olly went down with a cry of pain, and for one stark split-second time froze as Gabriel thought she’d been shot. Then she was scrambling to her feet, muttering “Damn it!” with muffled fury before grabbing his hand and taking off again. She fell again, almost immediately; the thick treads on his boots didn’t afford him a lot of traction, but her sneakers had almost none.

Gabriel hauled her to her feet once more; she stifled another cry of pain, and too late he realized he’d pulled on her right arm, and her injured right shoulder. To keep her upright, he wrapped his arm around her and held her, his grip so hard he expected her to protest, but she didn’t make a peep. Running in that locked-together position was impossible, unless they wanted to end up facedown on the ground while the two meth-heads took potshots at them. Their best bet was to keep moving, no matter how agonizingly slow their progress seemed to be.

At least it was dark up here, away from the lights of town and other houses; hiding would be easier. Of course, that meant they had to be extra cautious themselves, because he couldn’t turn on the flashlight without pinning a bull’s-eye on their backs. All he could do was keep moving, get them into the trees, and hope for the best.

Even though she’d spent the last hour—two hours? She had no idea how much time had passed—in terror, expecting to be killed, somehow the first explosive crack of a gunshot still caught Lolly by surprise; her entire body lurched, and her heart jumped so hard it felt as if it would come out of her chest. She stumbled, lost her balance on the icy grass, and went down. Cold immediately seared her legs. The poncho somewhat protected her, but from mid-thigh down her pants were wet. After all the effort she’d made to stay dry, what did she do but fall on the wet ground the very first thing? Furious with herself, she scrambled up, grabbed Gabriel’s hand, and took off running again.

And immediately fell again.

This time Gabriel jerked her to her feet, and the pressure on her bruised shoulder and side wrenched a cry from her before she stubbornly shut her mouth. What was a little pain in her shoulder compared to maybe getting shot? Gabriel clamped his arm around her waist and set off again, all but dragging her along with him.

Behind them, the porch light flared on, and the front door opened with a pop and a slam; the first shot must have been through the dining room window if they were just now making it out on the porch. Niki and Darwin began firing from the porch; their aim was off, but every cell in her spinal cord seemed to shrivel as she waited for a lucky shot to find her. Again, time seemed to have lost its meaning; logically only ten or fifteen seconds could have passed, because how long could it have taken them to get to the porch? It felt as if she and Gabriel had been running for the woods for a lifetime, but they were still several yards away. Lolly was afraid to turn and look at the porch, afraid to do anything except try to keep her feet under her and make as much progress as she could.

Don’t fall, don’t fall. Instinct screamed at her to run, but even with Gabriel’s support it was all she could do to keep her feet under her. They were still on grass, which wasn’t nearly as slick as the driveway would be, but every step sent her feet slipping and skating in various directions. Gabriel fared better, maybe because of his boots, maybe because he was heavier and crunched through the layer of ice to the ground. Don’t fall. She clutched the back of his coat in a death grip, hanging on for dear life.

Then they reached the tree line and Gabriel whirled, shoving her behind one of the larger trees and pressing himself full against her as if he were trying to push her into the rough bark. Lolly clung to him, her head buried against his shoulder as she sucked in huge, rapid gulps of air. Random shots splintered the air, the sound curiously flat and muffled, as if it was absorbed by the ice instead of echoing back. Her heart still pounded like something wild, even though they were significantly safer behind this tree trunk than they had been before. But what now? If they ran, they’d be exposed again, at least sporadically. If they didn’t run, then all Niki and Darwin had to do was walk across the yard to shoot them at close range.

Gabriel incrementally leaned to the left, until he could see the house but still presented almost no target, given they were in the darkness of the tree line and Niki and Darwin were hampered by standing on a lighted porch. Even knowing they likely couldn’t see a thing, Lolly’s hands involuntarily tightened on Gabriel’s coat as she tried to wrench him back to safety. She couldn’t move him at all, not even a fraction of an inch.

His right hand patted her shoulder, the movement so absent she knew the reassuring gesture was pure reflex. He was concentrating on the situation, on the two murderous idiots on the front porch. Feeling slightly ashamed for being such a wuss, Lolly forced herself to release him. She’d gotten this far without turning into a spineless blob; she’d make it the rest of the way, or die trying … literally.

“How many weapons did you see?” He breathed the words, the sound barely existent.

“Two.” That didn’t mean there weren’t more, though. For all she knew, there was a cache of weapons in their old Blazer.

“Do you know guns?” he asked.

She shook her head. She knew what a shotgun looked like, because her dad had gone skeet shooting, but her experience was limited to that and whatever she’d seen on television or in a movie.

“Can you tell the difference between a revolver and an automatic?”

That much she did know. “They were both automatics … I think. I didn’t get a good look at the one he had.” Darwin had pulled it from his pocket, but she’d barely had time to register the fact before he’d shoved her against the newel post.

“I don’t suppose you could tell me how many bullets they had in each gun,” he said wryly.

Lolly just shook her head, even though the question had been rhetorical. Had he actually been counting the number of shots? She’d barely been able to think at all, much less keep track of how many shots were being fired.

Then the gunshots stopped, and that was almost more frightening than being shot at. What was happening? Were Niki and Darwin coming after them? She could hear the two of them yelling at each other. She could also hear her own heartbeat, Gabriel’s breathing, and the wind. At this moment, there was nothing else.

“What are we going to do now?” she whispered. Her voice was all but lost against his thick coat, but Gabriel heard her and gave her another of those absent pats.

“We’re going down the mountain. There’s nothing else we can do, no other option.” He didn’t sound happy about that, but she couldn’t think of anything else they could do, either. She’d been prepared to make her way down the mountain alone, anyway, so she wasn’t going to complain.

Gabriel looked toward the house, took Lolly’s hand again, and together they eased away from their protected position behind the tree to move deeper into the woods. His step was quick but sure, and she had to struggle a little to keep pace. Her legs weren’t as long as his, and hiking through the woods wasn’t exactly her thing. She didn’t have many “things,” she realized. She was excruciatingly normal, lived a normal life, worked at a normal job. She liked books and movies, forced herself to exercise, but despite growing up in Maine, she didn’t care for roughing it or any winter sports at all, so she was definitely out of her element right now.

The trees had sheltered the ground beneath them, so there was less ice here, though their feet still made crunching sounds. That meant ice was building on the limbs and branches overhead, and she knew how dangerous that could be; working for an insurance company had given her insight into all sorts of situations, because she’d seen the claims.

Gabriel led her at an angle that generally followed the long driveway toward the narrow secondary road, stepping over fallen dead branches, maneuvering around clumps of wild growth. A couple of times he looked back at her. She felt like a tethered balloon, being tugged along in his wake. Her breath huffed out in rapid gasps. He must have realized that she was struggling to keep up with him because he shortened his stride, but not by much. “It’ll be a bit easier when we can leave the woods,” he said once, as he helped her around an overgrown, brambly bush. “I have soup and coffee in my truck.”

“Dangling a carrot, eh?”

That might’ve been a smile, but it was so dark she couldn’t be sure. “Whatever works.”

“Um … exactly where is your truck?” The shock had worn off enough now that she could think a little. Obviously Gabriel hadn’t flown there, so he had to have wheels somewhere.

“About half a mile farther. The ice was so bad I had to stop.”

Questions tumbled in her mind, questions like: why was he here? It wasn’t as if she and Gabriel McQueen were close friends—or even friends, come to that. Of all the people in the world, what was he doing at her house? None of this felt real, and somehow his presence was the most unreal part of it all. Being knocked around, terrorized, almost raped, and held captive were all shocking enough in their own right, but the fact that he, of all people, had appeared out of the night to help her escape was simply dumbfounding—either that, she thought wryly, or this was her brain’s way of helping her cope by shoving all that other stuff to the side until she could cope.

If concentrating on Gabriel McQueen was a coping mechanism, then she’d go along with the game plan; that was much better than thinking of the violence, of everything that could go wrong, of how dangerous walking for miles in weather like this could be. The odds were so heavy against them surviving the night that only sheer desperation made her willing to try.

The darkness in the woods was almost complete; they both stumbled over obstacles, feeling their way along. Her eyes had adjusted somewhat, and still she could barely see. If Gabriel had a flashlight he didn’t produce it, and she didn’t ask; much as she wanted to see where she was going, she seriously didn’t want the equivalent of a spotlight pinpointing their position for Niki and Darwin.

In spite of the poncho Gabriel had given her, before long the cold cut through all the layers of clothing she wore. Her jeans and sweatpants were wet from falling on the ice, and the wind went right through to her skin. She would have liked nothing better than to stop and hunker down so the poncho draped around her and blocked the wind, but if she stopped moving she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to start up again. Knowing what waited behind her, in the warmth of her own home, spurred her to keep up. She’d walk all the way to Portland if that was what it took to get away from those two.

She’d even put her life in the hands of Gabriel McQueen, who had been the bane of her teenage years. He’d been everything she wasn’t: popular, outgoing, self-assured. And she’d had the most horribly painful crush on him all through junior high and high school. The flip side of that was she’d hated him, too, for all the times he’d made fun of her, all the times he’d taunted her and laughed at her, and she’d never passed up an opportunity to slip a verbal knife between his ribs. When he’d graduated two years ahead of her, she’d been relieved, yet she’d still caught herself watching the hallways for that proudly held dark head.

She should probably count herself lucky he’d bothered rescuing her. The teenage Gabriel wouldn’t have bothered—though, to be fair, if she’d still been a teenager she’d probably have slammed the window on his hands anyway.

Thinking about the past could occupy her mind only so long before her physical misery began to push its way to the forefront. The rain was coming down harder now, coating the trees, the underbrush, even them. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel the weight of it crusting her wet pants and shoes. At least her feet didn’t seem to be quite as wet as her legs, thanks to the Vaseline … either that, or they were so cold she couldn’t feel the moisture. The wind soughed through the tree limbs, making them rattle like bones in their ice-coffins. The sound was eerie, ghostly, and she was glad for the big, hard hand that gripped hers.

Then Gabriel pushed through some particularly heavy undergrowth and halted so abruptly she plowed into his back. “Finally,” he said, reaching back to steady her. “Here’s the road. There’s about a three-foot drop down to it, so be careful.”

He bent down, gripped a sapling, and used it to steady himself as he jumped down the low embankment. His feet skidded on the ice, but with the aid of the sapling he stayed upright. Gingerly he turned, reached up, and grasped Lolly around the waist, then lowered her to the road with easy strength. “Watch your step,” he warned. “There’s a shallow ditch here. Walk on the weedy strip between the ditch and the pavement; it’s better footing.”

Head down, Lolly concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Surely they had gone more than a half mile; shouldn’t they have reached his truck by now? She had grown up on this mountain, knew it like the back of her hand, most of the time, but the darkness, the cold, the unrelenting series of shocks, had all left her disoriented and she had no real idea where they were. Her hands and feet hurt so much from the cold she felt as if she could barely shuffle forward. She couldn’t do anything about her feet, and Gabriel gripped one of her hands so she couldn’t do anything about it, either, but her other hand she wormed under the poncho and several other layers of clothing to reach the bare skin of her warm belly. She could barely feel the warmth on her fingers, but her belly could definitely feel the cold of her hand. There, that was a little better.

Now and then she darted a glance at the man who was leading her, though in the darkness she couldn’t make out much more than his height and the width of his shoulders—that, and the determination with which he faced the storm head-on. She remembered the way he’d looked when he’d popped up in her window, though. He was older, obviously; so was she. A lot of years had passed since he’d graduated—fifteen of them!—and they’d both changed.

He was no longer a cocky teenager with the world at his feet; he was a grown man, a widower with a son, as she’d heard during one of her trips to Wilson Creek. Becoming a father and losing his wife were life-changing events; no way could he be the same person he was when they were in school. She wasn’t, and she hadn’t been through anything as traumatic as losing a spouse. There was nothing traumatic in her life at all. Instead she’d quietly made her way, made a settled life for herself, shed a lot of her insecurities and shyness.

She had butted heads with him for as long as she could remember, and right now … she wasn’t sure why. Was it because she’d always had such a ferocious crush on him, and never expected him to like her in any way, so she’d protected herself by developing a shield of hostility? Teenagers were such tangled pits of angst and emotion, anything was possible. Looking back, she felt slightly bemused by their teenage selves.

If there would ever be any time for putting the past behind them, that time was now. She leaned slightly toward him and said, “Thank you,” her voice raised so he could hear her over the rain and the wind.

“Thank me if those psychos don’t come after us and we get off the mountain before the trees start to fall,” he said without looking at her.

Okay, that sounded a little abrupt, but she did something that, fifteen years ago, she could never have done: she mentally shrugged and let it go. Under the circumstances, he was allowed to feel testy.

They were walking right into the wind now, which gave her some bearings. Lolly glanced up, but not for long; the rain stung her face like icy pellets, the wind stole her breath with its chill. The wind was from the north, so if it was in her face then they were walking north, which meant they were on the long slope before a very sharp curve that would take them southeast.

They weren’t that far from the house at all.

They had some time before the ice that coated everything was so heavy these old trees started to come down … she hoped. How long would the dead trees hold up with this wind and ice? she wondered. Their fragile limbs would come down first. The side of the road was littered with limbs that had fallen in one storm or another and been left to lie, giving her a hint as to the length and breadth of what might come crashing down.

The wind picked up a bit just then and the trees creaked, literally, as if their very fabric was groaning. Lolly shuddered. They had one option, and it wasn’t a good one. Darwin and Niki were behind them, ice-covered limbs hovered above their heads and could come crashing down at any time, and the ground was increasingly slick beneath her feet. There was no place to go except forward, toward the safety and warmth that seemed so very far away.

She slipped, her sneakers giving her no purchase at all. The Vaseline definitely helped, but some moisture had seeped into her shoes and socks and her feet were painfully numb. She’d grown up in Maine; she knew the dangers of frostbite. She knew what the outcome of the night was likely to be, and a sense of fatalism seized her. Better to lose her toes than let herself get caught by Darwin again.

She adjusted the sleeves of the flannel shirt tied over her head, pulling them over her nose and mouth, but the sleeves were wet and icy and she didn’t know if that would do much good. Thank goodness Gabriel was there, steady as a rock, plowing forward with the determination of a pit bull. His grip was solid, a comfort in a decidedly uncomfortable world. He was that kind of man, she supposed, the kind who would go out in an ice storm to make sure a neighbor was all right, a man who would throw himself between danger and a woman even if she was nothing to him, even if she was a girl he’d once known and hadn’t liked.

She hadn’t had a chance to tell him everything that had happened back at the house and after a moment of reflection she decided she wouldn’t. Not only did she not want to talk about Darwin’s attempted rape, she wasn’t sure how Gabriel would react to the news. Would he feel as if he had to turn back? Would he care at all? She suspected he would care, just because of who he was, and she didn’t want to go back to the house. She didn’t want Gabriel going back there either, and for now she was sticking by his side. Her sights were set firmly away from the house and the nightmare there. No matter what the conditions, she was moving forward.

There was silence behind them—at least human silence. Mother Nature was making a racket, with the patter of falling rain, the wind, the ghostly rustling and creaking of the trees. Maybe they’d given up. Maybe they hadn’t given chase at all. Maybe Niki and Darwin were unwilling to leave a nice warm house in this weather, just to chase her and Gabriel.

She glanced up once more, at the tall man towing her along. “So … how’ve you been?” she asked.

Gabriel snorted. “You want to chitchat now?”

“Maybe talking will keep my face from freezing.”

He nodded once. “I’ve been okay. You?”

So much for dragging him into conversation. “Fine.” What else could she say? Still single. Job’s good, if unexciting. Mom and Dad are in good health, but they lost a good bit of their retirement money in the latest financial disaster, so keeping a house they no longer use is ridiculous. I didn’t want to sell it, but I can’t afford to buy it from them, and now I don’t want to. I loved that house, and now I don’t care if I never see it again. The sense of loss was surprisingly sharp; she took it in, accepted that she would never again feel the same about the house, then she resolutely put the house in the past where it belonged and mentally faced forward.

She should have been paying attention to what she was doing, rather than wool-gathering. She slipped again, and once more Gabriel caught her.

“We need to get you out of this ice,” he said, his tone concerned. She had to admit, getting out of the weather was a good idea. The best, in fact. But there wasn’t a neighbor for miles, and town was even farther.

“My truck isn’t far,” he added encouragingly.

Lolly knew very well that these roads were now impassible. Nasty as it was, dangerous as it was, she’d rather walk down the steep road than get in a vehicle and take the chance of slipping and sliding over the side of the mountain. There were some wicked curves and steep drop-offs between here and Wilson Creek. But they could stop at Gabriel’s truck, get inside and get warm, maybe break out the soup and coffee. With that thought in mind, she had a reasonable destination in mind and that kept her moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other. If she had to think of walking all the way down the mountain she’d probably drop here and now, certain she couldn’t make it.

None of this was real. It couldn’t be. Her life was unexciting, boring, ordinary. To fight off an attack, escape through a second-story window, get shot at and fight against a storm as dangerous as what she’d left behind—these were things she’d never thought to do. Lolly decided she liked unexciting. At the moment, she craved it. She’d never again complain about being bored. This … this was all like a bad dream.

Every step now was a struggle. The cold cut through her clothes, slowing her down. Her instincts screamed at her to stop, rest, give in, but she knew if she stopped here, she’d die. Freezing to death couldn’t be a pleasant way to go, and even if it was, she wasn’t ready to go.

“Soup,” Lolly said with all-but-frozen lips, throwing the word out like a talisman, something to keep her going. Suddenly she realized she was starving. The thought of the soup warming her from the inside out encouraged her to keep moving, even when the ground beneath her turned sharply down and each step became even more precarious.

“Yes, there’s soup.” His arm was tighter around her now; he was all but carrying her. Lolly gathered her strength, focused on what she was doing.

If she could just get some soup—and coffee! He’d said he had coffee!—she’d be able to make it. They could rest for a few minutes, turn the truck heater on full blast and thaw out a little, have some soup and coffee, and be on their way. With a little fortification, she’d be good to go.

Then there was an enraged shout from above, followed by a gunshot, and terror blasted its way through every fiber of her body. Darwin was coming for her after all.