LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      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 decided her action. She started to rise enough to creep back into the house.

      “Freeze! Deputy US Marshal.” The voice rang through the night, shooting into Lauren’s heart like one of the flying bullets.

      Deputy US Marshal. Of course, they were hunting Ryan. Thousands of marshals existed. He could be any of them. It didn’t have to be him.

      Heart racing, Lauren charged toward the still-open door. Bullets whizzed past her head. One slammed into the doorjamb, the other soared into the house’s interior. Lauren dived for the floor of the deck and rolled behind the woodpile.

      More gunfire exploded.

      This time not from the trees.

      A whimper escaping her lips despite her best efforts, Lauren curled into a fetal position behind the cords of wood stacked at the end of the deck. She shivered so hard from cold and fright she feared her chattering teeth would chip. If someone didn’t shoot her, she was going to die from exposure. If only she had stayed in the house, closed the shutters, pretended she hadn’t seen her brother racing across the lakeshore...

      “Drop your weapons.” Nearby, the authoritative voice cracked like breaking icicles—cold, sharp, familiar.

      Silence fell. Lauren uncurled enough to peek around the end of the woodpile. She saw nothing but the trampled and stained snow where Ryan had run. She heard nothing but wind in the trees and the creak and crack of ice on the lake. Perhaps danger had moved on and she could return to the warmth of her house. Unable to feel anything but the warning tingle in her face, fingers and toes, Lauren crawled from behind the piled wood and started to rise.

      Gunfire and shouts erupted across the clearing, one from the far side where Ryan had vanished, the other close at hand. Too close.

      Before her shocked senses reacted,

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