Alaskan Christmas Target

by Sharon Dunn

  The rope might still be useful to direct him toward the house if it hadn’t been blown around too much. He picked up his end and moved toward the shop door. A gust of wind made him take a step back when he opened the door. His gaze traveled from the cord in his hand to where he could see it on the ground. His view of the orange cording was consumed by the storm within a few feet. He stepped through the door, closing it behind him. The wind and snow whirled around him as he stared at the ground.

  He feared that he might be walking toward his demise. Though he was dressed for winter, if he got off track away from the house, the exposure to the freezing temperatures could lead to hypothermia, compromised mental faculties and, ultimately, freezing to death.

  He stared down at the orange rope by his boot. The wind intensified, picking up the cording and moving it several feet. He shook his head. How many times had that already happened? He needed a better plan to get to the house.

  He turned and headed back toward the garage. He was still close enough that each time the wind died down a little he could see the blue siding. He pushed forward. The wind acted almost like a solid object that he had to move through as he bent and took another step.

  He reached out for the garage door and stepped inside. He’d already come up with a more viable plan. The large shop door that he opened to get the car and snowmobile in and out was not electric, which meant he could push it open by hand. It had been hung on a pulley system that could be moved manually. He pushed the door open, feeling the biting intensity of the wind and snow all over again.

  Then he climbed into the car he had intended to loan Natasha, started it up and switched on the headlights. He pulled out of the shop and turned the steering wheel in the general direction he thought was the house. There were ten yards of separation between the shop and the house. The view through his windshield was nothing but a solid sheet of white with momentary pockets of clearing that revealed only vague outlines.

  Maybe Natasha had become disoriented and let go of the cording. That would be the best-case scenario, though it didn’t seem possible. She had been standing beneath the shelter of the porch and would have been able to take the four or five steps to find the door easily enough.

  Landon clenched his teeth. He knew the most likely scenario was that she’d been right about the assassin following them and that she’d been attacked.

  He prayed she had managed to stay alive. He knew that he had wasted precious minutes trying to figure out how to get back to the house. His boot pressed the gas with a featherlight touch and he eased the car forward, hoping, praying, that something would come into view.

  The tires rolled over the snow. Still, he could see nothing. His bumper hit something solid. He let up on the gas for a moment, listening to the engine hum. He tried to remember what object lay between his house and shop. A wheelbarrow or old tire, or maybe he’d hit the edge of the porch. Only one way to find out. He eased the car forward again. Whatever the object was, his car bumper could move it.

  Feeling a rising sense of urgency, he backed up and turned the wheel, hoping to drive around the object. Again, he pressed the gas.

  He jerked at the sound of someone or something banging on the hood of his car. The noise grew louder and then stopped. Then a different sound reached his ears. Someone was fumbling for the passenger door handle.

  The door swung open. A blast of cold hit him and then a face came into view. Natasha’s face, though it was red from exposure to the cold. Snow had frozen to her hood, which she had drawn over her head.

  Her voice was almost a whisper. She clearly had been out in the cold for some time. “I saw the headlights.”

  “Get in.”

  She stared at him for a long moment as though she was trying to process what he had said.

  He patted the passenger seat. “Natasha, get in the car.”

  This time she complied. He saw then that one of her hands no longer had a glove. It, too, had turned red from exposure. He grabbed it and held it between his own two hands.

  She was shivering.

  He let the car idle and turned up the heat.

  “Switch off the headlights. He might be able to see them.”

  “He’s in the house?”

  She nodded as she closed her eyes.

  As he held her icicle of a hand between his, he knew this was no time to pump her for information. First, she needed to warm up.

  He let go of her hand and grabbed one of his gloves where he’d left it on the console so he could drive. “Give me your hand.” He could not see in the dim light if her fingertips were blue, which would mean frostbite had set in. “Are your fingers numb?”

  She lifted her hand so he could put the glove on it. “It was only a few minutes that I was outside. I had to crawl out on the roof. I fell in the snow when I dropped down.” She closed her eyes again, as though reliving what had happened was too much to face. “I rolled away from the house, and I couldn’t find it.”

  He turned to check the backseat to see if he had anything that might be of use. He spotted an old dog blanket, which he reached around and grabbed. “I hope you don’t mind. This is covered in fur.”

  “If it will help warm me up, I don’t care.”

  He placed the blanket over her torso.

  She looked straight ahead as she drew the blanket up toward her chin. “Another couple of minutes and I could have frozen to death. I could feel my mind going numb, unable to make good choices.”

  He touched her shoulder. “But you didn’t. You found me.”

  “God has always taken care of me through everything.”

  The level of faith she displayed in such trying circumstances made Landon realize that his own faith had in many ways sat dormant since Maggie’s death. He’d gone to church, read his Bible and gone through the motions of praying. But really, there was part of him that had closed his heart off to God. “That’s an amazing thing to say. Considering all that you have lost and all that you have been through.”

  “God is the one constant in my life.”

  He nodded. He wished that he could believe that. He turned and stared through the windshield, which provided a view of nothing but driving snow. The truth was that he didn’t trust God anymore. Warmth and the hum of the car heater surrounded him. “Do you suppose he’s still in that house?”

  She pulled the blanket even closer to her neck and shuddered. “If he’s smart, he’ll stay in there. He’s got to figure that we won’t stay out here.”

  “At the first break in the storm, he’ll try to come at you again if he realizes that you’re still alive.”

  “These guys are thorough. I’m sure he has to produce a picture of me dead before he gets paid.”

  “Maybe...” Landon suggested, “we can get back into the house and take him out. Arrest him before the storm breaks.”

  Her response did not come right away as the options and the possibilities tumbled through her head. “Even if we put him in jail, Leo Tan Creti will just send someone else.” She let out a heavy breath.

  “Leo Tan Creti?” The name had been in the headlines. “That’s the guy who is behind all this?” He had detected the frustration in her voice. “I can’t take him out alone. I need your help.”

  “I dropped my gun when the hitman grabbed me on the porch.”

  “Okay, that makes it a little harder,” Landon conceded, “but it’s still two against one, and I have my gun.”

  “I don’t think he had a handgun, or he would have used it on me by now. That means there are two of us and we have one gun.” She seemed to be coming back to life, engaging with the plan he’d proposed. “He might be desperate for money and that’s why he opted to come into the house and try to get at me.”

  “Guess you have a lot of experience with how these guys operate.”

  Natasha turned to look at him. “More than I ever wa
nted to know.”

  He sensed the anguish behind those words. “I’ll ease the car forward with the headlights off. We’ll get a close as we can. Maybe we’ll catch a break. If the wind would just let up a little, we might have enough visibility to pinpoint the front porch.”

  “Even if we are able to get into the house,” she noted, “we have no idea where he is in there. He was headed up the stairs, where you keep your workout gear, and he has a flashlight, so he can get around.”

  “You don’t think he followed you out onto the roof?”

  “Not sure. I doubt it. What I did was super risky,” she said. “I had no other choice. If he caught me, he would have killed me.” She pulled the blanket away from her chin. “The smart thing to do would be to wait inside until the storm breaks—and I think this guy is smart.”

  Landon leaned forward and shifted the car into Drive. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  NINE

  While Landon moved the car forward at a snail’s pace, tension coiled around Natasha’s torso like a snake trying to suck the breath out of her. She considered what other options they had. They could sit through the night in the car, running the heater intermittently and trying to stay warm until the storm broke. Trying to drive away with zero visibility meant they would probably end up in a snowbank, making them vulnerable and giving the assassin another opportunity to come after her once the storm broke.

  Landon was right. The best option was to try to take the hitman by surprise before he had a chance to escape or to come after her again.

  The car bumped against something and Landon eased up on the pedal while the engine idled. “Whatever I hit, it’s solid. Last time I hit something the bumper could push against.”

  “Are you saying it’s the porch?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Or it could be my truck or the trooper SUV. If it is, I know where we are in relationship to the house. It’s only about ten feet to get to the front steps from where those vehicles are parked.”

  “Yeah, but from what I understand about whiteouts like this, it’s easy to lose your sense of direction. It happened to me when I jumped off the porch roof.” She fought hard to purge the fear from her voice.

  “I can’t do this alone, Natasha,” Landon said. “I wish I could. I know you’re afraid, so am I.”

  She took in a deep breath. “Tell me what the strategy is.”

  “We need to get out of the car together, holding hands. You cannot let go of me, no matter what. We need to keep our other hand on the car until it connects with whatever we have butted up against.”

  “Okay.” She zipped her coat up to the neck and secured the hood over her head. “Do you want your glove back?”

  “No, keep it. Open the glove compartment. I have some leather driving gloves in there. That will least give me a little coverage if not as much warmth as a winter glove.”

  She complied and handed him the gloves. He picked the one he needed and slipped it on his hand. “Let’s go on the passenger-side door.”

  Natasha straightened in her seat, tore off the blanket and clicked the door open before grabbing his hand. The wind hit her immediately as she placed her foot on the ground. She waited for Landon to move across the seat, then pushed the door open even wider and set her other foot on the ground. She squeezed his hand as she got to her feet.

  She reached out for the hood of the car with her free hand. The sound of the car door slamming shut reached her ears as she edged forward. She bent her head, trying to shut out some of the driving snow as her hand patted along the hood of the car.

  Landon’s grip on her other hand remained tight. She got to the end of the hood and reached out, trying to feel whatever object they had butted up against. Her hand touched the metal of a truck bed.

  She turned back to Landon. Though their heads were only inches apart, she felt like she had to shout to be heard above the shrill and gusting wind. “It’s your truck.”

  He leaned even closer to her. “Feel your way around it to the other side. When you get to the front headlight, look down. There should be paving stones that lead to the front porch.”

  She squeezed his hand to let him know she understood and then placed her palm on the bed of the truck and felt along until she touched the rear bumper.

  The cold had begun to seep into her skin as she pressed her hip against the back bumper and slid along it, her free hand touching the tailgate.

  With the wind and cold howling and swirling around them, she navigated by touch to the front headlight. She opened her eyes and looked down. Nothing but white. Then she saw her boot and a paving stone. She took a step forward.

  The stones led to the first step of the porch. Still holding her hand, Landon came to stand beside her, and they moved up step by step. Once they were beneath the shelter of the porch, she could see the door, the beige siding on the house and a dark window.

  Landon pulled her close so he could speak into her ear. “He might be waiting for us. Assuming that we will try to come back inside. I’ll go in first. Stay close.”

  Landon stepped across the porch and then knelt and eased the door open. She slipped inside after him, letting go of his hand to do so. She followed close behind him, crawling on all fours until she reached out to touch his leg where he was leaning against a wall. She slipped in beside him. His shoulder pressed against hers. She heard him exhale softly.

  In the darkness, Natasha tuned her ears to the sounds around her. The house, or maybe it was the glass in the windows, creaked from the wind hitting it. She heard another sound she could not identify. It was too repetitive to be human, as sort of crackling crunching noise.

  They sat in the darkness for at least ten minutes.

  She heard no footsteps or any sound that might indicate where the assassin might be. Landon’s theory that he would not leave the safety of the house until a break in the storm was the most likely scenario, especially if he thought they were outside freezing to death.

  If the hitman had been anywhere close, he would have heard the door easing open, even though Landon had been very quiet. In a still house like this, any out of place noise would have raised suspicion and the assassin would have come into the entryway to at least make sure he was still alone.

  Crawling on hands and knees, Landon moved forward through the kitchen toward the living room. As she eased around the counters and entered the living room, Natasha saw the source of the crinkling noise. Flames danced in the window of the woodstove. The assassin must have put more logs on the fire to keep the house warm. Still, there was no sign of him.

  Landon pressed his back against the wall facing the woodstove. He tugged on her sleeve, indicating that she should do the same. As she got into position, she could hear and feel him moving around. He pulled his gun from the holster.

  He leaned close to her and whispered, “Sooner or later, he’ll make noise. It will tell us where in the house he is.”

  So their strategy was to wait. Except for the little bit of light from the flames in the window of the woodstove, they were in total darkness. She could barely discern the outline of the furniture.

  They waited for what seemed like an hour, though she could not be sure. Her eyelids grew heavy and she slept for short periods, waking with a start. Landon remained close. Nothing had changed.

  A single thudding noise came from the other end of the house.

  Though she remained still, her heart pounded.

  Landon still did not move. “That might have been snow sliding off the roof. Let’s wait.” He’d put his mouth very close to her ear to whisper.

  With her heartbeat thrumming in her ears, she stared across the living room toward the woodstove. Her body stiffened. There had been a lump by the overstuffed chair positioned at a side angle from the stove. The lump was no longer there.

  Blood froze in her veins.

  “I think he’s in this
room, and he’s moving toward us.”

  * * *

  Landon tightened his grip on the gun. He dare not even whisper because it would give away their position if the assassin was indeed in the dark room. They may have made a fatal error in talking in the first place.

  Adrenaline coursed through him as he tried to discern shapes in the room. The man must be inching toward them silently.

  Natasha leaned her shoulder with more pressure against his to get his attention. She lifted her hand. Though he could not be sure, it looked as though she was pointing not too far from the chair by the fireplace.

  He studied the area for a long moment. Sweat trickled down his back and his mouth went dry. It wasn’t so much that he saw movement but that he sensed the other person in the room.

  He could not see well enough to take an accurate shot. At this point, he wanted to take the man in alive so he could be questioned. The man must be moving an inch every five minutes. He had probably been sitting in front of the fire and had heard them come in. He’d then likely crouched beside the chair, knowing the darkness would hide him.

  This felt like a game of slow-motion chicken. Who would blink first? Who would try to attack first?

  The assassin must still be operating under the assumption that they had not detected him yet.

  The best strategy would be to run to another hiding place, hoping the guy moved loudly enough or that the minimal light provided enough of a view for Landon to get off a decent shot.

  He wasn’t sure how to communicate that to Natasha without talking or moving in a way that might make a sound. They’d made noise when they’d first entered the living room and their whispering had probably given away their approximate location.

  He pressed his elbow against Natasha’s side, hoping she would understand. He cringed. His ski coat rubbing against hers made a tiny scratching noise. He hoped it sounded like the creaking of the house as wind hit the outside.

  Natasha seemed to understand what he was saying. She eased away from him and then took off. He could hear her crawling as the flooring changed from the carpet of the living room to the linoleum of the kitchen.