In The Arms of a Stranger

by Kristen Robinette

  A crushing sadness flowed over her as she straightened. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  A thin gust of wind whistled through the car, carrying the strong, unmistakable odor of whiskey. Dana’s gaze fell to the floorboard of the back seat where several liquor bottles lay next to the woman’s purse. More than one was empty, and one was half-finished. The sadness doubled and she hugged her jacket against her body.

  The back seat was literally mounded with clothing, and Dana noticed an upturned laundry basket and a box with linens and partially spilled household items. It was as if the woman had thrown everything she owned into the car. Dana thought of her own escape from Atlanta and the similarities between herself and the dead woman. What had this woman been running from?

  A second blast of wind hit the face of the mountain, rocking the car. Dana gasped and took a step backward. There was nothing else she could do. Or was there? She could at least identify her to the police. She carefully leaned in and pulled the woman’s purse from the tangled floorboard.

  She stared at it in frozen horror. It wasn’t a purse.

  Dancing blue bears decorated the side of the white satchel. Dana unzipped the top with trembling fingers. Diapers. A pacifier…

  Oh, my God. A baby.

  She threw down the diaper bag and leaned back into the car, resting one hand lightly against the back seat. “Baby!” she called. The car rocked beneath her. Slow a voice in her head whispered. Careful. She forced her hands into deliberate action as she began pushing clothing and blankets aside from the center of the back seat. “Baby!” she called again. Her hand hit the solid form of a car seat and she instantly heard a soft mewling sound.

  The infant. Elation spread through her. She’d found the infant.

  As Dana pushed away the last article of clothing, the baby lifted a chubby fist in the air, turned to look at her, and instantly began crying. It was music to her ears. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, the wind whipping the words away. It was all the same, Dana thought. She glanced at the child’s mother. The words were a lie.

  She had to get him out. The car swayed, groaning against the rocky boulder as if threatening her.

  Go, an inner voice commanded. Do it now.

  Dana leaned farther in, a million prayers dancing through her head. The carrier-style seat was built for an infant, with the car’s center lap belt fastened over it. If she could just unfasten the seat belt… There was no choice but to climb partially in.

  Her entire body was trembling as she placed her knee on the back seat and leaned over the child. He was screaming in earnest now. Was he hurt? The car lurched forward as her fingers found the release button. The seat belt gave way, and Dana scrambled to get a grip on the car seat. Her frantic actions swayed the car just as a gust of wind hit the mountainside.

  She knew instantly that the car was going to go over the cliff.

  Her fingers dug into the car seat and she threw herself backward with every ounce of energy she possessed. A hard blow smacked the flesh on the left side of her face and as if from a great distance she heard the sound of shattering glass, felt something cold and wet drench her foot. She was tumbling, felt her precarious grip on the car seat slipping… She hit the ground, her breath leaving her lungs as the car seat landed painfully on her chest.

  The sound that followed was horrible. Metal ground against rock, screaming as it slid. Then there was the seemingly endless sound of the car crashing down the mountain face, snapping trees with the force of its weight.

  And then there was silence.

  Her eyes opened to darkened purple sky, wet snowflakes falling against the skin of her face. The daylight was almost completely gone. She still hugged the car seat but there was no sound. Panic seized her. Where was the baby?

  Dana rolled to one side, and the throbbing pain on the right side of her head filled her vision with dancing lights. She eased the car seat to the ground and scrambled to sit up, blinking to clear her vision. The baby stared back at her, still securely held in its seat, his eyes wide and panicked.

  Him? The question registered absently in her brain.

  She glanced at the blue sleeper with its bright cars and trucks. The cheerful clothing brought hot tears to her eyes. Yes, a boy. And so young. Probably only three or four months old.

  “Oh, little one,” Dana whispered. “My God, what have you been through?” Her fingers fumbled with the restraining belt, releasing it. She scanned his tiny body for injury, finding none. Lifting him from the car seat, she realized that the weather was the next greatest threat to his safety.

  And hers.

  Dana partially unzipped her jacket and eased the baby inside. He instantly snuggled against her, nuzzling her breasts frantically. “Oh, sweetie,” Dana cooed through unshed tears. “There’s nothing for you there, but we’ll find something. I promise.”

  Something in her mind stilled as she said the words. Food. Where was the diaper bag? Her legs trembled uncontrollably as she stood. As she looked down, Dana instantly found the source of the shattering glass. The liquor bottle had tumbled from the car, shattering at her feet and drenching her boot with alcohol. She stared at the heap of glass. It was the only thing that remained, a sad reminder of a tragic mistake.

  Dana found the diaper bag a few feet away and looped it over her arm. She turned to face the mountain cliff she’d so easily slid down. It would be impossible to climb back up, especially holding the infant at her chest.

  “No, no, no…” she whispered.

  She scanned the terrain and found that the ledge curved back toward the mountain, a natural footpath. Tears of relief stung her eyes as she maneuvered a steep but manageable pathway up the side of the mountain. She was trembling all over as she reached the top. Cool under fire, her uncle always said of her. Until the firing stops. Unfortunately the adrenaline that always saw her through a crisis had the tendency to abandon her too soon. It was happening now.

  She stumbled away from the ledge, then leaned against the trunk of a tree, sliding down the length of it until she sat on the frozen ground. The baby… Her breath left her in bursts of frozen vapor as she unzipped her jacket. Just a few inches and she could see the infant’s head, his dark hair swirled on the top. Dana eased the zipper a little farther.

  He was sleeping.

  Hysterical laughter gave way to tears as she hugged the baby, her thumb tracing circles against his chubby cheek. She’d done it. She might have made a mess of everything else she’d touched in the past year—her marriage, her career… Her thoughts stilled when they reached little Michael Gonzalez.

  She’d failed Michael in the worst possible way. What started out as a story segment on the life of a foster child had turned into much more. She’d fallen in love with the sweet five-year-old and wanted desperately to keep his abusive father from obtaining custody. But her overzealous reporting of the abuse had had the opposite effect. Provoked, Paul Gonzalez had stepped forward to claim his son, referring to him as his “property.”

  The child who had stolen her heart fell from the window of his father’s second-story apartment less than a month later.

  Dana drew the baby against her chest, tears in her eyes. She may have failed Michael, but by God she hadn’t let tragedy claim this little life.

  She kissed the top of the baby’s head and stood, making her way to her car. Her cell phone proved useless, its signal no doubt deflected by the mountains. It was just as well. The road wouldn’t be navigable for much longer. She and the baby could freeze to death waiting for help. Still, she tucked the phone in the baby’s diaper bag, along with her billfold, car keys and the map.

  She turned to face the mountain.

  Was that a pinpoint of light? Hope surged as Dana focused on a distant light that twinkled in the growing darkness. It was the only sign of civilization in the expanse of forest that surrounded her.

  She would follow the light and she would make it to safety. Her hands cradled the baby beneath her jacket.

>   She had to.

  The rifle felt good, like an old friend. The woman’s form appeared in the crosshairs of the scope.

  Taking down a target was like riding a bicycle. Some things you never forgot…. Things like going hungry, like waking with your own breath frozen against your pillow and hearing your father slowly choke to death on the black silt from the mines.

  A lifetime ago, but yesterday. The nose of the rifle trembled, despite the determined fingers that gripped it. If the bitch thought she could waltz in and take everything away, she was wrong.

  Dead wrong.

  There was no going back. Not after you’d risen from the dirt. The girl should have understood that the first time she was warned. The shot cracked through the frigid silence, and the woman fell. But just as quickly she stood again, darting toward the road.

  “Dammit.” The word was whispered, controlled, even in the face of desperation.

  She’d merely slipped on the ice and the shot had missed its mark. That the girl had survived the accident was an insult to the original plan. She’d scrambled back up that ledge like some nasty bug that refused to die. The rifle’s scope found the woman again but she slipped into the cover of the woods. It was obvious where she was headed. And when she got there it would all be over.

  No more bug.

  “Damnation!” Luke killed the headlights and pushed the vehicle’s door against the side of the ditch. He squeezed out, the space he’d made barely allowing his six-foot-four frame to pass. Snow and half-frozen mud clung to his jeans and boots as he climbed from the ditch and onto the road. He squinted through the falling snow, staring at the mangled mess that used to be his Jeep Cherokee.

  That ice don’t care whether you got a four-wheel-drive or not, his grandfather had said when he’d urged Luke to go home. Get on outta here while there’s still a road to steer that fancy lump of steel on.

  He should have listened. Luke doubted that Seth Carlisle had been wrong often in his eighty-five years. Besides being his maternal grandfather and the only person in this godforsaken town he considered a friend, Seth lived in the middle of nowhere. Luke had to make sure he had firewood and food, at the very least.

  He stared at the useless form of his vehicle and sighed. The storm had turned toward Sweetwater with the fury of a scorned woman and was bearing down hard, adding a layer of snow to the frozen mountain. Thanks to his determination, the town’s chief of police was now stuck in the middle of nowhere during the worst storm in living memory. Not good. He touched the cut on his forehead, reminding himself that it could have been worse.

  “If I’m in this mess, you’re in this mess,” Luke called, stamping the circulation back into his already numbing feet. “Get out here.”

  Sam managed the narrow opening with more grace than Luke, but he had twice the traction. The yellow Lab bounded up the side of the ditch and looked at him expectantly.

  “Aren’t you supposed to have a keg of beer or something?”

  Sam cocked one round eyebrow and wagged his tail.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  A gunshot cracked through the still night and Luke instantly dropped to the ground, drawing his gun.

  “What the hell…?”

  A second shot shattered the silence that had followed the first, and Luke heard someone cry out. The voice was muted but distinctly female. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in response. He crouched on the balls of his feet, listening as he reached for his two-way radio at his waist. Damn. He’d left the radio in the Jeep.

  The road took a sharp turn a short distance down the mountain, following a treacherous cliff and creating a natural overlook. Luke jogged, crouching, until he reached it.

  The sound he heard next was unmistakable. Someone was running—crashing—through the forest. He could hear the underbrush snapping, even hear their panicked gasp for breath. He cocked his head, listening. The shots had come from the right, he calculated, making the person below him the woman.

  He knew with every lawman’s instinct he possessed that she was running for her life. What was going on? There wasn’t time to make sense of anything other than the fact that she needed his protection.

  He intentionally slowed his breathing, concentrating on what few facts he had. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the shots had come from. He scanned the area below him. There was only blinding darkness to his left with one exception. A faint light glowed through the cover of the trees. The old forest ranger’s station, he realized.

  When the woman reached it, she would find it locked. Worse, she would discover that it had been built on the furthermost point of a natural rock crag, chosen to provide rangers with an unrestricted view of the forest below. Flanked only by the impossible rock face of the mountain behind it, there was only one way in—and out.

  She would be trapped.

  Chapter 2

  She wasn’t going to die. Gonzalez—it had to be Gonzalez—wasn’t going to win. Dana clawed at the doorknob, rattling it against the solid pine door. It was locked. The baby was silent inside her jacket. Too silent. Fear cut through her. Oh, God, had she hurt him while running? She had to check, had to get inside.

  Hot tears of frustration burned her eyes. She stepped back, admitting that the door was not going to open. Her heart pounded as she frantically paced the cabin’s porch, searching for a way in. It looked as if the porch wrapped around the cabin but it was difficult to tell. A bare lightbulb burned next to the door but the light didn’t extend…

  Dana stopped abruptly. The window. There was a window near the door. Hope filled her. She needed something to break it, something hard. A dark object was on the porch stoop next to her feet. She knelt, curling her fingers around solid metal. A boot scraper. She could use it to—

  Glass shattered above her and the porch light was instantly extinguished, plunging her into darkness. Rough fingers curled over her mouth, swinging her body up and against a solid form.

  Oh, God, he was here. He’d found her. She was going to die…. As soon as the thought formed in her head, the baby squirmed against her chest, reminding her that her life wasn’t the only one at stake.

  She would not let him die.

  Dana brought the boot scraper up as hard as she could, aiming for the man’s face. It met flesh with a solid thump, then fell against the wooden planks of the porch. She heard the man curse beneath his breath. She’d hit him, but the heavy metal had connected with flesh rather than bone. He’d been too tall for her pitiful weapon to hit its mark.

  She tried to scream then, even knowing that the effort would go unheard.

  “Shut up,” a deep voice whispered next to her ear. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He was dragging her, she realized, and she was helpless to fight with one hand securing the baby beneath her jacket. Her feet shuffled against the wooden porch. Was he was hauling her to the back side of the cabin? She heard the sound of keys rattling, and her mind struggled to make sense of what was happening. As Dana felt the man’s grip on her relax, she realized he was fitting a key into the door.

  It might be her only chance.

  Maybe he felt her muscles tense or maybe he read her mind, but his grip returned to her arm, pulling her against his side, his other hand still firmly wrapped over her mouth. “Who’s out there?” he whispered.

  The words stopped her, and she repeated them in her head to try and make sense of what he’d asked. She heard the door creak on its hinges and a gust of stale air flowed over her as he dragged her inside. He used their coupled bodies to push the door closed behind them, then leaned his head near her ear.

  “I’m here to help you.” He didn’t whisper this time, and the deep sound of his voice vibrated against her ear. “I’m a law officer. Do you understand?”

  Relief, mixed with wary disbelief, poured over her. She wanted to believe. She nodded against his hand.

  “If I let go of you, are you going to hit me again?” There was a tinge of humor in his voic
e that comforted her far more than his words had.

  She shook her head.

  She scrambled backward as he released her, connecting with something hard. She used her free hand to steady herself in the darkness. A stone fireplace. She took in huge gulps of air, never taking her eyes off the dark form of the man.

  “Who was shooting at you?” His voice resonated in the dark. “What’s going on?”

  Her thoughts tumbled over one another. The only logical answer was Gonzalez. But she was wary. After all, she didn’t know this man. He’d appeared out of nowhere, just as the shots had. Was she supposed to believe more than one person was crazy enough to be in the middle of nowhere during an ice storm?

  “I don’t know,” she finally answered, her voice hoarse.

  Luke studied the faint outline of the woman, sensing her presence as much as anything. She was small. That much he could tell. Her ragged breathing spoke volumes in the darkness. She was obviously scared as hell. Whether or not she was telling the truth was temporarily irrelevant.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “No, but…” She shifted and he thought he heard a soft grunt as if she were hiding an injury.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the window, at the faint outline of light that shone through it. “Stay where you are,” he commanded.

  Luke felt his way along the interior wall of the ranger’s cabin, finally reaching a bookcase. He knelt, hoping his memory of the place was still worth a damn. His fingers brushed along a row of books, finally reaching cold metal. The flashlight. Paydirt. He inched his way back down the wall, then covered the small distance between himself and the woman, grabbing her by the arm.

  “We need to get to an interior room,” he said as he half dragged her through the cabin. She made a small cry of protest and followed clumsily behind him.

  The cabin’s layout flashed in his head. It was practically one room, with a small kitchenette adjoining the den area they’d entered. There was a bedroom but it had a window. He mentally dismissed using it for that reason. A supply pantry off the kitchen was the only choice, and he pulled the woman toward it, finally hauling her through the door.