The sudden grumble of an old car engine from somewhere nearby startled her, made Chance let out a soft woof.
In an instant, the indecision on Darcy’s face was gone, replaced by an angry determination as she took a fast step backward. The little boy stumbled along with her, the little girl lifting her head as Darcy stiffened her arm and leveled her gun on Peter.
“Don’t,” Peter warned softly. “I’m a trained police officer. My aim is better than yours.”
Betrayal flashed across Darcy’s face, but she didn’t glance Alanna’s way this time. Instead she stared directly at Peter, the guilt in her voice shifting to anger. “You want to find out? You’re a bigger target than I am. At this distance, I could be a terrible shot and still kill you. You want to risk being slightly off your mark and hitting my girl?”
Chance let out a low growl, took a slow step forward with his front paw.
Alanna held up a hand and he froze. She didn’t dare look at Peter.
She had no idea what Peter’s training was like, how accurate a shot he was. She doubted he’d fire unless he had to with the little girl in Darcy’s arms.
But five years ago, Darcy had fired at Kensie. And she hadn’t aimed to wound.
Darcy’s head tipped back slightly, her lips tightening as if she’d made a decision, and panic took hold of Alanna.
She leaped in between them, spreading her arms wide.
“Alanna!” Peter yelled, a mix of anger and fear in his voice as he shifted sideways and she moved with him. “Get out of the way!”
Alanna didn’t take her gaze off of Darcy.
A ghost of a smile lifted one corner of Darcy’s mouth, a sad understanding look in her eyes, before she spun and escaped out the front door with the little girl.
* * *
“CHANCE, STAY!” Alanna yelled as she practically body-slammed Peter.
Peter slid his finger off the trigger, bracing himself to absorb her weight so he wouldn’t get knocked to the ground. “What are you doing? She’s getting away!”
“She could kill you!” The panic in Alanna’s voice was unmistakable, the desperation clear in the surprising strength of her grip as she wrapped her arms around his waist and hung on.
He swore, angling his gun away from her as he tried to push her away with his free hand. Alanna was a lot stronger than she looked, with lean muscle in her arms and legs and a good knowledge of leverage that she used to her advantage.
He glanced at the closed door. “If she gets away now, how will we find her? She’s got a child!”
“Darcy won’t hurt her, but she’ll hurt you,” Alanna said, her fingers digging into him, her desperation dangerous.
He didn’t want to hurt Alanna. But the cough and sputter of a car’s engine followed by the squeal of tires made him swear. “I’m sorry,” he said, and twisted her arm as if he was going to push her to the ground and arrest her. The move broke her grip on him, prevented her from twisting back. Then he pushed her away and darted for the door, hoping he wasn’t too late to stop Darcy.
Alanna ran after him and he spun back, holding his pistol away from his body, afraid it would accidentally fire as she grappled him. But she wasn’t coming for him this time.
She reached for the little boy Darcy had left behind, who’d been crying since the melee had started and now ran toward the door, too, to follow the woman who’d kidnapped him.
Chance got there first, blocking the boy’s way and plopping onto the floor. He knocked the boy down with him, but instead of crying harder, the little boy wrapped his arms around the big dog and buried his head in Chance’s fur.
Alanna sighed, then looked up at Peter, fear and regret in her eyes.
She had to know he wouldn’t hurt Darcy unless there was no other choice, didn’t she? He wanted to reassure her that everything would be okay, but it wasn’t a promise he could make, so he just broke eye contact and took off out the door.
The yard seemed empty, moonlight filtering through the towering trees and iced-over snow. But there were a lot of places to hide and no guarantee the engine he’d heard was actually Darcy’s. Would she have been able to get into a vehicle that fast? He hadn’t seen any other vehicles except his own truck when he’d arrived. The trees here were thick; there probably wasn’t enough space to hide a vehicle except close to the road.
His heart thudded too fast as he tried to focus on any sound that didn’t belong, any movement in his peripheral vision. But the woods were too dark, the diminished hearing in his left ear made worse by the stress of knowing Darcy could be hunkered down behind a nearby tree, taking careful aim at him.
A crunch that could have been someone stepping through the icy snow made him swivel his head right, toward the direction of his parked police vehicle. He squinted through the darkness, trying to spot any movement, then a quiet snap from the left made his head swivel. Animals? Darcy sneaking up on him, ready to eliminate the only other person with a weapon?
If he was shot in these woods, what would Alanna do? Rush out and try to help him while Darcy took aim at her, took her revenge for Alanna’s betrayal, and then disappeared with both kids?
Furious to be in this position, Peter backed slowly toward the cabin, slipping inside. He shut the door, holstered his weapon and pulled out his phone.
“What happened?” Alanna demanded from where she was crouched on the floor, her arms around both Chance and the little boy.
“I can’t see anything. Do you know where she parked?”
Alanna shook her head. “I didn’t see a vehicle.”
He pulled Chief Hernandez up on his phone, but Alanna was by his side, gripping his arm, before he could hit Call.
“What are you doing?” She sounded panicked, like she was still thinking with emotion instead of logic.
For a few brief moments, he’d thought her raw emotion and honesty were what would change Darcy’s mind and end this whole thing peacefully. But that time had passed. Now they needed logic. And manpower.
He pulled his hand free and did the thing he should have done from the start. “We need backup.”
When Chief Hernandez answered the phone, he gave her a quick rundown of their location and status, then turned back to Alanna.
She was staring wide-eyed at him, the shock on her face mixed with grief.
Knowing she’d just lost a piece of her childhood, he squeezed her hand gently as he told her, “Lock the door behind me. Stay here with the boy and Chance.”
Chance stood at his name, took a step toward Peter, then looked at the closed door. As if he was ready to run out with Peter or stand between a threat and Alanna.
“Good boy, Chance,” he said, then looked sternly at Alanna. “Don’t let anyone in except the Desparre PD.”
He didn’t mention that they considered her an accomplice and might arrest her when they arrived. He and Alanna would have to deal with that if it happened. Instead, he let go of her hand and turned for the door when her fingers latched onto his arm again. When he turned back, there was regret on her face.
“Back at the other cabin, when I chased after her, I was so sure I could catch her. I thought if it was just the two of us, I could talk her down.”
“I know,” Peter said, peeling her fingers away. He pulled out his weapon again, glancing at her before he moved to slip out the door. The pink flush of emotion across her pale cheeks and the sadness in her dark eyes were a split-second image he knew would stick with him long after she was gone.
He’d risked his career for her. Risked his life for her. He had no regrets about that, but he’d still been wrong tonight.
If he’d let his team in on what he was doing, he would have had backup right now. There would have been a team waiting outside the cabin, ready to surround Darcy and talk her down, or follow at a distance until they could bring in reinforcements to take her out and protect th
e little girl.
Instead, Darcy was gone again. He and Alanna had the boy, but what about the little girl?
Peter forced himself not to look back at Alanna, at the sorrow and regret in her eyes. He closed the door behind him, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. He hoped it wasn’t already too late, but his gut told him it was.
He’d sacrificed his job thinking he was doing the right thing for everyone, Alanna in particular. But had his mistake just cost a little girl the chance to grow up with her real family?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The subtle clack clack clack of metal against metal echoed through the woods and Peter froze, his arms tense as they supported his pistol. The noise was coming from his right, in the direction of where he’d parked.
In an instant, he realized what it was. The sound of someone trying to open the door to his police SUV. He didn’t pause to wonder why Darcy would be trying to get into his vehicle instead of racing for her own. He just started running.
The deeper he went into the woods, the icier the top layer of snow got, crunching as he set each foot down, trying to suck his boots off as he lifted them back up. His breath puffed out in front of him in frigid blasts of air, his lungs feeling every degree that had dropped in the past few hours, every moment he’d spent earlier today digging his friends out of the snow.
As he got closer to the SUV, he slowed, knowing his heavy footsteps in the snow were telegraphing his approach. He couldn’t hear Darcy anymore. But was it because she’d gone silent, listening to his approach and trying to line him up in her sights in the darkness? Or just because his hearing wasn’t good enough to make out the soft noise of her slinking away over his own footsteps?
He ducked against the shelter of a big tree trunk just before the boom of a gun rang out. The muzzle flash told him she was standing behind his vehicle, using it as cover.
His heart thumped at the near miss, then with a realization. Darcy had run the wrong way out of the cabin. Unless he’d totally missed it, there was no other vehicle out this way. She must have left her car in the other direction. To get to it, she’d have to slip past him. Instead of taking the risk, she’d tried to take his vehicle.
He didn’t need to rush her now, try to get close through the threat of more bullets. He just needed to pin her there, prevent her from flanking him and returning to her own vehicle. Then he could wait her out, because the rest of his team was on their way. With sirens and lights, they should arrive in less than ten minutes.
Sliding farther behind the tree trunk, Peter squeezed his eyes shut and focused on his hearing. He angled his good ear toward the vehicle, straining to hear any sound that would indicate Darcy was on the move. But he heard nothing.
The muzzle flash had left a temporary mark on his retinas and he waited, listening, until it went away. Then he opened his eyes again and shapes that had been indistinct before became identifiable. A stray branch, broken and dangling from the tree in front of him. Holes in the snow, distinctly paw-shaped, where Chance had stalked alongside him on the way to the cabin. Bigger holes where his boots had broken through in his frantic rush to get to Alanna.
Peter leaned slightly around the edge of the tree, leading with his gun, because if his eyes had started to adjust to the darkness, surely Darcy’s had, too.
There was nothing. No top of her head peeking over the vehicle, no outstretched hand clutching a pistol, shifting to take aim. No crying little girl, cold and afraid.
A curse formed on his lips as he turned his head, angling his right side the other way to listen for Darcy. Had she given up on her vehicle to head deeper into the woods? Or maybe she had just kept going past his car and to the road, hoping to hitch a ride from someone who didn’t recognize her? Was she able to move through the snow more quietly than he could, his hearing loss too great to detect her?
He didn’t hear her. But suddenly, he heard sirens, approaching fast.
Then Darcy was racing away from his vehicle, desperation in the extended length of her strides, in the way the child was clutched in her arms.
She held the girl tight with both hands, Peter realized. It meant she didn’t have a hand free to aim and fire.
He moved away from the protection of the tree to pursue her. He was taller than her, with longer strides, and he was quickly closing the gap between them. But he couldn’t fire without risking the girl, so he holstered his gun.
Darcy glanced back, saw him gaining and put on a new burst of speed.
It wasn’t going to be enough, though, and she must have known it, because she halted suddenly, spinning toward him, her arms shifting to juggle the girl and pull her gun.
He leaped toward her, going for her gun hand. He grabbed it before her finger could slip under the trigger guard and then he was tossing the weapon aside, twisting her arm up and back.
She yelped and the girl, still caught in her other arm, started to cry.
“Hand her over,” Peter demanded. Then the sirens were suddenly on top of them, the flashing blue and red lights sweeping over Darcy’s face and illuminating the tears there, too.
Chief Hernandez and Tate were running through the woods to meet them, weapons out. Peter felt a wash of relief to see his partner had been discharged from the hospital.
“She’s unarmed,” he yelled, even though as he said it, he realized he couldn’t be sure she didn’t have another weapon on her.
Still, he had a hard grip on her arm, had it twisted at such an angle that there was no way for her to move it without causing a break. If she wanted to go for a weapon, she’d have to drop the child. Staring at her now, at her tear-filled eyes, wide and panicked, he knew she wouldn’t do it. Because even as she shook her head at the approaching cops, she made soothing shh noises under her breath to the child, slightly rocking her. Trying to comfort her.
“Hand her over,” Peter repeated, softer this time, as the chief stepped forward, holstering her weapon and holding out her arms. “It will be okay. We’ll take care of her. I promise.”
Then he heard the crunching of ice behind him, the sound of someone dashing toward them.
Tate shifted his weapon up and over, then returned his aim to Darcy.
Peter glanced over his shoulder and cursed as he saw that it was Alanna. Chance and the boy weren’t with her, which meant she’d left them in the cabin. She’d probably heard the sirens, heard him yell to his teammates that Darcy wasn’t armed anymore.
Darcy’s gaze locked on Alanna and guilt flashed across her face before she dipped her head. Then her shoulders slumped. She stretched her arm with the girl in it toward Chief Hernandez.
The girl clung to Darcy’s neck and Chief Hernandez peeled her arms free, tried to soothe her as she cried. The chief stepped backward, unzipping her coat and tucking the child into it as she nodded at Peter.
He grabbed Darcy’s other hand and handcuffed her. Then he pushed her against a tree trunk and moved her legs slightly apart with his foot so he could pat her down for additional weapons. “I tossed a pistol that way,” he told Tate, gesturing with the jerk of his head the area where he’d knocked it away from Darcy.
Alanna reached them just as he’d confirmed Darcy didn’t have any other weapons on her. Alanna was panting from exertion, her gaze darting to Tate, to the pistol he still held as he swept the discarded one out of the snow, and tucked it into his belt.
Peter’s partner didn’t train his weapon at Alanna, but as he straightened, he locked eyes with her, ready to take action if she rushed to help Darcy.
“She’s no threat,” Peter told Tate, hoping it was true. “The boy is in the cabin with Chance.”
His partner gave him a tense nod.
Peter had definitely destroyed some trust tonight.
“Why did you run?” Alanna demanded, her focus entirely on Darcy. She stepped forward, getting too close, and Peter forced Darcy backward, towar
d the police car.
Tate holstered his gun and stepped in front of her, preventing Alanna from getting any closer to Darcy.
Chief Hernandez told Peter, “Put Darcy in my vehicle. You’ll bring the kids back to the station. Take Tate with you.” Her words were clipped and angry, telling Peter there was a reckoning to come.
Peter nodded and pushed Darcy toward the open door of the police vehicle at the edge of the road.
Alanna’s voice trailed after them, gaining volume as she demanded over and over, “Why? Why? Why?”
Darcy didn’t respond, didn’t look back once as Peter put her in the SUV and slammed the door shut.
Then he turned back to the scene behind him. He took in Chief Hernandez smoothing her hand over the girl’s hair, whispering quiet words as the girl stared up at her, her tears slowly drying. His gaze skipped to his partner next. Tate stood in front of Alanna, feet braced hip-width apart as if he expected he’d need to forcibly stop her from chasing after them. And then there was Alanna herself, frozen in place, her lips still parted from her last screamed question. The pain on her face was hard to see, but at least their chase was over.
Her methods might not have been ideal, but she’d helped them find Darcy. Ultimately, she was the reason they’d been able to rescue these kids. Without her knowledge of Darcy and how to decode symbols that had looked like nonsense to whoever had gone through the Altiers’ home years ago, they never would have found this place.
The kids would be reunited with their families now. Alanna could go home to the family who’d waited so long for her return.
It was where she belonged. Back in Chicago, a town he’d never visited, never wanted to.
He belonged in Desparre, fighting for a job that had given him back his passion. For a team he’d grown to respect, a partnership that had become a friendship. A calling that spoke to him even more than being a reporter. A job that now might be beyond saving.
He hadn’t even known Alanna for a full week and they’d spent most of that time at odds. He’d broken her trust by calling in his team at the cabin in Luna. She’d broken his by going after Darcy alone after the woman had caused an avalanche. But he had the sense that Alanna understood his actions, as he did hers. After everything they’d been through, he felt a connection to her that was undeniable.
Harlequin Intrigue January 2021 - Box Set 2 of 2 Page 51