have happened.
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Lauren Wexler spied the man the instant he stepped from beneath the shadowing tree branches and into the clearing. Moonlight reflecting off snow lit him like a stage spotlight, highlighting the chiseled bones of his face and dark hollows of his eyes, his long form more skinny than lean.
Heart thudding hard enough to make her sick to her stomach, Lauren left the picture window and flung open the door. A gust of wind seized it from her hand, sending it slamming back against its stopper and flames hissing and roaring in the stove. Knowing the gusts from the coming storm would snatch away her words, she stepped onto the deck and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ryan Delaney, I told you not to come here.”
“Lauren, you’ve got to help me.” He started racing toward her, his footfalls crunching through the ice-topped snow. “Please.”
“I can’t.” She stepped over the threshold and reached for the door handle.
Ryan might be her older brother, but he was also a wanted man.
“You need to turn yourself in.” She started to close the door.
Ryan had nearly reached the deck. “But, Lauren, they’re going to—”
A shot rang out from the nearby trees, and Ryan landed on the deck’s bottom step, hand scrabbling at the ice-coated wood.
“Ryan!”
Wounded or making himself a lower profile for the shooter?
“Ryan?” She called his name again.
“Help me.” He tried hauling himself up the treads, but slipped back to the piled snow at the foot of the steps. “Help me.”
He must be wounded. She couldn’t leave him there in the cold, in danger. But she could get shot herself if she went to him.
Criminal or not, he was her brother, her half brother to be precise, and needed help.
Crouching below the deck rails to make herself a more difficult target, she crawled to the steps. Lying flat, she reached down the steps to grasp Ryan’s hand. “Can you crawl up the steps? I can—”
Another gun blast reverberated over the frozen lake and leafless trees. This time, she heard the buzz of a bullet not far enough over her head for comfort. Her heart stuttered.
Ryan grasped her wrist. “Go back inside before they...hurt you.”
“Who?”
“Get inside...now.” Ryan squeezed her hand, then scrambled to his feet and pounded across the lakeshore to the woods on the other side of the clearing. Even the clouds beginning to obscure the moonlight could not blot out the dark stain on the snow where Ryan had lain, nor the patches left in his wake.
He was injured and running for his life, leading the shooter away from her.
After he’d pressed something small and hard into her hand.
She shoved the plastic rectangle into her pocket and stared after her brother’s retreating form. She wanted to follow, to bind up his wound. She knew locking herself in the house made more sense. Sending away a fugitive brother was one thing. Sending away a wounded fugitive brother without offering aid first was quite another.
Two more shots in rapid succession
