In The Arms of a Stranger Read Free Page B

quickly she stood again, darting toward the road.
    â€œDammit.” The word was whispered, controlled, even in the face of desperation.
    She’d merely slipped on the ice and the shot had missed its mark. That the girl had survived the accident was an insult to the original plan. She’d scrambled back up that ledge like some nasty bug that refused to die. The rifle’s scope found the woman again but she slipped into the cover of the woods. It was obvious where she was headed. And when she got there it would all be over.
    No more bug.
    Â 
    â€œDamnation!” Luke killed the headlights and pushed the vehicle’s door against the side of the ditch. He squeezed out, the space he’d made barely allowing his six-foot-four frame to pass. Snow and half-frozen mud clung to his jeans and boots as he climbed from the ditch and onto the road. He squinted through the falling snow, staring at the mangled mess that used to be his Jeep Cherokee.
    That ice don’t care whether you got a four-wheel-drive or not, his grandfather had said when he’d urged Luke to go home. Get on outta here while there’s still a road to steer that fancy lump of steel on.
    He should have listened. Luke doubted that Seth Carlisle had been wrong often in his eighty-five years. Besides being his maternal grandfather and the only person in this godforsaken town he considered a friend, Seth lived in the middle of nowhere. Luke had to make sure he had firewood and food, at the very least.
    He stared at the useless form of his vehicle and sighed. The storm had turned toward Sweetwater with the fury of a scorned woman and was bearing down hard, adding a layer of snow to the frozen mountain. Thanks to his determination, the town’s chief of police was now stuck in the middle of nowhere during the worst storm in living memory. Not good. He touched the cut on his forehead, reminding himself that it could have been worse.
    â€œIf I’m in this mess, you’re in this mess,” Luke called, stamping the circulation back into his already numbing feet. “Get out here.”
    Sam managed the narrow opening with more grace than Luke, but he had twice the traction. The yellow Lab bounded up the side of the ditch and looked at him expectantly.
    â€œAren’t you supposed to have a keg of beer or something?”
    Sam cocked one round eyebrow and wagged his tail.
    â€œYeah, that’s what I thought.”
    A gunshot cracked through the still night and Luke instantly dropped to the ground, drawing his gun.
    â€œWhat the hell…?”
    A second shot shattered the silence that had followed the first, and Luke heard someone cry out. The voice was muted but distinctly female. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in response. He crouched on the balls of his feet, listening as he reached for his two-way radio at his waist. Damn. He’d left the radio in the Jeep.
    The road took a sharp turn a short distance down the mountain, following a treacherous cliff and creating a natural overlook. Luke jogged, crouching, until he reached it.
    The sound he heard next was unmistakable. Someone was running—crashing—through the forest. He could hear the underbrush snapping, even hear their panicked gasp for breath. He cocked his head, listening. The shots had come from the right, he calculated, making the person below him the woman.
    He knew with every lawman’s instinct he possessed that she was running for her life. What was going on? There wasn’t time to make sense of anything other than the fact that she needed his protection.
    He intentionally slowed his breathing, concentrating onwhat few facts he had. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the shots had come from. He scanned the area below him. There was only blinding darkness to his left with one exception. A faint light glowed through the cover of the trees. The old forest ranger’s station, he realized.
    When the woman reached it, she