she whirled from the window and ran to the cradle. As she bent over it Danny started to scream, his tiny fingers bunched into fists, his eyes wide with shock.
“I’m here, starshine. Mama’s here.” Scooping him into her arms, with shaking fingers she wrapped his blanket tightly around him. Terrified blue eyes stared into hers, and his screams became louder.
A terrible anger rose up in her, hot and clear, and her gaze swung to the olive-wood cross, a stark black silhouette against the shadowed wall.
“He’s only a baby, Lord!” Her protest was harshly agonized. “And that woman outside opened her home to me out of the goodness of her heart. Why are You letting this happen to us?”
The cross swam in front of her burning eyes. It seemed to waver and grow larger, and all of a sudden it was no longer a symbol but two splintered timbers crudely affixed together and set up on a lonely hill, the nine long nails pounded into it put there by human hands, not divine.
It wavered, and once again came into focus.
“I—I’m sorry,” Susannah whispered. “Men brought this evil to us, I know. But I can’t let it touch my son.”
She looked down at the baby in her arms. Bringing her face close to the frightened red one peeping from the blankets, gently she pressed a kiss to Danny’s flushed forehead. His screams subsided into a hiccuping sob.
“The man I named you for is out there protecting you, little one. I wish I could do something to help him, but you’re my first responsibility. We’ll just have to pray he stays safe.”
On the dresser by the now-extinguished oil lamp was her purse. She reached for it with her free hand, slinging its strap bandolier-style across her chest.
“Your mama’s going to get you out of here, starshine. And Lord help me, if I have to use this to do it I will.”
The revolver felt heavy in her grip as she made her way to the door. Cradled against her with her other arm and barely visible in the blanket he was wrapped in, Danny gave a burbling sigh that ended in the softest of baby snores. She risked a glance at him, her lips curving into an amazed smile.
“You’re a real little mountain man, all right,” she breathed. “Fight when you have to, sleep when you can. That lesson’s been bringing Bird males home safely since Zebediah Bird fought the British at New Orleans, Daniel Tyler.”
There was a good chance Tye had managed to arm himself, if Hawkins had told him about the vermin rifle kept in the courtyard’s gardening shed, she thought, creeping through the dark kitchen. Sightlessly she fumbled on the counter for the keys she’d seen there earlier.
Her fingers closed over them. She grabbed them up just as she heard the flat crack of a shot being squeezed off, noticeably different from the more explosive sound of the guns the intruders were using. Tye had found the rifle, she thought shakily. With any luck his first shot had found a target.
He’d seen Daniel’s baby monitor and he’d immediately realized she was here. She didn’t know how she was so sure of that, but she was. She’d felt it—the same current that had run through her when he’d placed a newly delivered Daniel into her arms a week ago.
She hadn’t imagined it then. She hadn’t imagined it tonight. And what it meant she was never going to find out.
He kept saving her. She kept leaving him.
She was going to have to leave him now, and pray he and Hawkins could hold off their attackers until help arrived, she told herself. Her hand shook so badly she could hardly turn the knob on the door in front of her.
Greta’s pickup truck was her workhorse, but the red four-by-four was her pride and joy—which was why she’d had a walk-through garage built for it, complete with an automatic door that opened onto the arrow-straight drive leading to the road. Susannah hastened to the vehicle.
“As soon as that garage door opens Mama’s going to be puttin’ the pedal to the metal, Danny Tye,” she said to the sleeping baby in her arms. “Good thing your aunt Greta bought a car seat for you. She—she said she wanted to take her favorite guy out for a drive one of these days.”
She couldn’t let herself think of Greta right now, she told herself. She couldn’t let herself think of anything or anyone but her baby. His life depended on it.
In a matter of seconds she had Daniel secured. She slid into the driver’s seat, praying that the four-by-four could outrun whatever her pursuers were driving for at least as long as it took to get to Last Chance and alert the authorities.
And to tell Dr. Jennings to get ready for an emergency surgery, she thought. She forced the tears back, her lips tightening. The garage door remote in her hand, she pointed it at the windshield and activated it as she turned the key in the ignition.
The next moment pure terror shafted through her.
“This vehicle moves an inch and the brat doesn’t see his first birthday. Hand over the keys if you want him to live.”
For nine months she’d wondered what the face of evil looked like, Susannah thought in icy fear. Now she knew.
Standing by the opened passenger-side door, with his sandy hair and average height he looked deceptively ordinary except for the ugly black automatic that fit so easily into his hand it seemed to be a deformed extension of it. The flat, compact barrel moved.
“D-don’t hurt him, please.” Her tongue felt as if it had cleaved to the roof of her mouth. The keys jingled crazily in her shaking fingers. As she dropped them into his outstretched palm she tried again, her words spilling out in a moan.
“You couldn’t live with it on your conscience. Do what you want with me, but please don’t hurt my little one.”
“Ah don’t rahtly get paid to have no conscience.” His mockery of her speech was accompanied by a thin smile. He reverted to his own toneless voice. “God, it’s been a long time since I heard cornpone as thick as that. Get out of the car, Ellie May, and don’t even think about reaching for that gun by your feet.”
Even as he spoke, the sound of a shot and then of returning fire came from the direction of the portale. Two more shots split the night, and on the heels of the second one Susannah heard a sound she’d never heard before.
A man was screaming. Tye’s rifle had found a target. As the scream broke off abruptly and she half fell, half stumbled from the vehicle, the man beside her stiffened. Then he shrugged.
“Lucky for me I won the toss and came after you. Whoever your friend is, he’s done this before, but I’m a professional, too. Kneel down on the floor and it’ll all be over in a minute.”
“Why?” Instead of complying, Susannah stood her ground, her desperate gaze holding his. “Why have you people been hunting me? Why do you want to kill me?”
“I’ll give you the same answer I gave your husband. Payback. Which reminds me—I guess I’d better take something in the way of confirmation.” Roughly pulling her purse from her, he set it on the hood of the vehicle and carelessly tipped it upside down. Her wallet spilled out first. “So that’s why it was so hard getting a line on you. No credit cards. No ATM card. Not as dumb as we figured, are you?” Unzipping an inner pocket, he drew out a folded paper.
“My
