THE BARREL OF a shotgun pressing into his back stopped him in his tracks.
“Don’t take another step.”
The feminine voice surprised Adan Harrison. He had not been expecting that. What he had been expecting was a wanted fugitive he’d been tracking for three long, cold days.
“I’m not here to harm you,” he said, hoping she’d put the shotgun down. He held his hands up and went to reach inside his sheepskin-lined coat. “I’m...an officer of the law. I’ll show you my badge and ID.”
“Don’t do that.”
Adan stopped, waited. He could hear her shifting in the slush and the snow. Freezing in his boots, he didn’t dare turn or make a move for his own gun. He’d been around enough prickly females to know you didn’t mess with a woman with a loaded shotgun. Especially if you were in the deep woods of a treacherous mountain terrain in western Arkansas.
“Let me show you my badge,” he said. “Look, I got lost and it’s cold and I didn’t think anyone was inside the cabin.”
“Did you bother knocking?”
She was so close he smelled something clean and fresh through the scent of wet, frozen trees and decaying wood.
“I did knock, yes, ma’am.” He took a chance at looking over his shoulder. “Can I turn around so we can talk face-to-face?”
She made another movement, quick and sure. “Okay, but slowly. And keep your hands up.”
Adan did as she asked, pivoting in the snow and dirt to face her. Another surprise. She was young and pretty, but she was so covered in her big coat and dark blue scarf that it was hard to tell anything else. Her eyes matched the scarf and bits of stray hair hung in light auburn tufts around her face and ears.
“Show me your badge,” she said, the gun now aimed at his heart. “And I won’t hesitate to shoot if you try anything.”
Adan didn’t argue with her. He believed she’d shoot him in a heartbeat. Something about her stance and the dark fierceness in her eyes told him this woman was either hiding something or running from something. Or someone. Maybe she was hiding someone, now that he thought about it.
The someone he wanted to take back to Texas?
He slowly reached to unbutton his heavy jacket. She stepped closer, her unyielding eyes burning him to the spot. The damp hulking trees dripped with softly falling snow as night begin to descend on Crescent Mountain. If he didn’t get himself out of this soon, he’d be stuck here in a December snowstorm.
Keeping his eyes on the woman with the gun, Adan opened his coat and showed her the badge attached to the left pocket of his flannel shirt. “I’m a Texas Ranger, and I’m looking for a man,” he said. “A very dangerous man.”
She got all skittish and then her gaze moved from his face to the badge. “What if that’s fake? What if you’re a dangerous man?”
Was she trying to deflect attention away from herself by accusing him?
Aggravated and losing patience, Adan stepped closer. And found the barrel of the gun digging deeper into the middle of his chest.
“Look, lady. It’s cold and I’m tired. I thought the cabin was empty. I’m here for one reason, to find this man before he hurts someone else. I have it from a reliable source that he might be either headed here or already here, hiding out on this mountain.”
The fierce gaze he’d seen earlier was replaced with what looked like fear. He could feel the gun trembling against his ribs. And because he knew she was afraid of something besides him, he took advantage of that slight distraction by grabbing the barrel and holding tight as he pushed it up enough that she had to either shoot into the sky or drop the shotgun.
She stared into his eyes with a white-hot anger while they stood so close he could smell that sweet, fresh scent tickling against his cold nose. She pulled the trigger and sent scatter shots into the trees before he was able to wrench the gun out of her control. The woods vibrated with the sound of the gun going off and the trees shook down patches of snow and leaves.
Adan’s eyes held hers as they stood nose to nose. He saw a certain horror there in her startled gaze. She held onto the gun with surprising agility, but Adan was stronger. He wrestled the gun away and stared over at her.
“Okay, now that we’ve settled that, I’m not here to hurt you,” Adan said, holding the twenty-gauge down. “If we could just go inside and talk this through, I can prove to you that I’m who I say I am.”
“You never said your name,” the woman replied, a kind of triumphant gleam in her eyes.
In the next second, Adan heard the whack of something hitting him. And then he felt the intensity of a hard sharp pain. Her face was the last thing he saw before the world went black.
* * *
SOPHIA GRABBED THE gun back and stared down at the tall man lying at her feet. “Miss Bettye, I hope you didn’t kill him.”
Sophia’s seventy-year-old neighbor, Bettye Scott, stood over the big man, her hands tight on a cast-iron frying pan, her braided gray hair falling around her shoulders. “He ain’t dead. I see his chest rising and falling. Is he the one?”
“The one?” Sophia was used to her neighbor’s strange ways and quirky attitude on life, but sometimes Miss Bettye really didn’t make any sense. Then at times like this, the woman zoomed in on the glaring truth.
Miss Bettye tugged at her moth-eaten wool hat and smiled over at Sophia. “The man you’re hiding from, honey.”
Sophia had shared lots of secrets with her feisty neighbor but Bettye didn’t always remember