High-Caliber Christmas

by B. J Daniels

  The only thing that stopped him was that she was the only one who knew where Kayley was.

  And yet he had a feeling she wasn’t going to take him to Kayley. With him and Kayley and Ava dead, the sheriff would think this tragedy was over.

  Eva had been able to come and go for years as Ava. Until Ava got out of the mental hospital.

  Even if Eva got caught, she could blame all of this on Ava—just as she had always done, according to Ava.

  As he stood and turned to face her—and the gun she was holding on him, he saw her sudden change of expression.

  She tilted her head, looking surprised. Jace heard it, too. Someone calling for help. The voice distant and muffled. Jace knew then that Eva had reason to believe that Kayley was dead and that the only person who could be calling was her sister.

  “It’s Ava calling you,” he said, even though he knew better. He’d seen where she’d landed in the rocks. No one could survive a fall like that.

  But Eva didn’t know that, and in the sudden fear he saw contort her face, he realized Ava hadn’t been the only one haunted by her sister all these years.

  He pretended to turn to look back over the edge of the precipice as if to call to Ava, his heart pounding with hope. Kayley was alive somewhere in this mine, and he was going to find her.

  Just as he had anticipated, Eva stepped toward the dropoff, desperate now to see if her sister had survived.

  Jace prayed he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life as he swung his leg, catching Eva in the back of the head at the same time as he dove to the side.

  She got one shot off before she went over the edge. Her scream was wild and primitive, echoing through the tunnel as dirt and rocks showered down from the gunshot blast.

  When the scream ended as abruptly as it started, he quickly got to his feet.

  He didn’t need to look over the edge, but he did. The sisters lay side by side like two tiny broken dolls on the rocks fifty feet below.

  Jace turned away, listening. He could hear Kayley calling to him from somewhere below in one of the lower tunnels.

  “Kayley!” His voice echoed through the crater of rocks and back down the tunnel.

  He waited, then heard her calling again. It was faint. He didn’t call again, knowing that any sound could set off a cave-in. She would have heard the gunshots, Eva’s horrible scream. Hopefully she would know he was finally coming for her.

  MCCALL HAD REACHED THE entrance to the mine. She’d followed the fresh tracks in the snow and knew they had to be Jace Dennison’s.

  Her deputy had called her back just moments ago to tell her that Jace’s rental SUV was parked at his house but that Audie’s pickup was missing.

  Not missing anymore, she thought.

  When she’d seen the brochure with the mine circled at Ava Carris’s rental house, McCall had feared that Kayley hadn’t gotten out of town. Now she was even more concerned that was the case.

  At the mine entrance, she had stopped to listen, hearing nothing but a hawk crying out as it circled high overhead in a sky of blue.

  Pulling out her flashlight, she’d snapped it on, then stepped through the opening into the tunnel.

  Weapon in one hand and flashlight in the other, she’d moved deeper into the mine, afraid of what she was going to find.

  She hadn’t gone far when she’d heard the gunshot.

  FOR A FEW MOMENTS KAYLEY couldn’t remember where she was or what had happened. Her memory came back in a rush.

  She and Ava had been descending deeper into the lower tunnel when it had started to cave in. Kayley had seen her chance and run—only to end up trapped on the other side of the cave-in.

  A rock had hit her and knocked her down. She must have blacked out from the pain.

  Now she tried to sit up to assess the damage but realized her ankle was caught under the rubble. When she tried to move it, she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She let out a cry of pain and frustration as she lay back.

  The darkness was intense. She couldn’t tell what was up or down. She felt disoriented and felt herself start to panic. What if there wasn’t enough air in this part of the chamber where she was now trapped?

  Running into the cave-in had been a desperate measure. But she’d known after she talked to Jace on the phone that Ava didn’t plan to keep her alive until he got there.

  She’d seen the change in the woman, almost as if she were someone else, someone who had no respect for human life. It hadn’t been anger in Ava’s eyes—just a total lack of compassion.

  Now, though, Kayley feared she’d played right into her kidnapper’s hands. The thought made her angry with herself. She wasn’t going to die in here. Well, at least she wasn’t going to die without putting up a fight.

  She pushed herself up as far as she could with the pain in her ankle nearly making her black out again and began to work at moving the debris off her injured leg.

  It was slow work, but she was afraid to use too much oxygen too quickly. She tried to breathe normally as she moved the rocks and dirt until she could work her leg out by lifting it with both hands.

  As she felt along the ankle, she knew it was broken. She’d expected to feel a bone jutting out given the amount of pain she was in.

  But the break seemed to be a clean one. Taking off her jacket and shirt, she tore her shirt into wide strips to try to bind the break as best she could.

  Kayley knew she wouldn’t be able to stand, but she needed to be able to move if she hoped to get out of here.

  Her heart broke at the thought that Jace was walking right into Ava’s trap. She reminded herself that Jace was trained for dangerous undercover work. Unfortunately, he was still injured after his latest assignment. He’d been limping and when they’d made love, she’d seen the scar on his thigh that hadn’t yet healed.

  She just hoped he didn’t make the mistake of underestimating Ava.

  But she couldn’t think about any of that. She had to concentrate on getting out of here and praying for Jace’s safety.

  After she had tied her ankle, she put her coat back on against the cold of the tunnel. Fortunately it was about forty degrees, warmer than outside.

  Common sense told her that since she couldn’t walk, she would have to dig her way out. The cave-in hadn’t been extensive, because she hadn’t taken but a few steps before she’d been hit and knocked down.

  She began to dig, dragging herself higher up the pile of small rocks and dirt.

  She had stopped to rest for a moment when she thought she heard a gunshot. Her stomach dropped. Jace. Ava had killed him. She doubled over, unable to hold back the tears.

  Another gunshot. She lifted her head. That’s when she heard what could only be a horrible scream. A woman’s scream.

  “Jace!” She yelled as loud as she could. Then she thought she heard him answer, but she might only have imagined it.

  Kayley began to dig as if her life depended on it. She had a bad feeling it did.

  WHEN JACE REACHED THE fork in the mine tunnels, he took the lower one, following the winding narrow passageway deeper and deeper downward.

  According to Ava there had been a cave-in, and Kayley had gotten caught in it.

  But she was alive.

  He’d heard her calling to him. No one could tell him any different even if he questioned how he could have heard anything deep in this mine.

  His mind raced. For him to be able to hear Kayley, it meant that she was in a tunnel that opened to the cavernous hole where Ava and Eva now lay. That made sense, and he knew that he had to be thinking logically right now. He couldn’t let his emotions get in the way.

  Ahead, he heard the frightening sound of small rocks and dirt cascading down. This old mine was ready to cave in at any moment.

  The channel narrowed, and he had to stoop to see ahead. His light shone into the darkness, illuminating nothing but a solid wall of rock where the passage had caved in.

  He quickly backtracked and took another tunnel, praying he was
heading in the right direction.

  Not far in, he saw that this one, too, had caved in.

  His heart leaped when he heard what sounded like someone digging on the other side.

  He quickly pulled the shovel from his backpack and went to work moving the earth and small rocks, telling himself Kayley was on the other side, digging just as frantically as he was. He told himself she would have enough air. The fact that he’d heard her calling meant there was an opening on the cavern at the end of this tunnel.

  Still, Jace felt the clock ticking as he dug at the rock and dirt.

  He moved another shovelful of earth. His light shone into a hole, and he saw her. Kayley. She was covered with dirt, her hands scraped and bleeding, tears in her eyes. He scrambled to make the hole larger until he could get through it.

  He carefully drew her into his arms, seeing that she was in pain, her ankle bandaged with pieces of her shirt—the same shirt scrap that had marked the tunnel that had led him to Ava.

  “Kayley, Kayley,” he said into her hair.

  She nestled against him, crying. “I was so worried about you,” she kept saying. “I was so scared that she would kill you.”

  Jace heard a sound. A moment later, the light from a headlamp flickered over them, and minutes later Sheriff McCall Winchester was helping him get Kayley out of the tunnel and into the brilliant sunlight of the snowy late-November day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kayley lay in the hospital bed, watching the sun rise over the Montana prairie and studying the man sleeping in the chair beside her bed.

  Jace Dennison was the most handsome man she’d ever known, but it was his heart that had always attracted her to him. No one could ever understand why she hadn’t given up on him. She had weakened a few times recently.

  But ultimately she’d prayed that she wouldn’t lose him.

  She and his mother used to spend hours talking about him, worrying about him, wanting him home. They had faith that Jace would come to his senses, as his mother used to say.

  “You’re the only woman for him, you have to know that, Kayley,” Marie used to say. “But I don’t want you to wait for him. It’s not fair to you.”

  “I’m not waiting for him,” Kayley used to say, and they would both laugh because they knew it was a lie.

  She looked at him now and was filled with so much love it felt as if she might burst from it. How could anyone love this much and not be consumed by it?

  Her thoughts turned to Ava Carris. Had she loved her husband, John, like that?

  Jace had filled her in last night on the way to the hospital. She’d been shocked at how his resemblance to Ava’s deceased husband had set off this string of events that had ended with such tragedy at the mine.

  Kayley’s heart went out to Ava. Her own sister had taken the man she loved from her. No wonder Ava had latched on to the hope that a little of the man she had loved lived on in Jace Dennison.

  If anyone knew that kind of undying love, it was Kayley.

  JACE WOKE IN THE CHAIR next to Kayley’s bed to see her smiling over at him.

  “Good morning,” he said, sitting up and stretching out the kinks.

  “You didn’t have to stay all night,” she said. “That chair must have been horribly uncomfortable.”

  He grinned. “I’ve slept in worse places. Anyway, I wasn’t leaving your side.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to. The doctor just stopped by. He’s coming back to check me over. He’s letting me go home.”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “Jace—”

  He stepped to the bed and placed a finger on her lips. “Kayley, you’ve stopped me every time I wanted to tell you how I feel about you. Not this time.”

  She looked at him, her gaze solemn.

  “I am so thankful you’re all right.” His voice broke.

  “Thanks to you,” she said. “If you hadn’t gotten to me when you did—”

  “I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you. I should never have left you. I’m never going to again.”

  “Jace, we’ve both been through a lot. This isn’t the time to make a decision you’ll regret later.”

  “I’d decided I couldn’t go through with selling the place. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t leave you again. All I could think about was seeing you when you got back from Billings, and then I got the call from Ava.”

  “Jace—”

  “Kayley, please let me say this. I’m going to prove to you that I’m worthy of your love and trust. I was so devastated when my father died, that when we lost the baby it was as if my world had shattered. I felt so helpless and afraid.”

  “We both did, Jace.”

  “I know that now, but back then you seemed so strong, so sure of things. I wasn’t. You wanted to start a family right away after we were married. I was scared of losing another baby or, worse, losing you. I didn’t want to love anyone that much ever again.”

  She nodded and cupped his face with her bandaged hand.

  “I thought I would be safe with the life I chose because there was no chance of ever feeling like that again,” he continued, needing to get this out. “The only life I would be risking was my own. But I never got over you. I told myself that if I didn’t see you… Later, I couldn’t face you after what I’d done. I left you to grieve for our baby alone. I abandoned you.”

  “Jace, I knew how hard it was for you. I felt your pain.”

  “What about your own, Kayley?”

  She smiled at him. “I knew you loved me. That got me through it.”

  He shook his head. “You are the most amazing woman.”

  “No, I’m not, Jace. I just believed in our love and tried not to give up hope that one day you would come back. Really come back.”

  “Well, I’m back now,” he said and kissed her.

  VIRGINIA HEARD ABOUT what had happened the way most news moved in Whitehorse County—the grapevine. She’d been so upset she’d called her niece.

  “Is Jace all right?” Virginia had asked the sheriff the moment McCall answered.

  “He’s fine. Kayley has a broken ankle. Doc kept her overnight to make sure she was all right, but I just heard they are letting her go home today.”

  And Jace would be leaving again.

  “Jace saved her life,” McCall said. “Somehow he found her in one of the deepest tunnels. He swears he heard her calling him. It would have been impossible that deep in the mountain even with an opening farther down the tunnel.”

  Virginia felt sad that her son had apparently taken after both his biological parents. “How can he not realize that Kayley is the woman he should be with?”

  “He’s a man. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make them see the truth. Maybe this has done that for him.”

  “I hope so. I don’t want him to spend his life alone.” Like his mother did, Virginia thought. “I thought I lost my son. When you lose a child, especially if you’re alone or at least feel that you’re alone, it changes something in you. You are terrified of feeling that kind of pain again.”

  “Have you seen him?” McCall asked.

  Virginia smiled to herself, remembering the night she’d stopped by Jace’s home. It hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped it would, but she’d gotten to spend a little time with her son. She could go years on just that.

  “Yes,” she said. “I got to see him and talk to him. I’m okay now.”

  PEPPER WINCHESTER HADN’T been able to forget her only daughter’s request. She’d always feared that Virginia was selfish, greedy, heartless—just like everyone thought Pepper herself was.

  But it wasn’t until the two of them had spent time here on the ranch recently that she’d realized her daughter was more like her than she’d ever wanted to admit. Virginia hid her feelings, coming off as cold and uncaring. Pepper knew the feeling well.

  Like her, Virginia had been hurt badly. She had locked herself away, as well. While her daughter hadn’t become a recluse for the past twenty-s
even years, she had sealed herself off from the world with a mask of bitterness and anger.

  It had taken Jace Dennison and the knowledge that her son was alive to open her heart.

  Pepper had seen the change in Virginia but had still been surprised when her daughter had asked her to acknowledge Jace as her grandson and give her share of the Winchester fortune to him rather than her.

  It was then that Pepper realized just how much Virginia had changed. For the first time, she had hope that her daughter might actually find some happiness in this life.

  Now, as she picked up the phone, the matriarch of the Winchester ranch felt a strange sense of hope herself.

  Jace Dennison answered on the third ring.

  “You don’t know me,” Pepper said. “But I’m your grandmother, and I want to invite you out to the ranch. I know you are probably not ready. But if you ever are, the door is open.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” she said and actually chuckled. “If anyone understands how hard it is to be a Winchester, it is me. You take care of yourself.” She hung up, then picked up the phone and called her new lawyer to draft a new will.

  KAYLEY INSISTED THEY take it slow. She was getting around her house fine on crutches now that she was out of the hospital, and she definitely didn’t want Jace waiting on her hand and foot.

  She’d sent him back to his own house just up the road.

  “I have to get back in my classroom,” she told him. “No matter what happens with us, I want to keep teaching. At least for a while.” She meant until they had children, but she didn’t want to put any pressure on Jace. He had things he needed to take care of, like adjusting to the idea of staying in Whitehorse.

  Ava’s and Eva’s bodies had been taken out of the old mine by airlift, their ashes sent back to Alaska for what their father called a proper burial.

  It snowed the day of Ty Reynolds’s funeral. Kayley stood next to Jace. The entire county had turned out, everyone saying what a nice guy Ty had been.

  “You can’t blame yourself,” she’d told Jace after the funeral, knowing that he did. “Ty was the one who picked up Eva that night in the bar. Nor was it your fault that you resembled Ava’s husband.”