LITMIR.BIZ

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      “If your great-granny was still alive she’d say I was sliding down that slippery slope real quick, starshine,” she murmured to Daniel as she bent over his cradle. “But your mama had to think of something. You’d think nine whole months would have been time enough to prepare myself, but I guess I wasn’t as ready as I thought. Besides, there’s a chance it might not be him.”

      She lifted her head, her brows drawing together in a frown as she heard the solid-sounding thunks of not one, but both of the truck’s doors being slammed shut. Del had brought a friend. Even if her hasty withdrawal had been for the sole purpose of allowing Greta a few minutes of privacy it would have been all for nothing, anyway.

      “Someone should give that fool male a slap,” she muttered in momentary distraction, stepping to the screened window and looking out at the candle-and-moonlit patio. As she gazed at the man leaning forward to plant a casual kiss on Greta’s slightly parted lips, any last doubts about his identity fled.

      He was the Lieutenant Hawkins she’d grown up hearing so much about from her grandmother—the man her father had served under during a long-ago and terrible war, one of only two men Daniel Bird had sworn he would trust with his life. Del had lost both legs in Vietnam and although Greta had told her he’d been liberated from a wheelchair ten years ago when he’d been fitted with prosthetic limbs, the cane he was holding in his left hand was obviously necessary to his balance.

      “But you’re still a fine-looking man, aren’t you?” she said under her breath, watching as Hawkins lightly touched Greta’s hair before turning to introduce his companion. “And in love with her, if the look on your face is anything to go by. So why don’t you—”

      Susannah froze in shock. Her eyes widened painfully as she stared at the stranger standing with Del Hawkins and Greta.

      Except he wasn’t a stranger, she thought faintly. He was a fallen angel, and even while he reached for Greta’s extended hand his attention was fixed on something on the table.

      Tyler Adams raised his eyes from the baby monitor, his gaze encompassing the courtyard and then going to the house itself. In the light from the candles the sweep of his lashes cut shadows on the hard ridges of his cheekbones.

      And at that instant the night exploded in gunfire.

      “Get down!”

      There was no way he could see her—but incredibly, Tye’s hoarse shout seemed directed at her. Susannah could have sworn his eyes locked desperately on hers before he turned swiftly to his companions.

      Hawkins had already started to act, one muscled forearm shooting forward to knock Greta out of the line of fire coming from the openings in the wall where the votive candles had been moments ago. Even as his arm made contact with the blonde, Susannah saw her slam against him, as if some invisible fist had driven into her chest with enough force to lift her off her feet. Del’s stricken voice rose above the cacophony of gunfire.

      “Greta!”

      As she slumped against his chest he dropped his cane and took her whole weight with him. His knees crashed onto the brick of the patio but, showing no reaction to the pain, he pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her as if to shield her with his own flesh and bone.

      Of course he hadn’t reacted to the pain. He hadn’t felt any. The last time Del Hawkins’s knees had felt pain had been over thirty years ago in a Mekong Delta swamp, Susannah reminded herself. Even that long-ago agony, terrible as it must have been, couldn’t have contorted his features with the anguish she now saw carved into them.

      Wrenching free from the paralysis gripping her, 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

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