Secrets of the Highlander

by Janet Chapman

  Jack took up the slack in the rope and gave a tentative pull to see if she would come with it. “Stay on your back,” he commanded. “Keep kicking, but gently.”

  Inch by inch, second by interminably long second, Jack reeled her in. He watched her slowly rise up onto the ice, only to have it break beneath her. “Don’t struggle! You’ll eventually reach solid ice. Keep kicking softly.”

  She broke through two more times before the ice held.

  “That’s it, you’re doing great, sweetheart. I’ve almost got you. Stop kicking now,” he told her when she finally came fully out of the water. “I’m going to pull you away from the hole, but I have to keep us apart so we don’t stress the ice. Just lie still and let me do the work.”

  “I-I’m s-so cold,” she cried in a whisper, her voice still muffled by her helmet. “I-I can’t feel my hands anymore.”

  “I’ll have you warm in just a few minutes, I promise,” he said, scooting backward and dragging her with him.

  The moment he felt the ice was solid beneath him, Jack stood up and dragged her another fifty feet out onto the lake. Only then did he run to her, drop to his knees, and lift her shoulders up to his chest. She was crying uncontrollably and panting heavily, violent shivers interspersed with heaving coughing. He fumbled with the chin strap on her helmet, pulled it off, and pressed his face against hers.

  It felt like he was holding a block of ice, which was fast becoming a reality now that she was out of the water. “I’ve got you,” he whispered, holding her tightly. “You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay. I’ve got you.”

  She tried to say something, but her gasping sobs and wracking shivers made her unintelligible.

  “Shhh, don’t talk,” he told her, standing and scooping her up in his arms. He only made it a few yards before he had to stop and strip off her wet boots and snowsuit because they were weighing him down. He continued plodding through the deep snow to the main shoreline, since the peninsula had outcroppings of ledge dotting its length. He needed to get her someplace he could build a fire. He glanced at his snowmobile on the way and saw it was stuck in the slush up to its hood. It was no use to them now; he’d be lucky to get it out of there before spring.

  It took him ten minutes to reach shore, and he set Megan down under a spruce tree where the snow wasn’t deep. “Can you stand?” he asked, holding her under her arms to keep her steady. “We have to get you out of these wet clothes.”

  She tried helping, which only made it more difficult for him. He brushed her hands away, pulled her sweater, turtleneck, and long johns off over her head, then took off his leather jacket and wrapped it around her. Keeping one hand on her arm for support, he wrestled out of his own ski pants and set them on the snow.

  “Okay, so far so good. I’m going to pull down your pants and set you on my suit. Then I’ll pull yours all the way off and slip your legs into my ski pants, okay?”

  He wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t wait for one. Jack pulled her pants down to her knees, set her on his suit, and then stuffed her legs inside, zipping the bib closed up to her chin. He then stripped off his outer shirt and wrapped it around her wet head several times before hunching down in front of her.

  “You’re okay now, Megan. The worst is over, sweetheart, and you won’t get any colder. I’m going to leave you long enough to get wood to start a fire, okay? Nod if you understand.”

  Hugging herself and shivering violently, her face ghostly white in the moonlight, she nodded. Jack kissed her cold cheek, then stood up and pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt. He headed into the woods to gather material for a fire, thanking God and his ancestors that he’d gotten her out in time.

  He had a roaring bonfire going in less than ten minutes, and five minutes later Megan was showing signs of thawing. Jack took his first painless breath in thirty minutes, and the knot in his gut started to loosen. But only a little. Because they were without transportation in the middle of nowhere, and had no phone, no food or shelter, and only one set of dry clothes between them.

  The food and shelter he could deal with readily enough; it was the transportation that bothered him. Though he could keep Megan warm and even comfortable, he would prefer to get her home sooner rather than later.

  “Oh my God. The baby,” she whispered.

  Jack looked up from stoking the fire to see her hugging her stomach. “Are you having cramps?” he asked, unzipping the ski bib. He reached in and splayed his hand across the bare skin of her belly, relieved to discover she was no longer dangerously chilled.

  “N-no. But what if…what if the cold water hurt the baby?”

  He crawled behind her so that she was sitting between his thighs facing the fire, placed his hand on her belly again, and pulled her back against his chest. “The cold didn’t hurt the baby, Megan. He’s very well insulated, and you weren’t in the water long enough to bring your core temperature down that far.” He rested his cheek against hers. “Besides,” he added with a forced chuckle, “with his genetic heritage, he probably just considered this a refreshing dip in the lake.”

  “You can’t keep calling it a him,” she said, relaxing against him with a deep sigh. “I don’t want to get used to the idea that it might be a boy.”

  Jack also sighed, knowing she was going to be okay. “Even if I have a hunch that it is?”

  “There’s a 50 percent chance you’ll be disappointed.”

  “Naw,” he whispered against her cheek. “My hunches are at least 90 percent on target.”

  They fell silent after that, staring into the fire, soaking in its life-sustaining warmth. Jack felt as if it had been a hundred years since he’d held Megan like this. He was loath to move, partly because he was so damned relieved she was going to be okay, and partly because he was in no hurry to head back onto the lake. But they really did need the survival gear in the saddlebags.

  “I have to leave you for a few minutes. Will you be okay?”

  She tilted her head back onto his shoulder to look up at him. “Where are you going?”

  “To get some of our stuff.”

  She turned in his embrace to face him. “It’s too dangerous. Wait until morning, when you can see what you’re doing.”

  “We’re twelve hours away from daylight, and the temperature’s going to drop below zero tonight. We need the survival gear on your sled.”

  She clutched his shoulder. “My sled’s under water, Jack!”

  “It’s probably only nine or ten feet deep next to that ledge. And I noticed that your survival gear is in a dry sack. I’m betting there’s at least one sleeping bag in there, some food, and possibly a radio.”

  “One frozen person is enough for tonight. You can’t take care of me if you’re a block of ice yourself.”

  “I’ll strip off and be in and out in two minutes flat. I’ve done it before. If I have dry clothes to put on, I’ll be fine.”

  “No.”

  Seeing that she was recovered enough to argue with him, Jack peeled himself away from her and stood up. He walked over and pushed the two half-rotted logs he’d dragged from the woods deeper into the fire. “Any other suggestions, then?”

  “Yes. We sit right here, keep the fire roaring, and we wait. Trust me, they’ll be looking for us before daybreak.”

  “Not here. We’re still four or five miles north of where we should be.”

  “They’ll use a plane to scour the lake, and they’ll see our smoke.”

  “You’ll be well on your way to developing pneumonia by morning if I don’t get you settled into a sleeping bag in some sort of shelter.”

  “No.”

  “And then there’s that…whatever the hell we saw. We need our guns.”

  “You can get your gear, but you are not going after my stuff.”

  He stood up. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  “Jack,” she growled, stretching out his name to emphasize her warning. “If something happens to you, then I’m stuck out here al
one. I don’t even have boots. If you die, I die, too. Along with our baby,” she tacked on for good measure.

  “Believe me, I understand the consequences. I’ll bring back your boots and suit and get them dried out.” He pointed toward where he’d hung her wet clothes on a branch. “As soon as something is dry enough, put it on.”

  He walked onto the lake. “If an hour goes by and I’m not back,” he called, “then you may worry. But not before.”

  “It doesn’t take an hour to walk out there and back!”

  “I’m going to see if I can free my sled. You just concentrate on keeping warm so our son doesn’t catch a cold.”

  Our son. He liked the sound of that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Damn him, he was going after her gear! She knew it because he hadn’t actually promised that he wouldn’t—apparently thinking that if he didn’t lie to her, she might start trusting him again.

  He’d obviously forgotten about lies of omission.

  Megan settled back on the bed of fir boughs he had made after he’d built the fire, and opened his jacket to feel the heat on her neck and chest. She cupped her belly in her hands. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “I nearly killed us both trying to avoid that…that thing. No, make that all three of us, because Jack would have died trying to save you and me.”

  She scooted closer to the fire. “So what do you think?” she asked her belly. “Is Jack Stone the sort of man we want in our lives? I think he really does love me.” She patted her belly. “He definitely loves you. I can’t count the times I’ve caught him staring at my stomach. You’d think he’s never seen a pregnant woman before.”

  She picked up a stick and poked at the fire. “He said he used to have a brother—is he dead, or are they just estranged?” She unzipped the bib of her ski pants, hoping it would help her bra dry. “He must have died, if Jack wants to name you after him. I was planning to name you after my uncle Ian if you’re a boy, but maybe we can compromise. Are you feeling cozy in there, baby, like your daddy said?”

  Could a fetus even catch a cold, or had Jack only been trying to distract her? Megan leaned to the side and looked out at the lake again. She could just make out the position of his sled because the moon was reflecting off its windshield. She couldn’t, however, see any shadow moving around it.

  A violent shiver wracked her at the thought of Jack trying to retrieve her gear. That water was so numbingly cold, and she’d come so close to dying. She’d been so surprised when that…that…

  What in hell was that creature? It had looked like a dragon. But they were reptilian, not amphibious, weren’t they? She snorted, settling back in front of the fire and picking up the stick again. “They aren’t either, you crazy woman, because dragons do not exist.”

  Unless…

  Kenzie! He’d seen the creature, too! Hell, he’d been close enough to catch its odor. She had smelled the same rank odor on his clothes that she’d smelled in the air tonight, just before she’d hit the water. Which meant Kenzie did have something to do with whatever was breaking into the shops in town.

  And he was probably the man who had attacked Jack that night; the guy Robbie had chased off. Then Robbie had followed his tracks and would have caught up with him—which meant her cousin also knew what was going on.

  It was the damn magic. It had to be.

  Kenzie had been a panther for the last three years, before Winter and Matt had turned him back into a man on the winter solstice. So why couldn’t the magic conjure up a dragon? Hell, it could turn the sky green if it had a mind to. Providence—which was the real force behind the magic—was even capable of creating an entirely new tree of life, which it had done by combining Matt’s oak and Winter’s pine. A dragon was mere child’s play!

  “Oh God,” she groaned. “What am I going to tell Jack?”

  The man wasn’t blind; he had seen exactly what she had, and eventually he was going to want to talk about it. That creature was breaking into the town shops, so wouldn’t Jack want to let the citizens know he was closing in on the culprit?

  Speaking of which, why was it breaking into the shops? It had only stolen doughnuts and candy bars, according to what Jack and Camry had said. But it had looked like it was eating a fish tonight, when it had suddenly appeared in her headlights. Had it been using the open water next to the ledge as a fishing hole? She’d have to check that out first thing in the morning, before they were rescued.

  Okay, she needed a plan. She was going to have to persuade Jack that what they’d seen was some sort of anomaly, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. Yeah, she’d tell him that Pine Lake was so vast and deep, it had its very own mystery creature.

  But she didn’t have anything to back up her story. There hadn’t been any other reported sightings, and the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot were well-established, ongoing legends.

  Maybe she could imply the creature was new to the area. She snorted. Yeah, she could just see herself saying, “Isn’t this exciting? We’re the first ones to sight it! We’ll make the national news!”

  No, the quieter they kept this, the better. Her father and uncles had managed to keep the magic a secret for nearly forty years, and her generation had to continue keeping it a secret. She’d just have to persuade Jack that they shouldn’t speak to anyone about what they saw tonight; not even anyone in her family. It would be their little secret.

  He might go for that, if he thought sharing a secret would bring the two of them closer together.

  Megan checked her clothes on the branches and discovered that her turtleneck and silk top were dry, but that her sweater still had a long way to go. She slipped off her jacket and slid the bib of Jack’s pants off her shoulders, then decided to take off her bra since the back elastic wasn’t drying. She pulled the two jerseys on over her head, rezipped the bib, and slipped back into the jacket. She’d already taken off the shirt he had wrapped around her head, and she turned it on the branch so the back would dry, sure he would need it when he returned.

  She crawled past the fire enough to see the lake again. How long had he been gone? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? And how in hell was she supposed to rescue him without her boots?

  Megan sat back and eyed the bottoms of the ski pants she was wearing. They were made of thick leather and were long enough that she could tie the ends closed and walk with her feet inside them. She gazed around camp trying to spot something to tie them with, that wouldn’t break after only ten steps.

  Her bra! She could use the straps.

  She snatched the bra off the branch and tried ripping a strap off one of the cups. That wasn’t happening. She looped it over her foot and pulled, but the only thing that ripped was the satin cup. She searched for a couple of rocks, then had to use a stick to free them from the frozen ground. She set the end of the strap on one rock and beat it with the other.

  “Come on, you stupid thing,” she growled, pounding the double-stitched material. “I have to go save Jack.”

  It was a good thing she was only a C cup; anything bigger would probably be quadruple-stitched! Figuring she’d mangled the material enough to weaken it, she looped it over her foot again and pulled. It gave with a sudden tear that sent her flying backward.

  She scrambled upright and did the same to the other strap, then pounded the tiny metal rings on the back until they broke. She finally dangled the freed straps in front of her. “Am I my father’s daughter, or what?” she said proudly. “I should have my own ‘Survivor-woman’ show on the Discovery Channel!”

  She was just leaning forward to tie the bottom of her pants closed when she heard Jack approaching at a hurried pace. Megan shoved the straps in her pocket, grabbed her mangled bra and looked around, then simply tossed it in the fire. She lay down on the bed of fir boughs and closed her eyes, sleepily fluttering them open when he strode into camp.

  “That didn’t take long,” she said, stretching with a fake yawn, watching him drop his heavy load of gear.

  He hunched down in fro
nt of the fire and held his hands to its warmth, glancing at her out the corner of his eye. Yup, his hair was soaked and had started to freeze, and every inch of visible skin was covered with goose bumps.

  “Did you fall in the slush? Your hair’s wet,” she pointed out, ignoring the fact that his clothes were dry.

  He stiffened. “No.” He pushed a log deeper into the flames a bit more roughly than necessary.

  A blind man couldn’t miss her dry sack sitting on the ground, even though he’d tried to hide it by throwing her wet snowsuit on top. Then again, maybe he was grumpy because he was freezing.

  “Did you remember the cocoa?”

  He gave her a suspicious glance, then reached under her wet snowmobile suit, pulled out the Thermos, and tossed it to her. He picked up several more sticks and shoved them in the fire, only to suddenly stop in mid-shove. He used the stick in his hand to lift something out of the flame, which he held up between them.

  Megan realized it was the charred remains of her bra. She snapped her head around to look up at the branch the clothes were hanging on. “Well, jeez,” she said in disgust, looking back at her bra with a frown. “It must have fallen into the fire.”

  Jack eyed the distance from the branch to the fire, then lifted one brow, implying the bra would have needed wings to reach that far.

  Megan opened the Thermos and drank directly from it, then wiped her mouth with the sleeve of Jack’s leather jacket. “Can you get your sled unstuck?”

  “Not without a block and tackle and two hundred yards of rope,” he said, still eyeing her suspiciously.

  It was killing him that she wasn’t reading him the riot act—she’d have to remember this strategy in the future.

  “I went after your survival gear,” he growled.

  “Was the water very deep?”

  He eyed her again. “Just over my head.”

  Megan took off his jacket. “Here, slip this on. It’s already warmed up.”

  “No, you keep it.”

  “I’m actually starting to feel hot,” she countered, tossing it to him. She turned and pulled his shirt off the branch and tossed that at him, too. “Wipe your hair dry. And if you hand me the dry sack, I’ll see what goodies we have.”