Shadow of Doubt

by Abbie Zanders

  Then, she popped a few over-the-counter pain tablets, made creative use of the ACE bandage to fashion a makeshift sling of sorts, and draped the heat-retaining, foil space blanket around her shoulders like a cape.

  Next, she opened the back door and climbed out, wincing when she put weight on her left leg, and then she limped around the vehicle to further assess the situation. Her Jeep was dented on both sides, but the front and back were untouched, and she didn’t detect any damage to the fuel tank.

  She cleared the snow away from the tailpipe, vomited when another wave of nausea hit, and then climbed back inside. After engaging the emergency brake, she gritted her teeth, depressed the clutch, popped the manual shifter into neutral, and murmured a prayer as she turned the key once and then twice. The third time was the charm. The engine turned over, and she made a solemn promise to only buy Jeeps again for the rest of her life.

  While waiting for the defroster to heat up, she searched around the interior for her phone again. After an hour, she finally found it wedged under the passenger seat. Getting it out was one of the most excruciatingly painful things she’d ever done. She was glad her power windows still worked, so she could vomit out the side twice more before the deed was done.

  The upchucking did nothing to improve her headache, which had now progressed from switchblade to ax-blade level. Nor did it relieve the throbbing pain from bruised/cracked ribs.

  Nevertheless, she triumphantly held the phone in her hand as she sagged against the seat, happy to be in an upright and static position once again. She exhaled—slowly—and tried to wake up the screen, only to see a flashing, empty battery symbol in response.

  There would be no calling for help. Not today.

  She made a mental note to add a portable, battery-operated phone charger to her emergency kit along with something more powerful than OTC painkillers.

  Instead of focusing on the negatives, she chose to think of the positives. She had enough fuel to provide hours of warmth and plenty of food—not just the high-protein snack bars in her emergency kit, but also the steak and shrimp dinner she’d made to surprise Chris. She also had several bottles of water, and if those ran out, she was surrounded by plenty of snow that would work just as well.

  Though she wasn’t hungry, she forced herself to eat something and then downed a few more tablets since she’d thrown the others up. Then, she sat back, closed her eyes, and waited for her stomach to calm and the painkillers to do their thing before she attempted additional heroics.

  When she opened her eyes again, the clock on her dash told her it was mid-morning. Surely, someone must have noticed she was missing by that point.

  Right?

  Though the more she thought about it, the more she realized that might not be the case.

  She hadn’t been around to open the store, but folks might assume she’d taken the day off to take her dad home from the hospital.

  Luther was unreliable at best. If he was still upset with her, he wouldn’t think twice about showing up late or not at all, just for spite.

  Kylie and her mother wouldn’t notice, not unless they needed her, and even then, they would assume she’d just gotten involved in something.

  But Chris ...

  The last time she hadn’t returned his texts or calls, he had come looking for her. Hopefully, he’d do so again. But ... he’d have no idea where to look. She hadn’t texted him, wanting to do something unexpected and spontaneous.

  Her spirits took a sudden and decided downturn.

  Kate turned off the motor to conserve fuel and considered her options. As there were only two, it didn’t take long. She could stay right where she was and wait, or she could try to go for help. Common sense suggested she stay where she was—at least for the time being. Hiking the mountain could be challenging under the best of circumstances. Attempting to do so with injuries during a snowstorm, even more so.

  Please come looking for me, Chris.

  She must have fallen asleep again because when she woke up, the Jeep was covered in snow, and her feet were numb. She knew she had to clear the area around the tailpipe before she could restart the engine again. After all this, she sure as hell wasn’t going to give herself carbon-monoxide poisoning, though the thought of climbing over the seats again filled her with dread.

  Summoning her courage, she worked her way through the back, glad she had when she saw that the snow was really coming down, twice as fast and hard as it had been earlier. Several more inches had accumulated. She supposed that outlier model had been right after all.

  She was brushing away the area around the exhaust when she heard it—the distant whine of a snowmobile—and knew in her heart that it was Chris.

  Adrenalin and a sense of urgency coursed through her. She scrambled back into the Jeep as quickly as her injuries would allow and started the engine. Then, she flicked the lights off and on and laid on the horn in a repeated SOS pattern—short, short, short, long, long, long, short, short, short.

  Every now and then, she’d stop long enough to listen, her heart pounding increasingly hard and fast when she heard the vehicle getting closer.

  She’d never, ever in a million years forget the joy she felt when she heard that first snowmobile stop beside her.

  “KATE!”

  She couldn’t see who it was; the windows were covered in snow again. It wasn’t Chris’s voice, but she recognized it as one of the guys from Sanctuary.

  “YES!” she yelled back, laying twice on the horn in quick succession as well for good measure.

  “I got her,” she heard him say, and then he rattled off a set of coordinates. A gloved hand wiped the snow away from the driver’s-side window, and she looked into the face of a shadow with goggles. “Are you hurt?”

  “Minor injuries,” she said. “The door’s jammed. Wait, I can crawl out the back.”

  In her haste, she wasn’t as careful with her movements as she had been in her earlier ventures. She paid for it in the form of pain and nausea.

  “Move!” she yelled as she exited out the back, stumbled to the side, and promptly threw up.

  When she straightened and turned around again, her rescuer had removed his goggles. Enough of his face was revealed through the high-tech-looking balaclava for her to recognize Matt Winston.

  “Sorry about that,” she apologized.

  He guided her toward the bumper and had her lean against it, his eyes creasing in concern when he focused on the side of her face. “How bad are you hurt?”

  “I hit my head,” she said, starting with the obvious. “My left side took the brunt of it. I think I might have bruised some ribs and my knee, and I know I broke my arm. Otherwise, I’m good.”

  “Good, huh?”

  She nodded. He shook his head. She had the impression he was smiling, but since she couldn’t see his mouth, she couldn’t be sure.

  “I’m pretty tough.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  Within minutes, a second snowmobile came racing down the slope at breakneck speed. Chris was off the snowmobile and pulling her into his arms a moment later. It hurt like hell, but it was worth every ounce of pain.

  “Ow.”

  He took a step back and gently cradled her face. “Jesus, Kate. Are you okay?”

  “Super now that you’re here.” She tried to smile. She thought she had.

  “She admitted to head trauma, bruised ribs and knee, and a broken arm before you got here,” Matt told him.

  “Fuck, baby.”

  “I like when you call me baby.”

  Chris’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to Matt. “I think she’s going into shock. Where the fuck is Doc?”

  “Right here.”

  Two more snowmobiles had joined the party. She squinted and made out Doc and Sandy’s guy ... she couldn’t remember his name. Something that started with an H maybe. Her thoughts were fuzzy, and it was getting harder to focus as the pain escalated to new levels.

  A kind face filled her field of visi
on. “Hey, Kate. Remember me?”

  “Yeah. Doc, right?”

  “Right. How are you feeling?” Doc’s face intently peered into hers.

  “A little woozy,” she answered honestly. “I think I moved too fast, getting out of the truck. Sorry about the bad breath. Do you have a mint?”

  Someone off to the side said something as Doc gently lifted her eyelid.

  “You have a broken arm, and your ribs hurt?”

  She nodded. Her vision blurred. “And my knee. And my head.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  His eyes crinkled, just like Matt’s had. “Yeah, that’s plenty. What do you say we get you out of here and do something about that?”

  “I say, what are we waiting for? Let’s blow this Popsicle stand. Uh-oh. Clear the deck, boys.” She leaned over, threw up again, and passed out.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Mad Dog

  Mad Dog caught Kate before she hit the ground, scooping her limp body up into his arms as gently as he could.

  Doc was right there, shining a light into her face and lifting her eyelids. “She’s out.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. She needs medical attention.”

  “Agreed. More than I can provide though. We need to get her to the hospital.”

  “The mountain road is impassable.”

  “Good thing we have these then,” piped up Heff, making a sweeping gesture with his arm like some kind of game-show host.

  They briefly discussed the logistics of transporting Kate safely and with minimal impact. Before long, she was positioned in front of him on the machine, using straps to keep her securely against him and freeing both his hands. Church and Heff took the lead, forging a diagonal path downward toward the town, while Doc stuck close on his six. He was glad Kate was out; as careful as he tried to be, it was a bumpy ride, and she would have been in agony.

  They eventually hit a road, and after that, it was smoother sailing. The governor had declared a state of emergency, requiring citizens to stay off the roads. That definitely made it easier on them since it meant a clear path. Things became slightly trickier when they hit the town limits, but the snow was coming down so fast and so hard that the plows couldn’t keep up. As a result, they had no problem in getting where they needed to go on the snowmobiles.

  They got a lot of strange looks when they walked into the ER in their gear, Mad Dog carrying Kate, wrapped in her foil blanket.

  With Doc’s help, they provided as much information as they could, relaying what Kate had said before she passed out. A gurney was wheeled out, and they took her in right away, but they denied Mad Dog’s request to accompany her, assuring him that she was in good hands.

  He and Doc joined the others in the waiting room, dropping down into chairs and removing some layers.

  “She’s going to be fine, Mad Dog,” Church said.

  “Yeah.” She had to be.

  The next hour dragged by. No one would tell him anything because he wasn’t family. Making matters worse, the waiting room television was tuned to daytime talk shows. He couldn’t take the annoying voices and fake applause and turned it off.

  “Hey, I was watching that,” Heff protested.

  “Tough shit.”

  When his phone vibrated, he looked down to see Kylie’s number pop up. “Kylie.”

  “We just got a phone call that Kate’s in the ER.”

  “I know. We’re the ones who brought her in.”

  “We?”

  “Me and some friends.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  He relayed the events as succinctly as possible.

  “Thank God you found her when you did. You’re at the hospital now?”

  “Yes, but they won’t tell me anything.”

  “I don’t think they can without signed consent. Based on what they told us, she’s okay. We’re snowed in. Even if the roads were open, it’d take hours to dig out. The drifts against the garage are nearly up to the top of the door, and my mom is already borderline hysterical because my dad’s stuck there, too.”

  “I could send someone over with a snowmobile.”

  Kylie immediately rejected that idea. “My mother on a snowmobile? You’ve got to be kidding. There’s not enough Xanax in the world to make that happen.”

  “I’m here, Kylie, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Mad Dog disconnected the call and forced himself to take a deep breath. It took another agonizing thirty minutes before a nurse finally came out to talk to them. “Mr. Sheppard?”

  He stood, as did the others.

  The nurse looked from one to the other before settling her gaze back on him. “You brought in Kate Handelmann?”

  He nodded. “How is she?”

  “We’re admitting Kate and moving her to a room.”

  Shit. That didn’t sound good.

  “How bad is it?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  That was when Church said smoothly, “Shannon O’Shaughnessy. I haven’t seen you in years.”

  Her eyes flicked from Mad Dog to Church, focusing on him for a long moment before recognition dawned. “Matt? Matt Winston?”

  He nodded.

  “I heard you were back in town.” Her eyes raked him up and down. “Wow, you’ve really filled out, haven’t you?”

  He chuckled. “So have you.”

  Mad Dog and his brothers watched in fascination as Church transformed from the solemn, hard-assed team leader they knew to the charming, local boy next door.

  The nurse blushed. “Thanks for noticing.”

  “Pretty hard not to. Listen, Kate’s a good friend of ours, especially this guy here. He’d feel a lot better if he could see for himself that she’s all right.”

  She looked at Mad Dog and then back to Church. “Close friend, huh?”

  “Very close. If there’s anything you can do, we’d really appreciate it.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the desk and then brushed a lock of hair back with her fingers. “Hmm. Well, things are kind of crazy around here. As long as it’s okay with Kate, I suppose I could bend the rules for a good friend.”

  Church’s smile was dazzling. “Thank you, Shannon. I owe you one.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “I’m due for a break. You could buy me a cup of coffee.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  Her smile was just as dazzling. “All right. Hang here for a few, and I’ll check with Kate.”

  “Will do.”

  As soon as the nurse disappeared from view, Heff put both hands together in front of his chest as if in prayer and bent at the waist. “I bow to the master,” he said, grinning. “Teach me, O Great One.”

  “Fuck off,” Church replied gruffly.

  Nurse Shannon returned a short while later. Her lips were glossier now than they had been, and she smelled faintly of flowers. “Go on up. Room 702.”

  “Thank you,” Mad Dog said. He owed Church big time.

  His feet couldn’t move fast enough. They took him toward the bank of elevators, swallowing his impatience when the numbers indicated both cars were several floors above. Unwilling to wait, he went to the stairwell and climbed the six flights instead.

  There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied.

  “Kate ...” he called softly.

  She opened her eyes, and there it was—that light that made it possible for him to breathe again.

  “Hey,” she said sleepily. “What took you so long?”

  He laughed, relief flowing through his veins. “Sorry about that.”

  Kate smiled. “Just kidding. My hero,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Looking for me. Finding me.”

  He leaned down and kissed her because he had to.

  “I’ll always come for you, Kate. Always,” he reiterated, just in case she doubted him
. “How are you feeling?”

  “A little better now that they’ve finally agreed to give me something for the pain. You’re not supposed to take ibuprofen for a concussion; did you know that? Apparently, it can mask symptoms and increase the chance of internal bleeding.”

  “You have a concussion?”

  “A concussion, ten stitches to the side of the head, two cracked ribs, a broken arm, a bruised patella, and a mild case of hypothermia.”

  “Oh, baby.”

  “Hey, could have been a lot worse.”

  Yeah. He didn’t like to think about that.

  “What happened, Kate?”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” she said on a slow, easy exhale. “For Valentine’s Day. I made steak and shrimp and packed some sexy lingerie and planned to show up on your doorstep.” She smiled weakly. “Guess that plan went to hell in a handbasket, huh?”

  His heart swelled at the same time his gut clenched. “You shouldn’t have put yourself at risk like that.”

  “The roads weren’t bad when I left. I mean, there were some slick spots and stuff but nothing I couldn’t handle. It was the impatient jerk riding my ass that was the real problem. He hit my Jeep and sent me over the edge.” Her brows furrowed. “At least, I’m assuming it was a guy, but I guess it could have been a woman. I didn’t get good look; all I have is a vague impression.”

  Rage, instant and powerful, erupted within him. “Someone hit you? Intentionally?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, why would he? I pulled over to let him pass, but he pulled in behind me instead, and I panicked. I hit the gas, got back onto the road, slid, and the next thing I knew, I was field-testing the integrity of my roll bar. Five out of five stars, by the way.”

  He couldn’t appreciate her attempt to make light of the situation. His mind was still focused on the asshole who’d hurt his woman. “Could you identify him?”

  “No, it was too dark. All I could see was that it was a big truck. Oh, and it had a rack of spotters across the top. They were blinding in my rearview.” She paused, her brows furrowing as much as the painkillers would allow. “How did you find me anyway?”