by Nicole Helm
The world was white. He couldn’t even see trees. Just snow, snow and more snow. On the ground, still falling from the sky, accumulating fast.
The chance of help coming was about as remote as it’d ever be. Even if Addie got through to Laurel or a Carson, it’d take extra time.
Which meant he had to get back inside the cabin. There’d be no trying to lure the men away when he didn’t have much hope for quick backup.
He turned and pushed himself through the crawl space after pulling the door to the outside closed. He twisted his body this way and that, getting out behind the refrigerator, trying to come up with a new plan.
He was breathing heavily, but he heard the distinct sound of something. Not pounding anymore.
Footsteps.
He didn’t have time to push the refrigerator back in place, because a man dressed in black stepped out from the room Addie had been sleeping in just hours before.
Noah raised his rifle and pulled the trigger without even thinking about where the bullet would hit. The most important thing was stopping him.
The man went down with a loud yowl of pain, but another gunshot rang out in the very next moment. Noah only had the split second to realize it wasn’t his own gun before a pain so bright and fierce knocked him to his back. His vision dimmed, and damnation, the pain threatened to swallow him whole.
He stared up at the ceiling, a blackness creeping over him, but he fought it off, clinging to consciousness with everything he had in him.
He had to keep Addie safe.
He tried to move, to do anything, but he felt paralyzed. Nothing in his body worked or moved. It only throbbed with fire and ice. How was it both? Searing licks of heat, needling lances of cold.
When a man stood over him, hooded and dim himself, it gave Noah something external to focus on. The man’s black coat, not fit for a Wyoming winter, was covered in melted snow droplets. He had his face covered by a bandanna or hat. His eyes were a flat brown.
Evil eyes that were familiar—not because he knew this man, but because Noah had stared evil in the face before.
“Where’s the baby?” the man rasped, pointing his small handgun at Noah’s head.
Noah groaned, more for show, though the pain in his side was a blinding, searing fire. He’d heard Addie scream, but apparently the man hadn’t, or just couldn’t figure out where they were.
Noah thought of Addie and Seth and pretended to roll his eyes back in his head. He could hear Seth crying now, which distracted the man’s attention. Noah took that brief moment to gather all his strength and kick as hard and groin-targeted as he could.
Chapter Nine
Addie listened to the persistent thumping. She knew it was people trying to get in. People trying to get her and Seth.
She knew Noah would fight them with all he had, but would it be enough? The horrifying worry that he was only one man and there were at least two men out there curdled her stomach.
She reminded herself she’d texted every last Carson and Delaney Noah had in his phone. Even though she hadn’t had a response, the messages showed as sent, which meant she only needed one person to see it.
She could not think about what it might mean if no one was looking at their phone. If no one came to help them. So she paced the cellar, trying to work off all her nerves while at the same time keeping Seth happy. She needed to feed him. Even if Noah had fed him while she’d been asleep, he’d be getting hungry again.
She glanced above at the light footsteps. She knew Noah was moving around carefully and quietly on purpose and God she just could not think about what he was doing up there.
She used the weak light from Noah’s tiny phone screen to illuminate her surroundings until she found a large flashlight sitting at the base of the stairs. She clicked it on, relief coursing through her when a strong beam popped out.
Clearly the Carsons used this cabin at least somewhat frequently, because there were a few shelves lined with provisions. Mainly canned foods, but if she could find one with a pop-top, she could at least give Seth a little something to keep him happy.
No matter that her arms shook and she felt sick to her stomach, she forced herself to read through all the labels. She found a can of pears, one of Seth’s favorites.
“Okay, little man, let’s get you a snack.” She looked around the cellar again with Noah’s flashlight. She needed a blanket or something she could put Seth on.
She poked around a pile of old furniture in the corner. Broken chairs, a bent mattress frame. Tools of some sort. A conglomeration of rusty, broken crap.
And a crib. She blinked at it. The legs had been broken off of it, and there was no mattress, but it had once been a crib.
“Something is going our way, Seth,” she murmured, glancing warily above her as things got eerily quiet.
Quiet was good. Quiet had to be good.
Balancing Seth on her hip, she carefully picked through the debris of nonsense and pulled the crib out. She studied it, then the room around her. If it was even, and she could push the broken side up against a wall, it could act as an effective playpen if she wanted to go check on Noah.
She heard footsteps again, tried not to think too hard about what that silence might have meant.
She shrugged out of her sweater and placed it in the bottom of the crib. Quickly she ran her fingers around the wood and didn’t find any exposed nails or sharp edges. She set Seth down and searched around for other soft things.
She found a stack of folded dish towels and sniffed them gingerly. A little musty, but not terrible. She started placing them over the corners of the crib. A little softening to—
The gunshot was so loud, so close, she screamed. Seth began to wail and she grabbed him to her chest, trying to muffle both their cries as another gunshot almost immediately rang out.
Two gunshots was not good. She didn’t have a weapon, but she did have this pile of tools. She bounced Seth until he stopped crying, and she tried to keep her own tears at bay as she heard another thump, then more thumps. Grunts.
No gunshots.
She scrambled to the pile of debris and grabbed the heaviest, sharpest-looking tool she could find. She’d pushed the crib against the wall sort of behind the stairs, and that would work in her favor if she could keep Seth quiet.
The food. The food. She set the tool down by the crib and grabbed the can she’d dropped. She transferred Seth to the little crib and made silly faces to keep him distracted and quiet as she opened the can.
Seth gurgled out a laugh at one of her faces, but it didn’t assuage any of her shaking fear, because something scraped against the floor right above her. She could hear someone fiddling with the floorboard. Oh, God, it wasn’t Noah. Noah knew how to open it.
On a strangled sob she popped the can of pears open and grabbed one without thinking twice. She handed it to Seth. Usually she didn’t give him such big pieces, but she needed time. She needed to keep them both safe.
She clicked off the flashlight just as the door opened and light shone in. Addie grabbed the tool and gripped it in both hands as she stepped back into the shadows.
The tool was sharp. It would cause serious damage even with her limited strength. Her stomach threatened to revolt, but she refused to let it.
She was done running, cowering and giving in. She’d made that choice to stand and fight up there with Noah. So she would do whatever it took. Whatever it took to fight for him. Fight for Seth.
She was done being a victim.
She swallowed the bile that threatened to escape her throat as some man who was most definitely not Noah took the stairs. He didn’t have a flashlight, which put her at an advantage. Seth was liable to make a noise any second, so she had to be ready.
She quietly lifted the tool above her head and just as Seth murmured happily over a piece of pear, the man turned.
&n
bsp; She brought the tool down onto his skull as hard as she could, and he strangled out a scream and fell in a heap. Her stomach lurched as she realized the tool was lodged in his skull as it fell with him.
But she couldn’t worry about her stomach. She needed to get to Noah, and if no one was coming at the sound of the man’s scream, he had to be acting alone.
Or someone else is hurting Noah.
She picked Seth up, much to his screaming dismay, and scurried around the motionless body on the floor.
Oh, God, had she killed him?
Had he killed Noah?
She climbed the stairs, Seth screaming in her ear. She stumbled up into the living room, desperately searching for Noah.
Then she saw him lying on the floor. And blood. Too much blood.
“Noah. Noah.” She dropped to her knees next to him, not even worried she was getting bloody herself as long as she kept Seth out of it. “Noah. You have to be alive, Noah.”
“No! No!” Seth said gleefully, clearly not understanding the scene around them.
Addie had to focus. Focus on what was in front of her. He’d clearly been shot. Blood pooled on one side of his body, but not the other. His face was ashen. But, oh, God, his chest was moving. Up and down.
“Noah.” She wasn’t sure what to do with a gunshot wound. Pressure. That’s what they did in the movies, right? Apply pressure.
“Not dead,” he muttered, though his eyes stayed closed.
“Oh, thank God you’re awake.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead and his eyelids fluttered, but they didn’t fully open.
“No!” Seth squealed again.
“Where’s he?” Noah demanded.
She assumed he meant the man she’d... “I... Well, he came down and I think I killed him.” She’d still need to close up the door, cover it with something really heavy to keep him down there just in case. But for now she had to focus on Noah.
“Good,” Noah replied, his voice firm for the first time, though his eyes remained closed. “I killed the other one. Must be it or they’d be in here.”
“For now.”
Noah grunted.
“I have to...I have to get you help.” She pawed at her pocket for the phone Noah had given her earlier. She had a text from Laurel and as she clicked to read it, Noah said almost the exact thing.
Blizzard. Can’t get up. Grady and Ty trying with horses. Will be a while.
“Blizzard. No help.”
Addie closed her eyes in an effort to try to think. “We need to focus on you right now.” She stood and crossed to the travel crib. It was upended, but she righted it and set Seth inside, cooing sweet reassurances at him as she gave him a toy.
She went through the next few steps as though it were a to-do list. Get as many blankets, towels and washcloths she could. Put a pillow under Noah’s head. Peel the bloodied shirt away from his side. Try not to throw up. Gently wash out the terrible wound.
Noah hissed out a breath, but that just reassured her he was alive. “Is there a first aid kit anywhere?”
“Bathroom maybe,” he muttered.
She was on her feet in an instant. Seth fussed but not a full-blown cry...yet. She had to get Noah some semblance of patched up. She wished she could move him to a bed, but who would lift him? Her and what army?
She jerked open the cabinet under the sink and rummaged. Soap, extra toilet paper, a box of condoms. Her cheeks warmed, but she kept looking until she found a flimsy canvas pouch with the red first aid cross on it.
She hastened back to Noah’s side. His eyes were open so she tried to smile down at him. “Well, we survived.”
His mouth didn’t move and he looked so pale even under all his hair and beard. “For now,” he managed in the same tone of voice she’d used earlier.
Wasn’t that the truth?
She studied the wound again, and it was bleeding once more. She tried not to let despair wash over her. The only way Noah survived this was her somehow making it so.
So that’s what she’d have to do.
* * *
IT WAS A strange thing to be shot. Noah would have thought just the bleeding part of his body would hurt, but everything hurt. He kept losing consciousness, awakening who knew how long later on the cold, uncomfortable floor.
He tried not to groan as he forced his eyes open. He looked around the quiet room. The only sound he recognized was Seth sucking on a bottle.
It was a little bit of a relief to know things were business as usual for the baby.
Addie appeared in his wavering vision, and she knelt next to him, a tremulous smile on her face. “Oh, good, you’re really awake this time.”
“Was I kind of awake before?”
She nodded down at his chest and he realized that under the blanket draped over him he was shirtless and bandaged. “You came to a few times when I was bandaging you up best as I could. Well, I called Laurel and she patched me through to a paramedic. You’re lucky because it didn’t seem to make any kind of...hole.”
No, the bullet seemed to have grazed him. Badly, but no holes and no bullets floundering around in his body. It was good and it was lucky.
He was having trouble feeling it.
“I need to get up,” he said. Lying there was making things worse. If he got up and moved around he could hold on to consciousness. He tried to push himself into a sitting position. His head swam, his stomach roiled and the pain in his side burned. Addie’s arms came around him, though, surprisingly sturdy, and she held him up.
He was so damn dizzy, even if he had the strength he wasn’t sure he could get to his feet. It was unacceptable. This was all unacceptable. Because he did need stitches, and there was no way to get them. Which meant he was going to halfway bleed to death and be a weak, useless liability to Addie and Seth.
No, he wouldn’t be that.
“We need to secure the place. They got in through your room—”
“I dragged the man you shot outside,” Addie said flatly. “I boarded up the bedroom window again best as I could. I’ve locked the room from the outside—since we won’t be spending any more time in separate rooms, we don’t need it. I also barricaded the cellar just in case the man I...hurt isn’t dead.”
He stared. “You did all that while I was out?”
“It’s much better than sitting here fretting that you’re dead. Or waiting. Grady and Ty are still trying to get to us with the horses, but the blizzard set them back quite a bit. Apparently Ty knows some battlefield medicine or something and can stitch you up when he gets here.” Addie shuddered.
“I don’t know what to say.” Or feel. Or do. She’d handled it all. He was a burden now, but somehow she’d handled it all.
“Let’s get you to bed and then you’re going to lie down and stay put. You need to rest and not aggravate the bleeding until someone can get up here to help.” She glanced over at Seth’s travel crib. “Let’s do it now before he finishes that bottle and starts yelling.”
He wasn’t sure he could get to his feet, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. There had to be something he could handle. Something he could do.
He rolled to the side that wasn’t injured and tried desperately not to groan or moan as he struggled onto his feet. The world tipped, swayed, but he closed his eyes and with Addie’s arms around him, he managed to stay upright.
Because slight little Addie—the woman he’d deemed fragile the first time he’d met her—held him up as he swayed.
She pulled the blankets that had been around him over his shoulders, then held tight, leaning her body against his tipping one as he took a step.
He walked, and noted she moved slower than he might have tried to. She was holding him back. Making him take it easy. He should have worked up some irritation, but mostly he could only concentrate on getting the interminable distance from the kitc
hen floor to his bed.
But they inched their way there, no matter how awful he felt. Somehow he got his feet to keep moving forward. Managed to ease himself onto his bed, with Addie’s help.
Once he was prone again, he managed a full, painful breath. She was already tucking blankets around him, though she paused to inspect the bandage, the strands of her hair drifting across his chest. Somewhere deep down there was the slightest flutter of enjoyment and he figured he had a chance of surviving this yet.
“You need to rest. No getting up without help. No pushing yourself. Do you understand me?”
He grunted irritably. He hoped she considered it assent, even though it wasn’t. Not a promise, because why would he promise that?
“You need to try to get something to eat. Keep up your strength. I’m going to—”
He grabbed her, unmanned at the fact there was a beat of panic at the thought of her leaving him. It was the aftereffect of shock. Had to be.
She patted his hand reassuringly, and it was that something like pity in her gaze that had him withdrawing his hand. He wasn’t to be pitied. Yeah, he’d been shot trying to save her.
And she saved herself, didn’t she?
“I’m just going to get Seth. Grab you some soup I already warmed up. Trust me, Noah, the three of us are plastered to one another’s sides until this is all over.”
She slid off the bed, and still that panic inside him didn’t disappear. “How’d you kill him without a gun?” he asked. Anything to keep her here. Here where he could see her. Where he could assure himself they’d come out this on the other side.
For now. What about the next other side?
Addie fiddled with the collar of her T-shirt, eyes darting this way and that. “Well.” She cleared her throat. “Th-there were a bunch of tools down there so I just picked up the sharpest, biggest one and when he came down the stairs I hid in the shadows, then bashed him over the head.” She let out a shaky breath. “I’ve never...hurt someone. I’ve never had to. I don’t know how to feel.”
“You feel relieved you were able to defend yourself,” he said, hoping even though he felt weak and shaky and a million other unacceptable things she could feel that in her bones. “You took the relief of saving yourself or someone else—it was all you could do.” He should know.