Fugitive

by Shirlee McCoy

  “Much. And, now that I am, I really need you to leave. If this is the only cabin on the mountain—”

  “It is.”

  “Then eventually someone is going to show up here looking for me. I don’t want you here when it happens.”

  “If I leave, how will you get off the mountain?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “You can’t walk out. It’s too far.”

  “Like I said, I’ll manage. Did your husband keep a handgun around?”

  “In the lockbox on the top shelf of the closet,” she responded and then wished she hadn’t. She’d already broken the law. She was breaking it again by providing a felon with a firearm.

  He grabbed the box and set it on the satiny wood of the little table William had crafted on their last visit to the cabin together.

  “Do you know the combination?”

  “Why do you need a gun?” she asked, unable to look away as Logan fiddled with the combination lock. With his dark hair almost dry and his chin shadowed with the beginning of a beard, he looked tough and dangerous.

  “I’m not planning to kill a cop with it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking that helping you get out of those cuffs was one thing. Giving you a weapon is something else. Unless you have a really good reason for wanting it, it’s probably better that it stays locked up.”

  “It’s not a weapon—it’s a firearm. And I’m only planning to use it for protection.” He looked up from the box, his eyes blazing. Familiar eyes, and she couldn’t deny them, couldn’t turn away from the truth she saw there. She rattled off the combination, and he lifted the pistol, checking to see if it was loaded and then grabbing the ammunition that William had locked up with it.

  “I’d better go,” she said because looking at him wearing William’s clothes and carrying William’s firearm made her chest tight and her stomach ache. She’d loved William. He’d been her best friend and confidant. Her cheerleader and supporter. With him, she’d had freedom from the chaos and drama that she’d grown up with.

  The thing was, she’d loved Logan, too, all those years ago. Had loved him with the kind of love only a child who’d been desperate for affection could feel.

  She didn’t want to leave him, but she didn’t know how she could stay when staying meant turmoil and trouble. She’d run from that thirteen years ago. And she’d lived more than a decade with peace and stability and order in her life.

  “Be careful on the roads, and don’t stop for anything but a marked police cruiser,” Logan said as she opened the front door.

  She nodded but couldn’t speak. Her eyes burned with tears, all the things Logan had done for her when she was young and hurting and scared crowding into her brain.

  Don’t cry, Laney. Don’t give them that power over you.

  Those were the first words he’d ever spoken to her. She’d shoved the memory so far back in her mind, she hadn’t known it was still there.

  She walked outside, let the wind cool her hot face and burning eyes and tried to tell herself that she wasn’t abandoning the man who’d lived in her parents’ home for five years because he hadn’t wanted to abandon her.

  She was doing the right thing. She had to believe that, had to trust that God’s plan would work itself out. He would protect Logan.

  He didn’t need Laney’s help for that.

  Still...

  Thirteen years, and Logan was suddenly back in her life.

  That had to mean something.

  Didn’t it?

  She slid behind the wheel of the Jeep, her gaze jumping to the cabin. She needed to drive away, but she couldn’t quite make herself start the engine.

  The cabin door opened, and Logan appeared, silhouetted in the light. He walked to the car, his stride long and confident.

  She unrolled the window as he approached.

  “Did you change your mind about wanting a ride?” she asked, half hoping that he’d say he had. Half hoping that he wouldn’t.

  “I need to toss this into the woods. Ten minutes, and it’ll be covered with snow.” He held up his prison uniform. “If anyone finds it, they’ll assume I’m hypothermic and out of my mind with it. I don’t want anyone knowing I was here. Not for a while, anyway.”

  “Logan...”

  She wasn’t sure what she planned to say, what she should say.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” he cut in before she could gather her thoughts. “Now, go. Because the longer you sit there, the longer I’m going to be standing out here, and the colder we’re both going to get.”

  He meant it.

  She was absolutely sure that he’d stand there until she left. She nodded, rolled up the window and started the engine, her heart beating a heavy, hard rhythm as she pulled away.

  THREE

  Snow splattered against the Jeep’s windshield and Laney turned on the wipers, her hand shaking a little.

  She had to do this.

  Had to.

  Because it was what Logan wanted, and because Laney’s trip back home was designed to help her close the door to the past. Not revisit it.

  She frowned, her hands tight on the steering wheel, snow swirling as she inched down the long driveway. She’d given herself two weeks to clean out the cabin and her parents’ house. Two weeks to get them both on the market and return to her interior design job and to her clients.

  She hadn’t expected it to be easy, but she had expected it to go smoothly. She’d planned everything out—called the lawyer who’d handled her father’s estate after he’d died and asked him to have the electricity turned back on at the farmhouse, contacted a real estate agent and a contractor, asked friends to water her plants while she was gone.

  Yeah, she’d planned everything out, but she hadn’t planned on Logan.

  Hadn’t planned on having to turn her back on a part of the past that was suddenly very much in the present.

  She flipped on the heat, trying to drive away the chill in her bones.

  A light flashed somewhere below. It was just a glimmer that she wasn’t even sure she’d seen, but her pulse jumped, adrenaline streaming through her blood.

  Just keep going, keep driving.

  She wanted to, but her foot had a mind of its own, pressing on the brake so that the Jeep eased to a stop.

  She sat for a moment, peering into the storm, her body tense as she waited for some sign that there really was someone else on the mountain.

  There! Another glimmer of light.

  The police?

  Someone worse?

  She thought about Logan, completely unaware of the threat closing in on him.

  Just. Keep. Going.

  But she couldn’t.

  He’d done too much for her all those years ago, and she couldn’t leave without warning him.

  She put her car in reverse and backed toward the cabin, her heart racing with fear. Logan had warned her that trouble was coming. He’d told her to leave. Alone, though, trapped on the mountain with no transportation, he’d die.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  No matter how terrified she was.

  * * *

  Danger.

  Logan could feel it coming as he put on a coat that he’d found in the closet and shoved his feet into hiking boots that were a size too small. He tucked the gun into one pocket of the coat and extra ammo into the other, then searched the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, grabbing matches and a slender paring knife. He shoved the first into his back pocket and tucked the other into his boot. This wasn’t his way, digging through other people’s things and searching for whatever he could put to use. He felt like the criminal the jury had said he was.

  He doused the fire and turned off the lights.
>
  He stood in the pitch blackness of the cabin and prayed that God would lead him down the mountain and to safety.

  Headlights splashed across the front windows, and he knew that he needed to run. He wanted to run, but he felt weak, shaky, still disoriented, his body trying to thaw but still so cold that his teeth chattered.

  Going outside to toss the jumpsuit had been risky, but he’d had to do it. For Laney’s sake. Maybe even for his own. He didn’t want there to be any link between the two of them.

  He walked to the back door, his legs heavy, his mind sluggish. Another hour in the cold would probably kill him. He knew it, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Die trying to live, or give up and just die?

  Footsteps pounded on the front porch, and he pulled the gun, waited as the doorknob turned and aimed as the door flew open.

  Someone raced into the cabin, whirled in the darkness, hair swinging in a long pale rope.

  “Logan?” Laney called, her slender figure silhouetted against the gray night revealed by the open door.

  “Do you know how close you just came to dying?” Logan growled, his legs weak from what had almost happened. If he hadn’t served as a police officer for a decade, he might have pulled the trigger before he realized who was on the other end of the barrel.

  “You can lecture me later. I saw lights down the mountain. We have to get out of here.” She grabbed his hand and yanked him out into the storm.

  He let her because sending her alone toward whatever was coming up the mountain felt like sending a lamb into a lion’s den.

  “Are you sure you saw lights?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure if they were on the road or in the woods, but they shouldn’t have been there. There’s nothing between here and the highway but trees.” She opened the door of her Jeep, motioned for him to climb in then ran to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. “Should I head down or up? The road goes both ways.”

  “How far up are we talking? Can we get to the other side of the mountain or will we hit a dead end somewhere?”

  “I don’t know. William and I never walked to the end of the road. The farthest we ever went was a couple of miles.”

  “I think we’d better try it. Worst-case scenario, we’ll get out and walk down the other side of the mountain.”

  He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but he’d rather ride away from certain danger than into it.

  “Okay.” Laney pulled away from the cabin, the Jeep crawling along the driveway, the headlights off. Snow lightened the road they turned onto, swirling down into a valley far below. The wind had died, and the trees were still and quiet. Nothing but the snow moved, and that made Logan nervous. The Jeep shimmying from side to side as Laney inched up the road made him nervous, too. If they tumbled off the side of the mountain, they wouldn’t have to worry about running out of road or running into trouble.

  He shifted in his seat, searching the area behind them, probing the woods. A light pierced the darkness, too bright to be a flashlight, too still to be headlights. The cabin? Another light appeared. Windows illuminating the darkness. His heart jerked.

  “Think we can go any faster?” he asked, and Laney tensed.

  “What’s wrong?” Her voice was tight, her grip white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

  “It looks like there’s someone at the cabin.”

  “The police?”

  “No.” There’d be flashing emergency lights, more motion and action.

  “How much of a head start do you think we have?”

  “If they’re on foot, plenty.”

  “What if they’re not?”

  “How about we just keep moving forward?”

  “Funny. That’s why I came to the cabin this weekend. To move forward,” she said quietly, her voice shaking.

  “Yeah?” He wanted to keep her focused on the conversation rather than her fear and the threat that was following them.

  “My father left me the family property when he died. I’m supposed to be in Green Bluff tomorrow night so that I can clean out the house and get it ready to go on the market.”

  “You’re selling your parents’ place?” The property had been sitting vacant for twelve years. Logan had driven past it several times a week when he was on the force. Every time, he’d thanked God that the Mackeys had gotten what they’d deserved and that Laney hadn’t had to suffer for their crimes.

  “Like I said, I’m trying to move forward. Strange how I finally made the decision to let go of the past and one of the biggest parts of it is suddenly in my life again.” She laughed a little, but there was more sadness than humor in the sound.

  “I’m sorry, Laney.”

  “For what?”

  “Coming back into your life.”

  “It’s not like you planned it, Logan. It happened the same way as the first time you did. God worked it out. Who are either of us to say that it’s not for the best?”

  She had a point, but that didn’t change the fact that Logan had endangered her or that every minute that they were together the danger grew.

  They rounded a sharp curve, the car fishtailing and sliding toward the two-hundred-foot drop to their right. Laney wrangled the vehicle back into the middle of the road, her breath coming in short quick gasps.

  “You doing okay?” he asked.

  “This is crazy, Logan. We could be navigating switchbacks for hours, and in this kind of weather, it’s just not safe.”

  “Want me to drive?” He’d driven in worse conditions, and he wasn’t as nervous as she seemed to be. At this point, that could only play in their favor.

  “Yes.” The Jeep rolled to a stop, trees pressing in on one side, a gray expanse of nothing to the other, the road barely visible ahead.

  “Hold on.” Logan grabbed Laney’s wrist before she could open the door. Her pulse throbbed rapidly beneath her skin, but her face was cool and composed.

  “What?”

  “I’ll come around. You can just slide over. No sense in both of us going out in the cold again.” He didn’t give her time to argue, just got out of the Jeep.

  Snow crunched beneath Logan’s feet as he rounded the car, the scent of pine and the crisp winter air reminding him of home. It had been eight months since he’d been back there. Eight months since he’d hiked the bluff behind his house and inhaled the cold clean air.

  He wanted to go home. He wanted it so badly, he could taste it. Every cell in his body yearned for it. Home was all he’d ever dreamed of when he was a kid. He hadn’t wanted fancy clothes or toys or things. He’d just wanted that safe landing place, that soft spot where nothing mattered but just being.

  He slid behind the wheel, taking one last deep lungful of air and catching a faint whiff of something sharp and bitter.

  Fire!

  He was back outside almost before the thought could register, scanning the forest below, searching for a spot of color, a plume of smoke, something to prove what his gut was saying.

  “Logan? What’s wrong?” Laney appeared at his elbow.

  “Maybe nothing.” But in the distance a black cloud billowed up toward the blue-gray sky.

  “It’s the cabin, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What else could it be?” she asked, but he didn’t think she expected an answer.

  “We’d better get moving.” He took her arm, leading her back to the Jeep and helping her inside.

  She went without protest, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin against them. He wanted to take her back down the mountain before she got dragged any deeper into his troubles, but the fire would bring more emergency crews, more police presence, more of everything that Logan needed to avoid. If he turned around now, he and Laney would both be arrested.

  Or worse.
r />   Anyone could be waiting on the road behind them.

  Hunted, herded toward something—that’s how Logan felt.

  “I can still smell the fire,” Laney said as she shifted in her seat and looked out the back window. All Logan could smell was the subtle scent of flowers that floated in the air every time she moved.

  “It may not be as bad as we think.” But Logan thought it might be worse. Someone had known that he’d been there. That same someone had set the fire. To keep him from returning to the cabin? To flush him out of hiding?

  “How can it not be? It will take time for the fire crew to get to the cabin in this snow. By the time they do, all William’s hard work will be gone. He built the cabin two years before we got married. He did most of the work there himself. He loved that place.” The wistfulness in her words made Logan want to squeeze her hand, tell her again how sorry he was that he’d come back into her life.

  “Did you love it?”

  “I loved how happy he was when he was there. He always said he did his best work when he was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by God’s creation.”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  “He refinished woodwork in old homes and built custom cabinets. He carved some really beautiful wood sculptures that he sold in art galleries in Seattle and San Diego.”

  “That explains the shop then.”

  “Yes. I wonder if they’ll burn that, too.”

  “There was only one smoke plume.”

  “That’s something.” But it didn’t seem like enough. Not to Laney. Not yet. She rubbed her arms, trying to chase away the chill that flowed through her blood.

  “How long were you and William married?” Logan asked, and she knew he was trying to distract her, get her mind off the burning cabin. She let him because thinking about all of William’s hard work burning to ashes made her eyes ache with tears she didn’t want to let fall.

  “Just eighteen months. We were friends for three years before that.”

  “Friends?” He kept his eyes on the road, but she could feel the weight of his judgment. As if being friends wasn’t enough to build a marriage on. That had been what her closest friends had told her. That building a life on liking someone wasn’t the same as building it on love.