In the Lawman's Protection

by Janie Crouch

  They weren’t far from the cabin but there was no way she’d be able to carry him the last couple hundred yards. They might as well be miles away.

  She put her gloves back on and yanked off her jacket, rolling his torso onto it. Then she grabbed it by the collar and pulled, once again using her weight and gravity to her advantage. Every time she pulled him forward it was by crashing herself into the ground, but at least it moved him.

  The progress was slow and agonizing. She had to fall into the snow each time just to get him to move one or two feet. It wasn’t long before the cold and exertion was stealing all her strength.

  She fought to keep her mind in the present as the agonizing burn of the cold tried to throw her back into the past. When she was helpless. At Damien’s mercy.

  As the flames of cold licking her skin receded to the blessed numbness, her mind wanted to hide. From the pain, from the exhaustion. To just curl up in the snow and let everything float away.

  But if she did, she and Ren would both die. And damn it, she wasn’t going to let that happen.

  They were less than fifty yards from the cabin—she could see it, for heaven’s sake—when her coat ripped under Ren’s weight. Sobbing, she stumbled up to the house, grabbed a blanket from the bed and ran back down to Ren.

  She laid the blanket out on the ground and used her legs—there was no way she’d be able to do it with her arms—to roll him face-first onto it.

  Reaching for an inner strength she didn’t know she had, past all the pain of getting them this far, she got them the last few yards and into the house, kicking the door closed behind them. She fell next to Ren on the floor, breaths sawing in and out of her chest.

  She just wanted to lie there, but knew she couldn’t. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Leaving Ren where he lay, she crawled over to the stove. The fire had gone out so she built a new bundle of tinder like he had taught her.

  Using the flint with numb, exhausted fingers was even more difficult, but—thanks to Ren and his patience—she knew she could do it. Finally, a spark caught the kindling and a flame began. She built the wood on top of it and opened all the vents on the stove to allow as much heat out as possible.

  She pulled off her own clothes, now just as soaked as Ren’s, wincing at the pain down the entire back of her body after throwing herself onto the ground time after time to move him. She wrapped herself in a second blanket, crawling back to him. She got his wet clothes off as quickly as her numb, trembling fingers would allow, and wrapped his wound with a T-shirt to stop the bleeding. She threw all the frozen clothes and blanket she’d used to pull him into a pile by the door, just under her painting.

  With the last of her strength she grabbed a quilt resting over the back of the couch. She crawled back to Ren where he still lay on the floor, pulled his naked body to hers and wrapped them both as best she could in the blankets. She knew she should try to get him to the bed or closer to the fire, or do more with his wound, but she couldn’t. Her strength was gone.

  She pulled his icy hands under her armpits and his toes between her calves. She was so cold the difference in temperature barely registered.

  She’d done all she could do. She prayed it would be enough.

  Blackness claimed her.

  * * *

  EVERY PART OF him was screaming in agony. Ren fought back a moan of pain, years of ops kicking in, not sure where he was and if it was safe to make any sound.

  Slowly, awareness came back to him. That damn mountain lion and the icy bitch of a river as it had stolen every bit of breath he had.

  But now he was in the cabin with Natalie, lying on the ground, naked with her in his arms. How the hell had they gotten here?

  He shifted, and pain blistered up his shoulder. He moved cautiously, glancing down at the wound. That cat’s claws had gotten him good. It was going to need to be stitched.

  Natalie rolled, moaning, and her blue eyes blinked open.

  “You’re awake,” she whispered, before her eyes closed again briefly in relief.

  Then she frantically sat up and began examining his fingers and toes. “You were wet for so long. I was worried about frostbite but I didn’t know what to do and once I got you here I just ran out of steam.”

  He could feel her poking at his hands and feet as she continued talking. “But they look okay. Thank God.” Her hands moved to his shoulder, her voice becoming more and more distressed. “Oh, no, your wound. I knew I needed to do something about it, but I—”

  He put his finger to her lips to stop her stream of words, his body burning. “I’m okay. You did great. How did we even get back here?”

  “I got you out of the water and you walked part of the way.” She shrugged. “Then you lost consciousness and I pulled you the rest of the way on my jacket, then a blanket.”

  She said it casually as if she hadn’t just gone beyond, way beyond, what most people would’ve been able to do, and saved his life.

  He pulled her lips down to his with his good arm. “Thank you. You saved my life.”

  “I should’ve done more. I should’ve—”

  “You did enough.”

  She helped get him up and to the bed. He was barely able to walk, and dizziness assaulted him immediately. Once there, she removed the T-shirt she’d used to stop the flow of blood.

  Looking at it, he realized the wound was worse than he’d thought. Skin ripped open and still bleeding. It was already swollen and ugly. Infection was going to be a real worry.

  The game was up. He needed to call Omega and get some medical attention out to them. They could have someone here on Jet-Skis within twenty minutes.

  Natalie’s concerned face was already going in and out of focus. Hell, how was he going to explain this to her?

  “I need my phone,” he croaked out. She’d covered him with a blanket, but he kicked it off, feeling too hot.

  “Ren, we don’t get a signal, remember? You’ve already tried.”

  He shook his head, the movement causing him to fall back with a groan. “I have to tell you something. But I need my phone first. Pants pocket.”

  She moved to the pile of clothes by the door, hanging them over the couch to dry as she came back, but was shaking her head. “I’m sorry, it’s broken. The fall in the river and then probably as I dragged you back to the cabin.”

  When she handed it to him, he realized it was true. There was no way to make a call with this phone. Damn it, they were going to need to walk out of here. As soon as possible.

  “You’re going to need to stitch this,” he told her, struggling to stay upright as everything pitched around him. “There’s a first aid kit in one of the kitchen cabinets.”

  She got it and came back. Ren already knew it was fully stocked, including some supplies for sutures.

  She cleaned out the wound, wincing as he bit off a curse at the pain.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered as he showed her what she would need to do and helped her prepare the sutures.

  “You can.” He tried to smile at her but everything was so blurry. He could feel fever beginning to course through his body. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. We just need to get it closed before infection sets it.”

  Although he was pretty sure it already had.

  His breath whistled out his teeth as the needle pierced his already inflamed skin. But he swallowed all signs of pain when he saw the tears leaking out of Natalie’s eyes.

  “You’re doing great. You’re the most amazing woman I have ever met,” he told her after what seemed like hours later when she was almost finished. Her face had long since blurred into an unrecognizable blob as his eyes glazed over from pain. The sound of her voice—the sound of everything—starting to seem farther and farther away. He fought every second to stay conscious.

  He needed to tell her. Tell her how close they were t
o civilization. Less than four miles. What if something happened to him and he couldn’t lead her out? She could make it. This wasn’t just about Freihof anymore.

  “Nat, you need to know... I have to tell you...”

  “Ren?” Panic was clear in her voice.

  And then there was nothing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the time she’d tied off the stitches like he’d shown her how, Ren was completely unconscious.

  And burning up with fever.

  She touched his forehead but she didn’t even have to know for sure how high his temperature had climbed. His face was already a bright red and he’d kicked all the covers off his body. She spent the next few hours alternating between trying to cool him down with a wet washcloth and attempting to get some ibuprofen in him by grinding it into powder and mixing it with water.

  Nothing seemed to help.

  When the heat in his body turned to chills, she wrapped him in her arms, covered them with a blanket and held him.

  “I know you had something you wanted to tell me, so I need you to wake up and try, okay?”

  Her voice seemed to soothe his fever-ravaged mind and body so she kept talking.

  “You call me Peaches. Did I ever tell you how much I like that? I never would’ve thought I would, but I really do. It makes me feel...special. Cared for.”

  His body shuddered again, and she pulled him closer, hooking her leg over his hips to bring him even closer, kissing his forehead.

  “I know you’ve been talking to me and asking me questions. Trying to get to know me. And I know I avoided them a lot.”

  She knew there was very little chance that Ren was understanding her, but she still wanted to get it all out.

  “But I’ll tell you, anyway. I married a monster. I was nineteen years old, pretty much alone in the world, and fell for the first guy who showed me attention.”

  She brushed hair off his forehead.

  “You asked me if I knew what he did. I didn’t. I really didn’t at first. But it didn’t take long for me to put it together. He was a criminal. Sold things on the black market. I’m not sure exactly what. Weapons, I think, maybe? Technology.

  “I should’ve gone to the police. The first time I suspected something, or at the least the first time he hurt me. But I had nowhere else to go. He convinced me that nobody would believe me about the abuse.”

  Talking about this hurt so much.

  “But I think maybe he knew I was going to go to the cops, anyway. Before I even knew that was going to be my plan. That’s when he changed everything. He fired all the live-in staff who worked at the house, so there was no one around but us.

  “Then he told me he was going to train me to be perfect. Teach me how to be the perfect wife. For two and a half years I never saw another living soul but him in that house in Grand Junction. I never stepped foot outside it unless it was some sort of punishment. Like...like the snow. Buried in the snow until I was sure I would die.”

  She wiped the tears that leaked from her eyes.

  “That day it was because I’d forgotten to put the lid back on the toothpaste and clean out the sink. But really that was just an excuse for him to torture me. If it hadn’t been that, he would’ve found something else.”

  She rubbed her hands up and down Ren’s arms. Arms that had never once been used to do anything but bring her pleasure and comfort.

  “Eventually I just gave up. Gave in to him. He wanted the perfect puppet, I realize now. Damien’s always been the master puppeteer, getting people to do what he wants. I became an empty shell of a person filled up with the desire to be perfect for him.”

  Ren stopped shuddering. She almost hoped he could hear her, could process what she was saying, so he would understand. Even though she knew it was probably better for him if he didn’t know anything about Damien if the police asked him.

  Or, God forbid, Damien coming after Ren himself.

  Because telling him this didn’t change anything. Didn’t change the fact that if Damien discovered she was alive, he would search the world over for her and kill anyone who got in the way of bringing her back to him. Ren included.

  “I completely lost myself. Didn’t know who I was anymore. Once I was that perfect shell, he could start bringing me places again. A restaurant. The opera. I never talked to anyone, and just sat by his side, the perfect dutiful wife. One day he took me to the bank with him.

  “For most people, getting caught in the middle of a bank robbery, getting grazed by a bullet in the head, would be the worst day of their life. For me, it was the best.

  “I still couldn’t even tell you exactly what happened that day in the bank. Robbers. A SWAT team. Yelling, shooting. I got shot. Well, a bunch of people got shot, but I think my wound actually came from the good guys. Or at least Damien was screaming something like that.”

  She trailed her fingers along the gauze covering Ren’s wound.

  “There was blood. So much blood everywhere. Even more than what you lost today. I thought I was dying. Everybody thought I was dying. Damien jumped on a SWAT team member and started hitting him and then got detained, although he didn’t get arrested.”

  If they had arrested and processed him, they would’ve realized what a criminal they had on their hands. But they’d thought he was just a guy hysterical that his wife had been shot, so they’d let him go.

  “Miracle of all miracles, I got brought to the wrong hospital. The closest, but one that was having some sort of biological pathogen scare and was turning away patients. The CDC had been called in and it was complete chaos. I was just sitting in a corner of the ER since everyone had bigger problems than me. I’d stopped bleeding and obviously wasn’t going to die. CDC personnel stopped right in front of me, discussing how anyone who had died in the last four hours in the emergency room needed to be immediately cremated because of contamination concerns.”

  She could swear she almost felt Ren’s arms tighten around her. His shuddering had completely stopped. She kicked the blankets off them a little so neither of them would overheat.

  “I was sitting there with my own medical file in my lap and knew this was my only chance. Nothing like this was ever going to happen again. I saw the CDC guys tell an orderly to take a woman I was pretty sure was dead, somewhere, and I followed. To make a long story short, I looked at her chart, copied what was said about needing to be cremated. Put my medical file and jewelry in a metal box next to hers and ran.”

  She rubbed his hair off his forehead again.

  “It worked. Everyone assumed I had died in the shootout—I was reported on the news as a victim—and the hospital confirmed they had ordered cremation of all bodies at that time.”

  She sighed, lying back farther. “That was six years ago. I’ve been running and hiding ever since. Scared of everything. Haven’t even painted. I let him steal so much from me, Ren. Not only the three years I was married to him, but the six years since. Nearly a decade of my life.

  “It wasn’t until I met you that I realized it was time to stop. Not stop hiding. I’m never going to be able to stop hiding. But stop being his puppet. Stop letting him dictate and control my every move.”

  She reached over and kissed his forehead, pulling him closer. “You taught me that, Ren. And I love you for it.”

  * * *

  IT WAS THIRTY hours before Ren finally woke up. Natalie had bathed him with cool washcloths when he got too hot, held him when he got too cold, fed him as much broth as she could get him to take.

  And talked to him through the whole thing.

  She realized talking about her life with Damien had been more for her than it had been for Ren, especially since Ren wasn’t going to remember any of it anyway. There was so much she’d pushed aside. Feelings of anger, inadequacy, helplessness, pain.

  Maybe she was never going to ever truly stop runnin
g from Damien physically. But she could stop running every other way.

  She was done letting him pull all her strings. Done being a puppet.

  Looking at Ren now, watching his body wake up—his temperature back to normal, the sickly pallor gone, even his shoulder wound looking much better—was like a physical caress.

  Natalie knew she hadn’t known him long enough to call what was pressing inside her chest legitimate. Knew they were brought on by the dangerous and adrenaline-inducing circumstances that they’d found themselves in. But she didn’t care.

  She hadn’t known she was starving until she’d tasted him.

  She wasn’t a fool; she knew things would always be complicated at best. But maybe a relationship with him could possibly work. He lived in Montana on a farm, for crying out loud.

  A farm that sounded like everything she’d ever wanted in the world.

  Why would Damien ever look for her on a farm in Montana? He wouldn’t. She could explain everything to Ren, and then stay off the grid there. Take shelter in him. In them.

  Give in to these feelings that had been wrapping themselves around her heart since the first moment she saw him on the train. And hope he felt the same way.

  His green eyes blinked open right then. She saw confusion light his eyes, then knowledge as he remembered where they were.

  Then heat—so much heat—as he focused in on her.

  “You’re so damn beautiful,” he whispered. “From the beginning it has hurt me to look at you.”

  She felt her face—and other parts of her body—begin to burn.

  “I think that might be some residual fever talking there, soldier. You’ve been pretty sick for a while.”

  In a heartbeat his face changed, a cool focus washing out the passion that had just crackled between them.

  “I’ve been unconscious?” he asked briskly, already starting to sit up. “How long?”

  She moved to help him, but he’d already made it himself. “A few hours.”

  He pinned her with his eyes, moving his shoulder, testing it. “How many hours? Twelve? Eighteen?”