Alaskan Showdown

by Sarah Varland

  He needed to do the best he could for her.

  He crept toward the cabin, quietly. His feet fell on the ground of the Alaskan woods carefully as he made his way closer.

  Blue walked alongside him.

  The husky. Did he bring her or not? Adriana wouldn’t like her dog being in danger and she might make an impulsive decision if it seemed like Blue was. On the other hand, his chances of being able to save her were greater with the animal for help.

  The risk was worth it.

  “Don’t make me regret this,” he whispered to the dog.

  They moved as one toward the cabin.

  He could hear voices from inside. A woman was talking. The killer?

  “If you had never been unfaithful...”

  “Rosie, please.” Jim’s voice.

  Levi had never wished so badly to have been wrong, but his partner’s wife was the killer. It sickened him to imagine the bodies he’d looked at over the years, to know that it had been her evil and hatred that had ended people’s lives.

  A gunshot suddenly rang out.

  Levi had no more time.

  He burst through the closed door of the cabin, the dog at his heels, and hoped that Blue would have some inkling as to how to handle herself in this kind of situation.

  “Levi!” Adriana yelled, and as Rosie turned her head to watch the dog, Levi tackled her. The gun fell from her hands and clattered to the floor. As he wrestled her arms behind her back and reached for the cuffs at his side, he looked around.

  His assessment had been mostly right. Three hostages. Jim, Adriana and a young woman he didn’t recognize.

  “Their daughter,” Adriana said. Levi nodded but couldn’t see if anyone had been shot.

  Rosie screamed and fought him, but he finished getting the handcuffs on. “Rosie Johnson, you are under arrest.” He continued with her Miranda rights, surprised that his voice was steady as he recited them from memory. She would spend the rest of her life in jail, and the area would finally be free from her terrorizing people and taking some perverted form of justice into her own hands.

  Levi’s heart beat hard in his chest, but he took slow, deep breaths. It was over. They’d arrested her. He could breathe again.

  “No!” Adriana’s shout behind him jerked his eyes upward in time to see his old partner, Jim, reach for the gun and aim it at Adriana.

  “Jim.” Levi’s voice was low. Full of disbelief.

  Rosie had been behind the killings, right?

  “She is still my wife,” Jim said with a gasp and Levi noticed for the first time that Jim was the one who had been shot. Blood spattered the right side of his chest. Maybe a fatal wound, maybe not. But enough to slow him down. Not enough to necessarily make him less accurate firing a couple shots of his own. Rosie must have shot him right before Levi had come in. That was the gunshot he had heard.

  “Don’t do it, Jim.” Levi kept his own voice calm. From beside Adriana, Blue growled.

  “Make your dog stay put or I shoot her, too. And I hate killing dogs.”

  Adriana looked down at Blue. “Stay,” she told her calmly.

  Too calmly. Her voice was quiet, like she was losing strength. Levi looked over at her. The corner of her shirt, on her side... Was it darker than the rest? And if so, was it a shadow or a bloodstain?

  With wavering hands, Jim lifted the gun back to Adriana. Trained it straight on her.

  “You need to forget this happened, Levi. Bury it somewhere in your memory.” Jim was panting between words now—the gunshot must have damaged several organs inside him. Or the blood loss was just too much because Levi could see him fading away. Desperate sadness at losing a man who had been a mentor to him fought against some kind of relief. At this point Jim was at least guilty of attempted murder, and it might be getting worse. He hated the idea of his friend in jail.

  He doubted he’d have to worry about that.

  “Jim. Put the gun down. It’s not who you are.”

  The window behind Jim. Levi frowned. Did he see something? A flicker of light? Movement?

  Judah. It was his brother. Levi felt his shoulders relax even as he kept his eyes trained on the man holding a gun within ten feet of the woman he suddenly realized he loved more than anything on earth.

  “Put. It. Down,” Levi insisted. As he finished speaking, the glass in the window behind Jim crashed. Jim jerked up the gun and swiveled his head around, so Levi rushed him. He’d come within a foot when Jim leaped back and swung the gun at Levi.

  “Levi!” Adriana yelled, and he heard the noise of her chair moving, scraping against the wood floor of the cabin, but there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go.

  No, this was all on Levi until Judah could get back around to the side of the house. The cabin window was too high for him to climb into, but Judah had been brilliant to cause a distraction the way he had and trust Levi to do something with it. It was a kind of teamwork that he couldn’t remember having experienced in a long time. They were equals who still needed each other.

  Having a partner sometimes wasn’t so bad. And he wasn’t going to let his brother down now by getting shot and messing this up.

  Levi lunged toward his former partner, as he tried to fight him off. Levi jerked hard one final time, tightening his grip on the man’s arm as he pushed it down. The gun fell to the floor, again, and this time Levi kicked it to the side, out of the way.

  Now. Now it was over.

  Judah ran in the door, ran over to him. “You got him?”

  Levi nodded. “Got him.”

  “I called the PD. They’re sending backup, lots of it. They should be here soon.”

  Then it would truly be over.

  Jim breathed hard, losing strength as Levi kept him restrained but cuffed him carefully with the handcuffs Judah handed him. He could hear the man crying.

  Jim had made bad choices, most of which Levi probably didn’t know about, and it would be a struggle to forgive him, Levi knew. But he could ask God to help him with that.

  At least he had his life ahead of him. The woman he loved...

  “This is your fault!” Rosie screamed in Jim’s direction.

  The woman in the corner, tied to the chair, was crying, too.

  “And you are?” Judah walked over and asked her.

  “Jenny. I’m their—their daughter...” She trailed off, started to cry again.

  “She started killing after Jim had an affair,” Adriana said. “And then stopped killing while she raised her daughter.”

  “I thought I could stop! I thought I could make it right by raising my daughter to be a good woman, not the kind of man stealing...” Her voice trailed off.

  “She stopped until her daughter made the same mistake as her father, by seeing a married person.” Adriana’s voice was quiet.

  Levi looked at all of them. His former partner, struggling to breathe. The sobbing woman in the corner.

  The angry murderer still sitting on the floor.

  And then back at Adriana. The shadow at her side was darker now. There was no more denial. “You’re bleeding.” He felt himself struggle to breathe as panic overwhelmed him. He had to get her out of here now, back to Raven Pass, to a doctor.

  Because he hadn’t come this far to lose her now.

  * * *

  Adriana remembered falling asleep, as consciousness played at the corners of her mind. Her side hurt, ached. Throbbed.

  She had woken up on a stretcher, in the woods, and had the sense that she was being carried through the forest, probably by the backup that Judah had called.

  Thoughts crowded her mind.

  “Blue?” she remembered asking.

  “She’s fine. I’ve got her.” Levi’s voice. Calm and reassuring.

  She’d fallen back asleep, let the darkness take her.

  Now sh
e blinked her way toward the light again. The bright fluorescents of the hospital room where she appeared to be were harsh.

  There was Levi. Standing beside her.

  “You’re awake,” he said and smiled.

  She loved him, she realized again. She’d never loved someone quite this way before. It was different than the love she’d shared with her fiancé. Not because she’d loved Robert any less, but because they’d had a relationship at a time in her life when she hadn’t known as much about loss and the cost of love. In some strange way, loss had taught her to care more deeply.

  “I love you,” he said to her, quietly.

  She blinked.

  He grinned wider. “You okay? Did you hear me? I love you, Adriana. And if I’m bad at relationships, I’ll work on that, and I won’t give up, because I love you. And that’s not what love does.”

  She smiled back at him. “I love you, too,” she said to him as she met his eyes.

  They stayed that way, staring, for what seemed like minutes but could have been seconds. Her perception of time was still off.

  She frowned.

  “I’m in the hospital?”

  “The doctors wanted to check your stab wound. You needed a little bit of blood, but you’re going to be okay. I’m so glad. I love you so much.”

  Adriana nodded, tried to sit up a little against the pillows.

  “I learned some things about the case,” he started, then paused. “Did you want to know this now?” Adriana nodded, but also suppressed a small laugh. This was what life with Levi would be like. They’d be talking about something serious, talking about their love for each other, and then he’d bring up a case. She knew it as surely as she knew anything else. And it was fine with her. She wouldn’t change the way he was for anything.

  “What did you learn?” she asked.

  “I sent a team down to try to see if there was a body near where the very first one was discovered. Outside the town of Hope.”

  “Did they find something?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Fifteen feet away from the site of the original body was another.”

  They were the same measurements, same MO of having two bodies buried near each other. That was a strange element of Rosie’s MO they’d probably never have an explanation for, but it had been consistent through each body Adriana knew of.

  “Anything else?” She could see that there was in the way he looked at her, with his eyes lit up. He nodded again.

  “The body we found this time was a woman who was from the town of Hope. She appears to have been killed before the first body we found there.” His face turned serious. “She was the woman Jim had an affair with. Rosie admitted to it once she was down at the station. She seems to have no desire to plead innocent, which is driving her lawyer crazy. She was only too happy to confirm what we knew and tell us some information we didn’t know yet.”

  “That’s why we were run off the Seward Highway the other day,” Adriana commented. “Because if we had started talking to that victim’s friends, the investigation would have uncovered Jim’s affair. Then we would have started asking questions of Jim. And his wife.”

  “And we would have figured out it was her,” Levi confirmed.

  Adriana closed her eyes. What a broken world they lived in, she thought. And yet a world full of good things, too. She never wanted to forget that and let the bad weigh her down. There was always a glimmer of hope to be found.

  “She also told me that Jim met the woman he had an affair with at a coffee shop.”

  “That’s why Rosie found her victims there?”

  Levi nodded. “Women who were cheating or helping someone else cheat. Always taken from a coffee shop as a kind of sick memorial to what Rosie’s husband had done to her with his betrayal.”

  Another detail of the case explained. Adriana had wondered.

  Sick, sick woman.

  Adriana shook her head, still overwhelmed with sadness. She looked away from Levi. A few minutes passed in heavy silence.

  “Adriana?”

  She turned to him, noting the seriousness in his voice.

  “I don’t want to date you.”

  She raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to elaborate. He’d told her five minutes ago that he loved her. And now...

  “I want to get married.”

  If she hadn’t been lying down already, she’d have needed to sit. The words stunned her, but filled her with more hope and happiness than she could explain.

  “You want to marry me?”

  “I want to marry you,” Levi said again. “Will you please do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  He was down on one knee now, and in her mind Adriana knew the scene looked ridiculous, with her on a hospital bed, under a pile of blankets, and him down on one knee.

  “I don’t have a ring yet. I’ve been in the middle of this crazy case, see. I’ll get a ring, though, as soon as we can. You can pick it out, or I can. I think I could do a pretty good job. I love you, Adriana. That’s what matters to me...”

  Adriana pushed herself farther into a sitting position.

  “Levi?”

  “Yes?”

  “The ring doesn’t matter.” Well, it would be exciting. And she’d love seeing it as a sparkling reminder of promises on her finger, but it didn’t matter as much as Levi himself.

  He looked at her. Eyebrows raised. Anticipating her answer.

  “I would love to marry you, Levi Wicks.” She laughed as he reached out his arms and hugged her in the gentlest way possible, careful not to press against her wound.

  “I know it’s fast, but we’ve known each other for years.” He nodded. “I know we can do this, Adriana. We make a good team. And we’ll make a good team together.”

  It was another vote of confidence—Levi being convinced that they would make this work, that their love would only grow stronger. She loved him even more for it.

  “Are you sure?” His eyes flickered with a tiny hint of vulnerability. “It would be forever.”

  “Forever with you is exactly what I want,” she assured him, and she put her hands on either side of his face, cradling his jaw, as she leaned forward into his kiss.

  EPILOGUE

  Never had Levi been prouder than at the sight of both of his brothers dressed in suits, for him. Ryan was performing the wedding ceremony, and Judah was his best man.

  Neither he nor Adriana had wanted a long engagement, so as soon as she was fully healed, they’d started to plan the wedding. It was just over three months since that day in the hospital when he’d asked her to marry him.

  And he loved her more than ever.

  Levi looked at his older brothers and smiled. But as he caught Judah’s eye he smiled a little wider.

  They had never explicitly talked about Judah’s tendency to treat Levi like he was perpetually in need of his help, but somehow after that night at the cabin, when Judah had come through for him without making him feel less than capable, everything had turned out okay.

  He stood at the front of the church, eyes fixed on the door at the back of the room. In a few minutes, Adriana would come through those doors. He couldn’t believe that only half an hour or less stood between him and forever.

  Despite his past hurts, today was only a celebration. Of the fact that they’d survived the hardest case he’d ever worked, of their love and that he’d found a teammate for life.

  The doors opened. She walked in, looking beautiful in a dress that highlighted her curves in a subtle way that he found so beautiful.

  That word. Beautiful. It was everything about her, but not just her. It was everything about their story.

  He’d stopped trusting God after heartache, then had finally tentatively tried again. And God had blessed him beyond his wildest dreams.

  “I love you,” he whispered to Adriana as sh
e came closer.

  Her eyes met his. They flickered, full of hope.

  Again, that word. Beautiful.

  “I love you, too.”

  They were the best words Levi had ever heard.

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Fatal Ranch Reunion by Jaycee Bullard.

  Dear Reader,

  If there is one thing humans struggle with, it’s trust. We wonder if we should trust ourselves, our friends and even the God who created us. Sometimes that’s because of our past circumstances, which is what Adriana struggled with in this book. Because of a loss she’d experienced earlier in life, she wondered if God was really good, which shook her trust in Him.

  Whatever has happened in your life, God does not change. He is good now as He always has been, and this is what Adriana learns in her story. Levi, likewise, has to learn to trust God and lean into a relationship with Him with his whole heart. It’s not always intentional that my hero and heroine learn similar lessons, but that’s usually how it ends up. Want to know a secret? It’s often a lesson I’m learning in my own life.

  I hope you enjoyed this second book in the Raven Pass Search and Rescue series. If you ever want to visit Raven Pass, which is, sadly, fictional, the next best thing is to visit Girdwood, Alaska. It’s set back against the mountains near Turnagain Arm in south central Alaska, and it is a beautiful place. If you find yourself with a chance to visit, I think you’ll love it. And if not, keep joining me for more books set in Raven Pass.

  As always, I love hearing from readers. Please feel free to reach out on facebook at facebook.com/sarahvarlandauthor, or email me at sarahvarland@gmail.com. Thank you for giving me some hours of your time to tell you this story.

  Sarah Varland

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