by Nicole Helm
“I’ve got one of the fugitives in my sights,” the deputy offered. He held out a hand. “Deputy Mosely. Laurel made sure we knew what all the Carsons looked like so we didn’t actually hurt the wrong person.” He frowned. “She didn’t tell me you’d be coming as backup, though.”
Noah shook the man’s hand and said nothing. He was more interested in scanning the valley below the rocks. There were two lone figures standing next to a ramshackle building that had been an outhouse long before Noah’s lifetime.
He couldn’t make out faces or even heights, but his stomach sank. “That’s not Addie,” Noah said flatly. Even from this distance he knew that wasn’t the shade of her hair. It was too white blond, not honeyed enough.
“What? How... You don’t know that.” The man shifted in his crouch and brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“I know that,” Noah replied, striding back to his horse. He didn’t even need to take a look through the binoculars. “Which way did the other couple go?”
“I don’t... The opposite. You can’t just...” The kid straightened his shoulders, adopting what Noah supposed was meant to be an intimidating look. “Mr. Carson, I would kindly suggest you don’t try to get in the way of the Bent County Sheriff’s Department’s actions.”
Noah snorted and didn’t stop moving. “The Bent County Sheriff’s Department can go to hell.”
Deputy Mosely sputtered. Hell, was this kid just out of the academy or something?
“What are you going to do?” Noah demanded, gesturing toward the couple in the valley.
“Not that it’s your business, but I’m going to radio Deputy Delaney and follow her orders to—”
Noah rolled his eyes. No damn way was he letting this go even more wrong. He lifted his rifle and pointed it toward the couple below.
“Sir, put the weapon down immediately...”
Noah looked through the sight, saw his target—the man’s arm, because he wasn’t an idiot or scared of doing the wrong thing while in uniform—and shot, ignoring the fact that the deputy had pulled his gun. The kid wasn’t going to shoot a fly, let alone Noah himself.
“You...” The man gaped at him, like a damn grounded fish.
“Well, go arrest him,” Noah ordered, putting his gun back in its soft case. “Get her back wherever she came from. Send everyone you’ve got available in the opposite direction of...” He trailed off as he noticed something not quite right in the horizon. Weirdly hazy.
He whirled around and there was a billow of smoke off to the west. “There,” he said, already moving for Vanessa’s horse. “Send everyone there. North point of Carson property. Follow the smoke.”
“You can’t just—” the deputy called after him.
Noah urged his horse into a run. “I just did.” Vanessa’s horse sped through the snow, agile and perfect, and Noah thanked God they had the kind of animals who could handle this.
Now he just had to make it across the entire north pasture to whatever was on fire and hope he could get there quick enough to save Addie, because he had no doubt she was somewhere in the middle of it.
God help the man who hurt her.
Chapter Fifteen
It turned out Addie had learned something in school. Stay low during a fire. Cover your mouth. Use your hands to feel out a possible escape route.
It was difficult to nudge her shirt over her nose with only the use of her chin and neck, but she managed after a while. Crawling was even more difficult with her hands tied behind her back, but she forced herself through an awkward, careful crab walk.
It didn’t matter, though. There was no escape. There was only smoke and heat. Everything around her was burning. Burning.
She held on to the insane hope Peter had set himself on fire in the blaze instead of only trapping her inside. Even as the roaring of the fire creaked and crackled. Even as she had no idea where she was in the stables, let alone if she was close to some escape.
But she kept moving. Kept blinking against the sting of the smoke, kept thinking past the horrible sounds around her. She could lie down and die, but where would that leave Seth?
And Noah? What would happen to Noah?
She had to keep fighting.
So she scooted around, even as it got harder and harder to breathe. Even as she was almost convinced she was crawling in endless circles she’d never escape. But anything was better than stopping, because stopping would be certain death instead of just maybe death.
She thought she heard her name, and she was more than sure it was in her head, but she moved toward it anyway. It was either death or some guardian angel.
“Addie.”
Some unknown voice above the din of the fire, and still she crawled toward it. She paused in her crawling. She tried to call back, but nothing came out of her scorchingly painful throat except a rusty groan muffled by her shirt.
Useless. She resumed crawling. Toward that faint sound.
“Addie.”
“Noah.” It came out scratchy and sounding nothing like his name and really she had to be hallucinating, because how would Noah be here? He was watching Seth.
Oh, God, he had to be watching Seth. She crawled faster, ignoring the way she couldn’t see, the way her whole body felt as if it were swaying. She moved toward Noah’s voice. Whether it was a hallucination or not, it had to be her escape.
She tried to keep her breathing even, but it was so hard. Tears stung her eyes, a mix of emotion and stinging from the flames around her. It was a searing, nauseating heat and she kept crawling toward it. Toward salvation.
Or is it your death?
Out of nowhere, arms were grabbing her, and there was somehow something cool in all the ravaging heat. Then it was too bright, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut against all that light.
For a moment she lay there in the foreign icy cold, eyes squeezed shut, almost certain she’d died.
But hands were pulling her to her feet, and then to take steps, and she let whoever it was lead her. Wherever they were going, it was away from that horrible fire.
“Just a ways farther.”
She opened her eyes even though they burned like all the rest. “Noah.” She could hear the fire raging behind them, even as he pulled her forward in the drifts of snow.
“Come on, sweetheart, a little ways farther.”
“Am I dreaming?”
He glanced back at her, but continued to pull her forward. “Feels pretty unfortunately real to me,” he said. There was no hint of a smile, and yet she wanted to laugh. Those were her words.
This was real. The misty gray twilight that hurt her eyes after the dark smoke of the stable. Noah, Noah, leading her to safety.
“Where’s Seth?” Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, scraped raw and awful, but she only barely felt the seething pain beyond the numbness. Still, the words were audible somehow.
“He’s safe. That I promise you. Where’s Peter?”
“I don’t...” They reached the tree line and finally Noah allowed her to stop walking, but she was pulled into the hard press of his chest. He swore ripely, over and over again even as his hands methodically moved over her body.
“I don’t think we have time for sex,” she said, attempting a joke.
“I’m checking you for injuries,” he replied, clearly not amused.
Her arms fell to her sides as Noah cut the rope holding her hands together.
“No broken bones,” he muttered. “I imagine you have some kind of smoke inhalation.” He pulled her back, studying her face intently. “What hurts?”
“I don’t...” She couldn’t think. All she could see was the blazing fury in his gaze. “How are you here?”
“I wasn’t going to let him take you, and apparently I’m the only one in this whole world with any sense. You running off. Laurel having children w
atch you who follow the wrong damn people.” His hands gripped her arms, his eyes boring into her. “I swear to God if you ever do anything like this again, I’ll lock you up myself.”
He was so furious, so violently angry, and yet his grip was gentle, and he kept all that violence deep within him. This man who’d been shot trying to keep her safe, and was now pulling her out of burning buildings.
“Noah...” She didn’t know what to say, so she leaned into him and pressed her mouth to his. Everything hurt except that.
His hand smoothed over her hair and he kissed her back, the gentleness in the kiss the complete antithesis of everything she could tell he was feeling.
She’d believed she could take Peter on alone—well, with the help of Laurel and Grady and the deputies, but mostly on her own. And she knew, even now with a bullet hole in his side to tell him otherwise, Noah thought he could take Peter down bare-handed.
But in this moment, and in his kiss, Addie realized something very important. They could only survive this together.
“You don’t have a coat,” he murmured, immediately shrugging out of his and putting it around her. She didn’t even know how her body reacted to it. She felt numb all over, but somehow she was standing.
“You’ll be cold now.”
“I have more layers on,” he returned, scanning the horizon around him. “Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled away and looked back at the burning stable, feeling an unaccountable stab of grief even with her renewed sense of purpose. “I was hoping he’d burned himself up.”
Noah squinted down at the building. “Not likely. There.” He pointed at something. Addie squinted, too, but she saw nothing.
“Tracks,” Noah said flatly. “Coming and going.”
“How can you see that? It’s been snowing and—”
“I can see it.” His gaze returned to her. “You need a doctor.”
“Over my dead body are we separating ever again, Noah Carson. It’s you and me against Peter, or you’re going back to Seth right this instant.”
He opened his mouth and she could tell, just tell, he was going to argue, so she gave his chest a little push until he released her. “We don’t have time to argue, and if you can’t see that the only way we survive this, the only way we win this, is together, I don’t have time to convince you.”
“You’re right we don’t have time to argue,” he muttered, taking her hand. “But you better keep up until we get to Annabelle.”
“Who’s Annabelle?”
“Our ride.”
* * *
NOAH WASN’T SERIOUSLY worried about Peter being on the run.
At first.
After all, Addie was safe with Noah, and Ty and Vanessa together could take care of any lone psychopath who clearly wasn’t as good of a criminal as he fancied himself. So far Peter’d had ample opportunity to really hurt Addie and he hadn’t done it. He kept giving her opportunities to escape. Maybe he expected her to die in the fire, but he certainly hadn’t made sure.
Maybe he didn’t want to hurt Addie. Maybe he just wanted his son back. Noah would never let that happen, but it soothed him some to think maybe this could all be settled without Addie getting hurt.
He glanced back at where she sat behind him on Annabelle’s back. Her face was sooty and her breathing sounded awful. She was clearly struggling, and still she watched the ground and the trail of Peter’s footprints they were following on horseback.
Any magnanimous thoughts he’d had toward Peter Monaghan obliterated to ash. He had left Addie to die in that fire. A painful, horrible death. No, he was no kindhearted criminal who couldn’t bring himself to end her life on purpose. He wanted her tortured. He was evil.
He needed to be stopped. Ended. So Seth never had to grow up and truly know what it was like to have that kind of soullessness in a father.
Noah would make sure of it.
He led Annabelle next to Peter’s footprints, shaking his head at how easy this all was. Scoffing at the FBI and everyone else who hadn’t caught this moron.
Until he realized that the footprints doubled back and followed Noah’s original ones. Back to where he’d stopped with Deputy Mosely. Then carefully going along the trail of his horse’s prints.
It had snowed, but lightly. There’d been no major wind. Since the snow had been a crusty, hard ice, the horse’s stuck out.
With a sinking nausea, Noah realized Peter was going to use Noah’s own damn trail to lead Peter to Seth.
“How did Peter get a horse?” Addie wondered aloud, her voice still low and scratchy.
Noah tensed and tried to think of a way to explain it that wouldn’t lead her to the conclusion he’d drawn. Not that Peter had gotten a horse, but that he was following Noah’s horse’s tracks. Noah tried to think of how to hurry without drawing attention to the fact that they needed to hurry.
Vanessa and Ty could handle Peter, but Noah was slowly realizing Peter had more in his arsenal than Noah had given him credit for.
“Noah,” she rasped in his ear. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He swore as the footprints stopped and suddenly vehicle tracks snaked out across the snow. Peter clearly wasn’t alone anymore. He had what Noah assumed was some kind of snowmobile, and at least one man helping him.
A vehicle that could traverse the snow better and faster than his horse. Following his tracks back to the cabin. The only hindrance would be trees, but that wouldn’t make the tracks unfollowable on foot.
“Noah... Noah, please tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” Addie said, her voice shaky from cold or nerves, he didn’t know.
He couldn’t tell her, so he kicked Annabelle into a run. He didn’t want to push the horse this hard, but they had to get to Seth. “What do you think it is?” he asked through gritted teeth as wind rushed over them, icy and fierce. If he was cold without his jacket, fear and determination kept him from feeling it.
Addie didn’t answer him. She held on to him, though, the warmth of her chest pressing into his back. She was careful to hold him above his wound, but sometimes her arm slipped and hit him right where it already ached and throbbed.
But the pain didn’t matter. What Addie thought didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to Seth before Peter did.
Addie held on tight as they rode hard toward the Carson cabin. Much like his desperate ride in the opposite direction, the land seemed to stretch out in never-ending white, and there was no promise in the beautiful mountains of his home. There was only danger and failure.
Still, Noah urged Annabelle on, and the horse, bless her, seemed to understand the hurry. As they got closer to the cabin, Noah eased Annabelle into a slower trot. The snowmobile tracks veered one way, but if Noah went the opposite they could sneak up on the back of the cabin through the wooded area.
“Why are we slowing down? He’s got so much time on us if he was in a vehicle. We can’t let him get to Seth.”
“Vanessa and Ty will fight him off.”
“He isn’t alone,” Addie said flatly. “Someone had to bring him that snowmobile.”
Noah ducked and instructed her to do so as well as they began to weave their way through the trees, bobbing around snow-heavy limbs. He didn’t need the snowmobile’s tracks anymore. “They couldn’t cut through the trees with the vehicle. It looks like someone walked this way and instructed them how to get around this heavily wooded part. So they didn’t approach the cabin this way as a group. That’s good.”
“Is it?”
“Ideally, it gives us the element of surprise, but that can’t be all. We need to slow down, think and plan. We need to end this.”
She laughed bitterly. “I keep thinking that and we keep running this way and that.”
“You said we needed to work together. Well, here we go. Peter must think you’re de
ad. He has to.” Which got Noah thinking... “Addie, if he thinks you and Seth are dead...”
“How could we possibly do that? What would it solve? We’d always be in danger if he found out.”
“Not if he’s in jail, which is the least of where he belongs. Convincing him you’re dead would just be insurance. A layer of safety on top of all the other layers.”
“I...I guess, but do we have time to figure out how to do that? We have to make sure Seth is safe.”
“All you have to do is make sure Peter doesn’t see you.”
“I don’t give a... We just need to get Seth. That’s all I care about.”
Noah understood that, whether he wanted to or not. But he couldn’t let fear or panic drive him. That’s what had led him to the Carson Ranch, and yes, he’d saved Addie in the process, but he’d also led Peter straight to Seth.
“You’re going too slow,” Addie insisted, desperation tingeing her voice.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like, the fear and the panic, but we can’t let it win. You know I wouldn’t let anything...” He trailed off, because he had let things happen to her and Seth. “We have to end this, which means we have to be smart. Leading with emotion, with fear, with letting someone else call the shots, is what got us here, Addie. If we’d fought straight off, if you’d stayed in the cabin, if I hadn’t flown after you half-cocked... We’re mucking things up right and left, and we can’t keep doing it. Because Seth is at stake.”
He felt as much as heard Addie’s sharp intake of breath, feeling bad for speaking so harshly to her, but it was all true. They couldn’t keep reacting, they had to plant their feet and act.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said softly into his ear as he brought Annabelle to a stop. They were deep in the woods, but he knew exactly where the cabin was though he couldn’t see it though the snow and thick trees. About a hundred yards straight ahead.
“So, let’s figure out a plan. A real plan. A final plan. One that brings you both home safe.”
