“You think that’s gonna keep them from finding me?”
“No. It’s called buying time.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask what good a few extra seconds were, because she didn’t have an answer.
He gave a resigned sigh. “Whatever.”
“Stay low.”
Logan struggled onto his hands and knees and, dragging his splinted foot, half crawled half hauled himself across the floor. Zoe stayed ahead of him, but kept a wary eye on the windows and the front door, expecting the Wolf to burst into the cabin at any moment.
Inch by painfully slow inch, Logan and Zoe made it to and through the bedroom door and into the dark bathroom. She didn’t dare turn on the light.
“Now what?” he asked.
She swept her arm around in the dark. At least it was a small bathroom. She found the commode, set the two bigger knives on the toilet seat, and tucked the paring knife into her belt. “Get in the bathtub.”
“What?”
“Just do it.” She didn’t want to admit she was making it up as they went along.
While he crawled into the tub with a groan, Zoe scrambled back to the great room. The fire was dwindling, but her eyes had acclimated to the night.
At least the front door was still closed. She wondered what had happened to Pony Boy, but pushed the thought of him out there bleeding or dead from gunshot wounds from her mind.
Focus.
She grabbed the seat cushions from the couch, tucked one under each arm, and thumped back to the bathroom. Logan was sitting in the tub.
“Lay down,” she ordered.
He obeyed, probably too scared to do anything else.
Zoe placed both cushions on his legs, careful of the splinted ankle. Then she grabbed his hand and pressed the hilt of the biggest knife into his palm.
“What do you expect me to do with this?” His voice squeaked.
She didn’t want to tell him to do the same thing that monster had done to Kayla, so she said, “Protect yourself the best way you can.”
“Where will you be?”
Pony Boy had called her the last line of defense.
She’d had a gun then.
“I plan to stop him before he gets to you. But if I don’t…”
“Yeah.” Cold reality hardened Logan’s voice.
Zoe moved the top pillow from his legs to cover his torso.
“You do realize this isn’t a tornado, right?” he said with a forced hint of humor.
“Hey, if I had a bulletproof vest, I’d use it. We’re improvising.”
“No shit.”
She thought of Rose’s cuss jar, but didn’t mention it.
“Aunt Zoe?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
She scooped up the extra knife from the toilet seat, left Logan buried under the cushions, and returned to the great room. The lighter Pony Boy had used to start the fire still sat on the hearth where he’d left it. She grabbed it and ran to the kitchen, no longer bothering to stay low. The stillness now unnerved her as much as the gunfire had earlier.
Dropping to her knees, she opened the cabinet doors beneath the sink. A couple of knives were no match for an automatic rifle. Nothing was. But she had to at least prepare for more than hand-to-hand combat.
Something scraped on the front porch. Zoe spun toward the sound. The big knife clattered to the floor. She grabbed for it. Her fingers closed around the blade. Panic and adrenaline dulled the pain. Wincing, she repositioned the knife in her hand.
Whatever—whoever—was out there had reached the front door. Zoe’s pupils had dilated sufficiently to see. But the intruder more than likely had the same advantage. He might even have a flashlight or some sort of night vision equipment. With only the table and chairs between her and the door, she was screwed.
She lowered the lighter to the floor. It was of no use. Getting her feet under her, she clutched the knife. Slowly, silently, she crept toward the door. Ready to pounce. Her only true weapon—the element of surprise.
Halfway there. Nowhere to hide.
The door flung open with a crash.
Twenty-nine
All Zoe could make out in the dark was a man, staggering into the cabin. Stumbling.
Landing on the floor with a grunt. He moaned as he rolled onto his back.
Pony Boy.
Zoe lunged at the door, slamming it shut before kneeling at the Navajo’s side. “What happened?”
He groaned. “I’ve been shot.”
She wanted to hit the light switch. Instead, she asked, “Where?”
He caught her wrist and pressed her hand to his abdomen between his lower rib and his hip. The fabric of his light jacket felt warm and sticky to her touch.
“I need to turn on the light.”
“No.”
“I have to stop the bleeding, and I can’t do anything if I can’t see.”
“There is no time.” His inhalation was a sharp hiss of pain. “The Wolf and his pack are out there.”
She’d known that much. Hearing it didn’t ease her panic. She glanced at the door. “Where?”
“I don’t know. I made it to my truck. When I opened the door—he must have seen. As soon as I started the engine, he fired. After that—nothing. I thought he may be in here.”
“He’s not.” She looked toward the couch. Pushed up and scurried over to it, grabbed a throw pillow, and scurried back. She pressed it against his belly. Anything to help quell his blood loss.
“Where is our friend?”
“I made him get in the bathtub and covered him with the cushions from the sofa.”
“We are not facing a tornado.”
“Yeah. Logan said the same thing. I’m open to suggestions if you have any better ideas.”
“We need weapons.”
She picked up the knife she’d laid on the floor once she’d realized who had crashed through the door. “I have this. And a smaller one in my belt. I gave Logan one too.”
“Kitchen knives versus an AK-47?”
Zoe wasn’t sure if Pony Boy’s groan was from pain or from being seriously outclassed in weaponry. “Are there any guns stashed around here?” she asked.
“No. Too many different people use this cabin. It would not be wise to leave firearms around.”
Not wise, but it sure would help them right about now. “I haven’t heard anything since the gunshots.” Except for Pony Boy on the porch. “Maybe they left.”
“They did not leave. The Wolf is playing games. Stalking us.” The Navajo chuffed a humorless laugh. “Perhaps we should change his name. Something more cat than dog.”
She finished Pony Boy’s thought. “And we’re the mice.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t just stay here.”
“I’m not the only one shot. My truck is dead.”
Besides, Pony Boy was in no shape to make another escape attempt. “I didn’t mean here in the cabin. I meant here right inside the door. Can you make it to the bedroom? Maybe I can turn on a lamp so I can try to bandage you—”
“There is no time.”
As if on cue, slow, heavy footsteps thumped onto the porch.
“The door,” Pony Boy hissed.
Holding her breath, Zoe took one long silent step and turned the deadbolt. It clicked. Had their stalker noticed?
The cabin lit up. A high-powered flashlight beam aimed through the front window, sweeping the room. Zoe squatted, her back pressed against the log wall next to the door. The spot on the floor where Pony Boy had lain was vacant. Except for a dark spot. Blood.
Where had he gone? Her gaze followed the swath of light. From all appearances, the cabin was empty.
Except for the tell-tale dying embers in the fireplace.
No
t that it mattered. Wolf Man already knew they were there. Somewhere.
A new thought struck her. What if the gunmen tried to torch the place? Smoke them out. She’d already experienced the horror of being trapped in a burning house. The notion of going through it again choked her.
A faint metallic scraping sound drew her attention away from her personal nightmare. The doorknob turned. A thud. He was shouldering the door, trying to muscle it open. The deadbolt held. For now. But the door wasn’t the only way to breach the cabin. Time had about run out for her. For Logan. And for Pony Boy. Wherever he was.
No damned way was she going down just squatting next to the door. Pony Boy was right, though. She’d probably not get a chance to use the kitchen knives.
She’d been working on another plan when Pony Boy had interrupted. Taking a deep breath, she pushed away from the wall and darted below the front window, back to the kitchen. Scooped up the lighter she’d dropped on the floor. Skidded to a stop on her knees in front of the still-open cabinet beneath the sink.
“What are you doing?”
The whispered voice made her flinch. Pony Boy. She glanced behind her and spotted the Navajo hunched down beside the couch. “Looking for bug spray,” she replied. There wasn’t time to elaborate.
Leaning into the open cabinet, Zoe triggered the lighter. Its flame provided more than enough light to take stock of the supplies stashed next to the trash can. Dish soap. Various cleaning products. She rummaged through them, trying to block out the footsteps and scraping on the porch.
There. An aerosol can of wasp spray.
Her fingers closed around the can as the front window shattered. She spun in time to see a large object crash through in a shower of glass slivers, hit the floor, and skid.
Not a man.
One of the chairs from the porch.
The tinkling of glass continued. The barrel of a rifle raked across the bottom ledge of the window, clearing the jagged shards.
She clenched the can in one hand, the lighter in the other. Climbed to her feet.
As the man wielding the rifle stepped through the gaping hole, Zoe charged, arms extended in front of her.
Noah Tucker turned toward her, eyes widened in surprise as she hit the spray button and the lighter at the same time.
“Noah Tucker?” Morales said. “That’s a new one to add to the list of AKAs.”
Pete kept vigilant as they careened along the paved road, watching for anything that might offer a sign of where two vehicles had disappeared. “Baronick said Cody Bodine knew his cousin was in the area and using the name Tucker but denied having any contact with him. Claims they grew up together, but that Calvin—or Tucker or Wolf Man—was the black sheep of the family.” Pete had memorized the notes he’d made during Baronick’s phone call. “Said, and I quote, ‘he could charm the pants off a nun when he wanted something.’”
Morales grunted. “I’ve never heard anyone call him charming before. But I believe it. Most bullies can be charismatic when it’s to their benefit.”
Pete remembered Zoe calling him a nice kid who was good with horses. Hell, Pete had talked to the guy on the phone and hadn’t picked up on anything askew.
And now this charming nice kid was out there, gunning for her.
“We’ll find them, Chief,” Morales said.
But would they find them in time?
Something in the periphery of Pete’s vision—the edge of the truck’s headlight beams—caught his attention. A deviation from the steady flow of road edge that had been flying past for the last ten or fifteen minutes. “What was that?”
“What?” Morales asked.
“Was there a side road back there?”
In the light from the instrument panel, Pete could tell Morales stiffened. He slowed. Picked up his phone and keyed in a number. “Hey. Did you guys check out the fishing camp? The one Federated owns?”
The reply was muffled, but Pete recognized the word “no.”
“We’re going to turn around and take a look,” Morales said and deposited the phone into the center console. He wheeled the truck off the road, spinning it a hundred and eighty degrees before jamming the gas pedal to the floor. He glanced at Pete. “Very few people know there’s a cabin back there.”
“Which makes it the perfect place to hide out,” Pete said, more to himself than to the detective. Hopefully it wasn’t also the perfect place to die.
As Zoe’s makeshift flamethrower blasted the intruder, he screamed and threw his arms up. The automatic rifle sailed through the air. Thunked to the cabin floor, spinning and sliding. He staggered. Stumbled. For a moment Zoe thought he was going to do a back flip out of the cabin window he’d stepped through.
She released the wasp spray’s button, but kept the lighter burning so she could see. The stench of burning chemicals, fabric, and hair hung in the air.
He dropped to his knees and covered his face. She stepped toward him and pried one hand away.
Noah Tucker?
When he’d stormed through the window, she’d thought she recognized him. The entire situation was so surreal, she figured she was imagining it. But no. Noah Tucker, her newest boarder-to-be at the farm, cringed at her feet, alternately weeping and swearing. His sleeves from wrist to elbow smoldered. His face and arms looked like he’d been in the sun way too long. First-degree burns. Possibly some second degree as well. He needed medical attention for sure.
Another face appeared at the window. One she definitely didn’t recognize.
“Wolf? Wolf? You okay, dude?”
One of the Pack. Adrenaline resurged. Emboldened, Zoe charged the window, triggering the wasp spray. The aerosol erupted again, blasting at the face and the shattered window. In the momentary blaze, she saw the stranger’s eyes go wide in terror. And then he was gone.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” he yelled.
Footsteps thundered across the porch in retreat.
She released the spray and the lighter, and the roar of the blaze fell silent. But the room didn’t recede into darkness.
Flames licked the curtains, popping and crackling. Tucker let out another girlish shriek and rolled away from the fire. Zoe spun, keeping her makeshift weapon aimed at him. “Don’t move.” Even she heard the panic in her words. “It’s all right,” came another voice calmer than hers, but weaker as well.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Pony Boy stood remarkably straight for someone losing large quantities of blood. He pointed the AK-47 at Tucker. Wolf Man. Whoever the hell he was. “I will guard the Wolf,” Pony Boy said. He lip-pointed at the window. “You put out the fire.”
Thirty
“Someone’s here all right,” Morales said.
He and Pete had turned off the road onto a narrow graveled driveway leading through a stand of small pines. A set of headlights flickered through the branches.
Directly toward them.
Pete swore, bracing one hand on the dash, the other grabbing for the armrest on the door.
Morales swerved off the gravel as the headlights and the Jeep they were attached to roared at and past them. The big pickup rocked hard to the right, but the detective managed to steer it back onto the driveway.
Pete turned in his seat watching the retreating taillights. Was Zoe in that Jeep, a kidnap victim? Or was she in front of them in the cabin? And in what condition?
Morales gunned the truck onward while punching a number into his cell phone one-handed. He barked orders for other units to pick up the pursuit of the vehicle they’d just narrowly avoided and braked to a stop in front of a small log cabin.
“Fire!” Pete yelled and dove from the truck.
Flames raked the edge of a window in the front of the house. Not an inferno. Not like the farmhouse last summer. Not yet. He pulled his Glock and charged toward the door, vaguely aware of Morales
behind him. His heart slammed against the back of his sternum like a sledgehammer. Who was inside? Zoe? Logan? Calvin Bodine a.k.a. Noah Tucker?
Pete hit the porch and slammed against the house, next to the door, his sidearm ready. “Police!”
Morales, gun drawn, stopped a few yards back. “Open the door and keep your hands where we can see them,” he barked.
A lock clicked. The door swung inward, but only a couple of feet. “Pete?”
Zoe’s voice. But she sounded…strange. Relieved? Frantic? He couldn’t quite tell.
He leaned toward the opening. Through it, he could see the flames. Curtains blazing. And a swinging blanket. He stepped back. And kicked the door the rest of the way open.
Zoe, wide-eyed, was beating the burning curtains with what appeared to be some kind of throw. “Help,” she cried.
He quickly took in the rest of the scene, lit by the blaze. A man on the floor. Curled into the fetal position. Covering his face with his hands and whimpering. Another man holding an assault rifle on him. Pete brought his Glock to bear on the gunman. “Drop the weapon.”
“No,” Zoe said. The flames nearly extinguished, she paused in her firefighting efforts to hit the wall switch next to the door. She tipped her head toward the man with the rifle. “He’s the good guy.” Pointing at the man on the floor, she said, “He’s the man who killed Kayla Santiago.”
“Calvin Bodine.”
She swung the blanket at the still burning drapes. “Who? No. Noah Tucker. Now help me put out this fire!”
Morales appeared in the doorway. He must have heard Zoe’s introductions because he holstered his weapon, reached up to yank the blackened curtains from their rod, and stomped out the remaining flames.
Zoe staggered, her arms hanging at her sides. The blanket slipped from her fingers. She turned to face Pete, tears welling in those gorgeous baby blues.
She looked like she’d been through hell. And she looked—beautiful.
He started to reach for her, to take her in his arms, but she turned toward the man with the rifle. She closed the distance between them in two long strides. “Give me a hand, Pete.”
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