LITMIR.BIZ

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shot!

       Who did this to you, Nikki? Is the killer still in the house?

      Karissa’s stomach lurched, and she froze in place. Her gaze darted around the vast space. All appeared to be benignly normal—except for a real estate flyer on the floor nearby. With her senses in heightened awareness, the bold black words smacked her between the eyes: Buying or Selling, You Need Marshall Siebender and Associates on Your Team. Strange. Nicki hadn’t mentioned letting go of the place. Quite the opposite, in fact.

      Focus, girl! Karissa snarled at herself.

      She needed to know she was alone in this house. Emptiness and silence met Karissa’s senses, but that didn’t mean a murderer wasn’t lurking somewhere on the premises. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood to attention. She needed to get out of here.

      Gripping the back of the couch, Karissa wobbled to her feet. On jellied legs, she managed only a lurching stagger in the direction of the door.

      She needed to call the police or the sheriff or whoever handled crime this deep in the boonies. Karissa pulled her cell phone from her handbag and frowned at the screen. No signal. Great!

      Gazing around, she spotted a landline telephone on the wall above the kitchen peninsula. Karissa rushed to it and snatch up the handset. No dial tone. Her insides went hollow. Now what?

      Next best thing—get out of here right now, jump into her car and drive as fast as she could to the nearest law enforcement office. The physical paralysis ebbed, and she accelerated toward the front door. But as her hand closed around the doorknob, a sound arrested her. A soft, mewling cry came from somewhere up the hallway toward the back of the house. The sound escalated into an infant’s distinctive wail.

      Baby Kyle. How could she have forgotten the child?

      Karissa dropped her handbag on a small table next to the door and charged up the hallway. She would get that baby and go. It wasn’t like she could leave him here unattended for an indefinite period of time. Besides, as scary as this whole situation was, common sense suggested that the murderer was likely as far away from here as he or she could get by now. What killer shot someone then waited around to get caught? Karissa was going to have to lean into that thought, because a child needed her to be brave right now.

      Guided by the infant’s howls, Karissa opened the door at the end of the hallway. Late-afternoon sunlight trickled between slight gaps in the curtain panels that covered two windows, allowing her a twilit view of a crib along the left-hand wall and its fussing, kicking occupant. A pang gripped Karissa’s middle. Poor, sweet baby. The little guy would never get to know his mother. Or his father, for that matter. Tears stung the backs of Karissa’s eyes, but she swallowed them away and marched toward the crib.

      Forcing a smile, contrary to her knotted insides, she gazed down at the flailing infant. Did the child somehow sense that pitching a fit was appropriate behavior at the moment? Of course not. Karissa’s imagination was running away with her. She picked up the child and cuddled the squirming bundle close. The howling instantly toned down to a thin whine.

      “I’ve got you, sweetie,” Karissa murmured as she whirled and headed out of the room.

      Her foot kicked something soft, and she looked down to spot the infant’s diaper bag. Without a second thought, she bent, hooked the strap over her arm and continued her retreat with barely a hitch in her stride. When she got herself and Kyle to safety, it would be good to have a few of his things along.

      Nearly to the front door, a sound halted her—a vehicle approaching up the driveway. Friend or foe? Barely daring to breathe, Karissa darted to the picture window and peered out. A black, four-door pickup truck crunched gravel beneath its tires. Suddenly the vehicle accelerated. No doubt the driver had noticed her little Toyota sitting under the shade of a maple tree that flanked the drive. The extreme reaction didn’t bode well. Was the killer returning to the scene of the crime? Why? To grab Kyle or do him harm?

      Over her dead body! A possible outcome if this was the killer returning for some nefarious reason. Karissa’s breathing hitched.

      The truck skidded to a halt, the driver’s door sprang open and a male figure jumped out. He had black hair and a sharp beak of a nose, but Karissa’s attention was caught by something else. The rays of the westering sun gleamed from the metal object in his hand. A gun! Her mouth went stone dry. Her dead-body vow might soon come true if she didn’t get out of this house right now. Making a break for her car was out of the question. The only route left open was out the back door and into the woods.

      The baby let out a squawk and kicked her in the ribs. Karissa looked down. She was squeezing him too tightly. Loosening her hold a bit, she dashed for the rear door. Hand on the knob, she looked back over her shoulder. Her handbag sat on the table next to the door. A heavy footfall on the front porch boards alerted her that she had no time to go back for it. She darted outside with her precious cargo and closed it after her in rapid silence. Tiptoe running, she headed down the deck stairs onto the lawn. If the killer thought she was still in the house, he might waste time looking for her. They would need every second to make the cover of the woods.

      Clutching Kyle to her chest, praying he would not cry out, she took off across the lawn. Good thing she was wearing cross-trainers and casual capris, not the skirt she’d almost put on this morning. Even so, her legs couldn’t seem to move fast enough. If only they pumped as rapidly as her heart. Or if only Nikki had a smaller backyard.

      When she was two-thirds of the way across the grass, a masculine shout from the direction of the house let her know she’d been discovered. Electricity spurted through Karissa’s body, and her legs suddenly found new speed. Her breathing rasped in her lungs, and the diaper bag beat a tattoo against her thigh. A sound like a coughing spit rang out, and heat seared her right arm. Crouching low, Karissa burst through a loose-knit set of bushes and scuttled into the shelter of the trees. Another spit sounded, and a small branch next to her head snapped in two.

      The killer was using a silencer on his pistol? Did that mean there were neighbors nearby that the shooter didn’t want to alert?

       Oh, please, God, let it be so...and help me find them.

      Karissa kept running, dodging tree trunks, leaping over roots and fallen branches. Her arms wrapped the baby close to her chest, shielding him with her body. But if the shooter knew his way around these woods, she and this infant who depended upon her would be easy prey.

      Hunter Raines swung the ax toward the chunk of wood perched atop the chopping block. Beneath his light T-shirt, the muscles along his shoulders, arms and back bunched and flexed with only mild discomfort from the burn scars that ran down the left side of his torso. Thunk! The satisfying sound echoed deep in his gut. His lungs sucked in a pine-laden breath as he brought the ax high again and swung it downward. Thunk!

      A light wind sighed through the branches of the Douglas firs hugging the forest service’s two-room cabin he’d occupied for many months now. Birdsong tickled his ears, soothing his senses. No sight or sound of human habitation intruded on the serenity—well, except for the rhythmic thud of his own ax, but he’d soon be done with the humble chore.

      How thankful he was for this secluded retreat in the Cascade Mountains offered to him by his forest-ranger brother, Jace. He couldn’t think of a better spot to hunker down after his eleven months of torturous skin grafts and therapy and give his wounds—both inner and outer—time to heal. Even now, after more than a year here in the wild, the thought of returning to the claustrophobic beehive of city life in Portland turned him cold.

      Yep, he owed Jace big-time for pulling strings to allow him to hole up for a while in this ranger cabin on the edge of Umpqua National Forest. Officially, Hunter was a temporary forest service volunteer tasked with fire watching from the nearby fire tower. Unofficially but more genuinely, he was a heartsick, wounded ex-firefighter struggling to make peace with senseless tragedy.

      “Help!”

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