging, the front wound didn't look too bad. But there was plenty of blood dried to his skin and the dark trail of hair disappearing into the waistband of his jeans…which bore a large dark stain.

  She shook her head, muttering, "Need to see if that back wound is bleeding again after the rough ride he had down from the camp."

  She spread the camp blanket on the floor next to the toboggan. Tuff Stuff grumbled.

  She met the dog's gaze. "Hey. No sense bloodying up any of my blankets when I already have this one and the bag to clean before returning them to the downstaters' camp. Not to mention I've got to replace their hydrogen peroxide and whatever else he used. The cost of taking care of this guy myself is adding up."