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“So what? You’ll make more money with me than you would as a midwife.” Penny propped herself up on one elbow. “Come here and help me get these pillows arranged.”
Rachel did as she’d been ordered, then she turned toward Cole. “I’ll help you get the car seat out of the van. The straps are complicated, and I don’t want you to break it.”
From the bed, Penny waved. “Hurry back. I want more tea.”
He grabbed Rachel’s down parka from the bedroom closet and held it for her. She hadn’t said a word, but he knew she’d made a decision to stick with him. Not surprising. Trusting Penny to take care of her would be suicidal.
RACHEL DIDN’T HAVE A PLAN. Trust Cole? Sure, he’d shown sensitivity when the baby was delivered. The whole time he was helping her, he’d been smart and kind, even gentlemanly. But he also had kidnapped her and jammed a gun into her neck.
All she needed from him was her car keys.
When they stepped outside through the side door of the house, he caught hold of her arm and pulled her back, behind the bare branches of a bush and a towering pine. Edging uphill, he whispered, “Duck down and stay quiet. Something isn’t right.”
The night was still and cold. Snowflakes drifted lazily, and she was glad for the warmth of her parka and hood. Behind them was a steep, thickly forested hillside. Peeking around Cole’s shoulder, she saw the side of the house and the edge of the wooden porch that stretched across the front. Since she’d been sequestered in the bedroom with Penny and hadn’t seen the rest of the house, she hadn’t realized that it was two stories with a slanted roof. To her right was a long, low garage. Was her van parked inside? She couldn’t see past the house, didn’t know if there was a road in front or other cars.
Through the stillness, she heard the rumble of voices. There were others out here, hiding in the darkness.
She whispered, “Can you see anything?”
“A couple of shadows. No headlights.”
Mysterious figures creeping toward the hideout might actually be to her advantage. She prayed that it was the police who had finally tracked down the gang. “Who is it?”
“Can’t tell.” His voice was as quiet as the falling snow; she had to lean close to hear him. “Could be the cops. Or it could be Penny’s boyfriend.”
“Baron.” He sounded like a real creep—much older than Penny and greedy enough to want his pregnant girlfriend to participate in a robbery. “Penny said this was his house. Why wouldn’t he just walk inside?”
“Hush.”
For a moment, she considered raising her hands above her head and marching to the front of the cabin to surrender. It was a risk, but anything would be better than being under Penny’s thumb.
Gunfire from a semiautomatic weapon shattered the night. She heard breaking glass and shouts from inside the house.
She wasn’t a stranger to violence. When she was driving the ambulance, she’d been thrust into a lot of dicey situations, and she prided herself on an ability to stay calm. But the gunfire shocked her.
Shots were returned from inside the house.
There was another burst from the attackers.
She clung to Cole’s arm. “Tell me what to do.”
“We wait.”
The side door they’d come through flung open. Frank charged outside. With guns in both hands, the big man dashed into the open, firing wildly as he ran toward the garage.
He was shot. His arms flew into the air before he fell. His blood splattered in the snow. He didn’t attempt to get up, but she saw his arm move. “He’s not dead.”
“Don’t even think about stepping into the open to help him,” Cole whispered. “The way I figure, there are only two shooters. Three at the most. They don’t have the manpower to surround the cabin, but they have superior weapons.”
Though her mind was barely able to comprehend what she was experiencing, she nodded.
He continued, “We’ll go up the hill, wait until the shooting is over and circle back around to the garage.”
Taking her gloved hand, he pulled her through the ankle-deep snow into the surrounding forest. Behind them, gunfire exploded. Anybody living within a mile of this house had to be aware that something terrible was happening. The police would have to respond.
Crouched behind a snow-covered boulder, Cole paused and looked back. “We’re leaving tracks. They won’t have any trouble following us. We need to go faster.”
Her survival instinct was strong. She wanted to make a getaway, but there was something else at stake. “We can’t leave Penny here. Or the baby.”
A sliver of moonlight through clouds illuminated his face. In his eyes, she saw a struggle between protecting the innocent and saving his own butt. “Damn it, Rachel. You’re right.”
Sadly, she said, “I know.”
They retraced their steps to the house. Instead of using the door, Cole went to the rear of the house. He stopped outside a window. Inside, she saw the bathroom where she and Penny had been talking only a little while ago.
He dug into his pocket, took out her car keys and handed them to her. “If anything happens to me, get the hell out of here. Hide in the forest until you can get back to the garage.”
The car keys literally opened the door to her escape. Her purse was in the van. And her cell phone.
When he shoved the casement window open, she said, “All those windows were latched.”
“I opened it hours ago,” he said. “I expected to be escaping from the inside out. Not breaking in.”
Walking into a shoot-out was insanity. But the alternative was worse. She couldn’t leave a helpless newborn to the mercy of these violent men.
Cole slipped through the window, and she got in position to follow.
“No,” he said. “Stay here.”
There wasn’t time to argue. He needed her help in handling Penny and the baby. She hoisted herself up and over the sill.
As soon as she was inside, she heard the baby crying. In the bedroom, Cole knelt beside Penny’s body on the floor. She’d been shot in the chest. Her open eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
Rachel reached past Cole to feel Penny’s throat for a pulse. Her skin was still warm, but her heart had stopped. There was nothing. Not even a flutter. Penny was gone. After her heroic struggle to bring her baby into the world, she wouldn’t live to see her child grow. Fate was cruel. Unfair. Oh, God, this is so wrong.
From the front of the house, the gun battle continued, but all she heard was the baby’s cries. If it was the last thing she ever did, Rachel would rescue Goldie. Moving with purpose, she took the baby sling from the backpack. When she snuggled Goldie into the carrier, the infant’s cries modified to a low whimpering.
Cole grabbed the backpack filled with baby supplies. They went through the bathroom window into the forest.
They were only a few steps into the trees when he signaled for her to stop. He said, “Do you hear that?”
She listened. “It’s quiet.”
The shooting had ended. The battle was over. Now the attackers would be coming after them.
Chapter Four
Cole went first, leading Rachel up the forested hill and away from the house. The cumbersome backpack hampered his usual gait. He hunched forward, moving as quickly as possible in the snow-covered terrain. Even if there had been a path through these trees, he wouldn’t have been able to see it. Not in this darkness. Not with the snow falling.
His leather jacket wasn’t the best thing to be wearing in this weather, but he wasn’t cold. The opposite, in fact. He was sweating like a pig. Though breathing hard, he couldn’t seem to get enough wind in his lungs. After only going a couple of hundred yards, his shoulders ached. His thigh muscles were burning. This high elevation was killing him. He estimated that they were more than eight thousand feet above sea level. What the hell was a California guy like him doing here? His natural habitat was palm trees.
He picked his way through the rugged trunks of pine trees and dodged around boulders. After he climbed over a fallen log, he turned to help Rachel. She had the baby in the sling, tucked inside her parka.
She ignored his outstretched hand and jumped over the log, nimble as a white-tailed deer.
“Careful,” he said.
“I’m good.”
Her energy annoyed him. Logically, he knew that Rachel lived here full-time and was acclimated to the altitude. But he wanted to be the strong one—the protector who would lead her and the baby to safety.
Hoping to buy a little time to catch his breath, he asked, “How’s Goldie?”
Rachel peeked inside her parka. “Sleeping. She’s snuggled against my chest and can hear my heartbeat. It probably feels like she’s still in the womb.”
They needed to find shelter soon. It couldn’t be good for a newborn to be exposed to the cold.
“I have a question,” she said. “Why are we going uphill?”
“Escape.”
“If we go down to the road, we’ll be more likely to find a cabin. Or we could flag down a passing car.”
He looked down the hill. The lights from the house were barely visible. “We’re going this way because we can’t risk having the guys who attacked the house find us. They’ll be watching the road.”
“They’ll be looking for us? Why?”
If the gunmen worked for Baron, they wouldn’t leave without the boss man’s baby. If they were Baron’s enemies, the same rationale applied. Goldie was a valuable commodity. “It’s not us they’re after.”
Her arm curled protectively around the infant. “The police ought to be here soon. Somebody must have reported all that gunfire.”
It was too soon to expect a response from his GPS signal, but he trusted that the FBI was closing in on this location. “Nothing would please me more than hearing cop sirens.”
“You can’t mean that.” Her earnest gaze confronted him. “You’ll be taken into custody.”
He’d almost forgotten that she still didn’t know his identity. As far as Rachel was concerned, he was the guy who kidnapped her at gunpoint. An armed robber.
“If I got arrested, would you be heartbroken?”
She exhaled a puff of icy vapor. “No.”
“Maybe a little sad?”
“Let me put it this way. I wouldn’t turn you in.”
Her response surprised him. He had her pegged as a strictly law-abiding citizen who’d be delighted to see any criminal behind bars. But she was willing to make an exception for him. Either she liked him or she had a dark side that she kept hidden.
He turned to face the uphill terrain. “We’ll keep moving until we know we’re safe. Then we can double back to the road.”
The brief rest had allowed him to recover his strength. He slogged onward, wanting to put distance between them and the men with guns. In spite of the burn, his legs took on a steady rhythm as he climbed. Coming through a stand of trees, he realized that they’d reached the highest point on the hill. He maneuvered until he was standing on a boulder and waited for Rachel to join him.
“This is a good lookout point. Do you see anything?”
Together, they peered through the curtain of trees. The snowfall was thick. Heavy clouds had blocked out the light from the moon and stars.
“There.” She pointed down the hill.
The beams of a couple of flashlights flickered in the darkness. They weren’t far away. Maybe eighty yards. He and Rachel were within range of their semiautomatic weapons.
He ducked. She did the same.
The searchers were too close. His hope for escape vanished in the howling wind that sliced through the tree trunks. He and Rachel had left tracks in the snow that a blind man could follow. Peering over the edge of the boulder, he saw the flashlights moving closer. There was only one way out of this.
He slipped his arms out of the backpack. “Take the baby and run. Get as far away from here as you can.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll distract them.”
Going up against men with superior firepower wasn’t as dumb as it sounded. Cole had the advantage of higher ground. If he waited until they got close, he might be able to take out one of them before the other responded.
“There’s something you haven’t considered,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Snow.”
While they’d been climbing, the full force of the impending blizzard had gathered. The storm had taken on a fierce intensity.
She grabbed his arm and tugged. “They won’t be able to see us in the blizzard. The wind will cover our tracks.”
Great. He wouldn’t die in a hail of bullets. He’d freeze to death in a blizzard.
“Come on,” she urged. “I need you. Goldie needs you.”
He shouldered the pack again. Going downhill should have been easier, but his knees jolted with every step. At the foot of the slope, they approached an open area where the true velocity of the storm was apparent. The snow fell in sheets. His visibility was cut to only a few yards, but he figured they could cover more distance if they went straight ahead instead of weaving through the trees.
When he stepped into the open, he sank up to his knees. His jeans were wet. His fingers and toes were numb.
“Stay close to the trees,” Rachel said. “It’s not as deep.”
At the edge of the forest, the snow was over his ankles. He trudged through it, making a path for her to follow. One minute turned into ten. Ten into twenty. Inside his boots, his feet felt like frozen blocks of ice. The snow stung his cheeks. So cold, so damned cold. If he was this miserable what was happening to Goldie? Fear for the motherless newborn kept him moving forward. He had to protect this child, had to find shelter.
But he’d lost all sense of direction in the snow. As far as he could tell, they might be heading back toward the house.
Trying to get his bearings, he looked over his shoulder. He doubted that the bad guys were still in pursuit. Any sane person would have turned back by now.
As Rachel had predicted, the snows were already drifting, neatly erasing their tracks.
