In the Arms of a Stranger
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Kristen Robinette
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16,8K
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19
Chapter 1
Snow was falling, covering the ground like a fuzzy white blanket. Wet, fat snowflakes covered the windshield as fast as the wipers slid them to one side. Dana Langston had never considered being a Southerner a liability, but it certainly felt that way now. Accustomed to Atlanta’s mild winters, she had no idea how to drive in snow, much less on a sheet of ice. She gripped the Acura’s steering wheel, too terrified to blink as the terrain of the North Georgia Mountains turned to rock-faced cliffs.
It was almost dark, the storm clouds stealing what was left of the twilight at an alarming rate. The temperature would drop even further soon, freezing the slush to solid ice. Clyde Jenkins, the news station’s midday producer and her boss, had given Dana the keys to his vacation cabin, along with a box of tissues, a fatherly lecture on professionalism and three weeks’ mandatory leave. Whether or not her job waited on her when she returned depended on how thoroughly she could get her personal life in order.
Your job as a midday news anchor is to inform our viewers without destroying the rest of their day. Let’s face it—your career simply won’t survive another on-air breakdown like you had today.
Dana bit her lip as her tires skidded against the shoulder of the lonely road, their traction lost in the gathering slush. The drive became more treacherous as the mountain’s incline grew steeper, but it was far too late to turn back. Clyde’s last instruction had been that, under no circumstances was she to leave for the mountains before she was certain the storm would miss Georgia entirely.
She’d tried. She honestly had. But the walls of her apartment had closed in on her as surely as the storm had closed in on the South. Dana knew that phone calls from sympathetic friends and family who’d seen her tearful on-air meltdown were inevitable.
But they were also avoidable.
Though the plan was looking seriously flawed, she’d left before she’d had to face the ringing phone. And, if she were honest with herself, she’d been genuinely frightened to spend another night alone in her apartment. The murder trial of Paul Gonzalez had been postponed. Again. She would testify against the monster if it was the last thing she did. But if the court system insisted on making her Gonzalez’s target for a little longer, she would at least become a moving target.
Dana concentrated on the twisting ribbon of road. If she’d thought for a minute that the storm could change course, she wouldn’t have been so rash. She’d heard a weather report about an hour outside of Atlanta, assuring listeners again that the storm would miss the state. Dana had popped a CD in the stereo right after that and hadn’t given it any more thought until the snow started to fall.
She stifled a hysterical laugh. Maybe she should have hung around her apartment a little longer, at least long enough to watch the weather on the evening news. She gripped the steering wheel tighter. That would have been a lot of fun. She could have sized up potential replacements for her job while she was at it.
Glancing in her rearview mirror, she looked for the lone set of headlights that had appeared and disappeared behind her during the past twenty minutes as her car had hugged the inside curve of the winding mountain road. Part of her welcomed the idea of another living soul on the road, but part of her wondered if the headlights could belong to Gonzalez.
Paranoid, she scolded herself. The whole day was making her crazy.
Dana switched on the dome light and pinpointed her progress on the map with quick glances. By her calculations she should be only ten minutes from the cabin.
Without warning her car lurched sideways. Dana threw the map aside and gripped the steering wheel with both hands, her worst nightmare realized. The barely passable road had become a solid sheet of black ice. Terror seized her. She hit the brakes but the action only caused her to slide. She was spinning, the interior of the car becoming a sickening blur of light, darkness and fear. Desperate, she turned the wheel in the opposite direction and her car straightened, eventually finding the shoulder of the road in a violent spray of ice and rock.
Then all was still.
For a full minute she just sat there, breathing in gulps of air and willing her fingers to loosen their death grip from the steering wheel. She blinked, her vision clearing as the panic subsided. Her car had gone off the shoulder of the road, coming to rest in an area of tangled underbrush mere feet from the mountain’s unguarded ledge.
Dana covered her face with her hands, stifling a sob. It had been foolish to take her eyes from the road. It had almost proved suicidal.
Ignoring the tangle of vines and scrub trees that curled over her windshield, she took a deep breath and pressed the gas. The car lurched forward once before its tires spun, digging ruts into the freezing slush.
No.
Panic tightened her chest. She tried again, slower this time, but the result was the same. She couldn’t risk backing, not with the cliff so close. Hot tears of frustration burned her eyes. She gunned it, praying the force of the action would work. It didn’t. In fact, she felt the left side of the car settle deeper into the mire.
All the events of the last week slammed into her. She wanted to curl into a ball and cry, sleep and wake to find out she’d only dreamed that her life had gone to hell. Dana shoved the tears from her cheeks. The only thing that would get her was frozen.
Switching off the engine, she donned her down coat and fought her way past the underbrush that clung stubbornly to the car.
The world outside was ghostly silent. The wind seemed to be the only living thing, whipping across the rocky face of the mountain and swaying the trees, their branches now laden with crystals of frozen ice. There hadn’t been a turnoff since she’d last seen the headlights behind her. Unless the car had done a U-turn, it would eventually catch up to her, she reasoned.
But did she want it to?
She began frantically searching the side of the road for branches, rocks—anything she could use to stuff beneath the car’s wheels—but the thick blanket of snow and ice camouflaged anything she might have used. It was then that she noticed the tracks. Deep tire tracks crisscrossed those made by her car, following a similar path. It appeared the car had been ascending the mountain in the northbound lane and had lost control, just as she had. Only…
Dana began walking forward, following the tracks, then paused. Her gaze followed the tracks until they disappeared. Then she saw the massive oak tree, its gray bark scraped clean with a fresh wound. Flanking it were pine saplings, their tops snapped away like gruesome, headless necks.
The car had gone off the cliff.
“Hey!” Dana yelled into the silence, spinning to search the road for help before she began running.
Briars and underbrush scratched her hands as she shoved them aside to reach the cliff. As she’d feared, the car was on a rock ledge below her. It had obviously made a nosedive and had hit a second ledge, crushing the front end. The only thing that kept it from continuing to slide down the mountain was a sharp boulder that had caught the rear underside of the car. Its crumpled front end was now suspended in midair; its tires overlooked a sheer rock cliff.
“Hey!” She yelled again. “Is anyone in there?”
Adrenaline pumped through her, and she assessed the situation with surreal clarity. If anyone had escaped, which seemed impossible, she’d have seen their footprints. The same was true for anyone that might have come to help.
The car was an older-model four-door, its faded blue sides making it nearly impossible to see in the growing darkness. The only way to reach it would be to lower herself down to the second ledge. There wasn’t time to consider anything else. Dana grabbed the rubbery trunk of a scrub brush and lowered herself onto her belly, slithering down the sharp cliff until her boots met the crunch of loose stone.
She approached the car cautiously, as though her footfalls could send it toppling off the mountain. The windshields were clear of snow, and the back door closest to her was slightly ajar. She cupped her hands to look through the window but saw only a tangle of clothing and blankets. Making her way to the other side, she did the same. This time the sight made her stomach lurch and bile rise in her throat.
The driver, a young woman, was visible from this angle. Though she was still in the driver’s seat, her body had come to rest at an angle, her head thrown back in a silent scream. The delicate flesh and cartilage that had once formed her features was now pulled away by a vertical gash. Congealing blood had stained and matted her long blond hair.
Dana felt her entire body begin to tremble. Was it possible to survive such a thing? She stared at the door handle. Any action on her part could send the car careening off the cliff. She took in a steadying breath. The woman was, in all likelihood, dead.
The trick would be to keep the car from dragging her with it if it began sliding.
As gently as she could, Dana lifted the handle and opened the door. It caught on its hinges, grinding against the boulder. The news station had required all its reporters to take basic CPR and emergency training courses, and she called on the half-forgotten knowledge. Leaning partially in, she pressed her fingertips against the woman’s bloodied neck. There was no pulse.
A crushing sadness flowed over her as she straightened. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
A thin gust of wind whistled through the car, carrying the strong, unmistakable odor of whiskey. Dana’s gaze fell to the floorboard of the back seat where several liquor bottles lay next to the woman’s purse. More than one was empty, and one was half-finished. The sadness doubled and she hugged her jacket against her body.
The back seat was literally mounded with clothing, and Dana noticed an upturned laundry basket and a box with linens and partially spilled household items. It was as if the woman had thrown everything she owned into the car. Dana thought of her own escape from Atlanta and the similarities between herself and the dead woman. What had this woman been running from?
A second blast of wind hit the face of the mountain, rocking the car. Dana gasped and took a step backward. There was nothing else she could do. Or was there? She could at least identify her to the police. She carefully leaned in and pulled the woman’s purse from the tangled floorboard.
She stared at it in frozen horror. It wasn’t a purse.
Dancing blue bears decorated the side of the white satchel. Dana unzipped the top with trembling fingers. Diapers. A pacifier…
Oh, my God. A baby.
She threw down the diaper bag and leaned back into the car, resting one hand lightly against the back seat. “Baby!” she called. The car rocked beneath her. Slow a voice in her head whispered. Careful. She forced her hands into deliberate action as she began pushing clothing and blankets aside from the center of the back seat. “Baby!” she called again. Her hand hit the solid form of a car seat and she instantly heard a soft mewling sound.
The infant. Elation spread through her. She’d found the infant.
As Dana pushed away the last article of clothing, the baby lifted a chubby fist in the air, turned to look at her, and instantly began crying. It was music to her ears. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, the wind whipping the words away. It was all the same, Dana thought. She glanced at the child’s mother. The words were a lie.
She had to get him out. The car swayed, groaning against the rocky boulder as if threatening her.
Go, an inner voice commanded. Do it now.
Dana leaned farther in, a million prayers dancing through her head. The carrier-style seat was built for an infant, with the car’s center lap belt fastened over it. If she could just unfasten the seat belt… There was no choice but to climb partially in.
Her entire body was trembling as she placed her knee on the back seat and leaned over the child. He was screaming in earnest now. Was he hurt? The car lurched forward as her fingers found the release button. The seat belt gave way, and Dana scrambled to get a grip on the car seat. Her frantic actions swayed the car just as a gust of wind hit the mountainside.
She knew instantly that the car was going to go over the cliff.
Her fingers dug into the car seat and she threw herself backward with every ounce of energy she possessed. A hard blow smacked the flesh on the left side of her face and as if from a great distance she heard the sound of shattering glass, felt something cold and wet drench her foot. She was tumbling, felt her precarious grip on the car seat slipping… She hit the ground, her breath leaving her lungs as the car seat landed painfully on her chest.
The sound that followed was horrible. Metal ground against rock, screaming as it slid. Then there was the seemingly endless sound of the car crashing down the mountain face, snapping trees with the force of its weight.
And then there was silence.
Her eyes opened to darkened purple sky, wet snowflakes falling against the skin of her face. The daylight was almost completely gone. She still hugged the car seat but there was no sound. Panic seized her. Where was the baby?
Dana rolled to one side, and the throbbing pain on the right side of her head filled her vision with dancing lights. She eased the car seat to the ground and scrambled to sit up, blinking to clear her vision. The baby stared back at her, still securely held in its seat, his eyes wide and panicked.
Him? The question registered absently in her brain.
She glanced at the blue sleeper with its bright cars and trucks. The cheerful clothing brought hot tears to her eyes. Yes, a boy. And so young. Probably only three or four months old.
“Oh, little one,” Dana whispered. “My God, what have you been through?” Her fingers fumbled with the restraining belt, releasing it. She scanned his tiny body for injury, finding none. Lifting him from the car seat, she realized that the weather was the next greatest threat to his safety.
And hers.
Dana partially unzipped her jacket and eased the baby inside. He instantly snuggled against her, nuzzling her breasts frantically. “Oh, sweetie,” Dana cooed through unshed tears. “There’s nothing for you there, but we’ll find something. I promise.”
Something in her mind stilled as she said the words. Food. Where was the diaper bag? Her legs trembled uncontrollably as she stood. As she looked down, Dana instantly found the source of the shattering glass. The liquor bottle had tumbled from the car, shattering at her feet and drenching her boot with alcohol. She stared at the heap of glass. It was the only thing that remained, a sad reminder of a tragic mistake.
Dana found the diaper bag a few feet away and looped it over her arm. She turned to face the mountain cliff she’d so easily slid down. It would be impossible to climb back up, especially holding the infant at her chest.
“No, no, no…” she whispered.
She scanned the terrain and found that the ledge curved back toward the mountain, a natural footpath. Tears of relief stung her eyes as she maneuvered a steep but manageable pathway up the side of the mountain. She was trembling all over as she reached the top. Cool under fire, her uncle always said of her. Until the firing stops. Unfortunately the adrenaline that always saw her through a crisis had the tendency to abandon her too soon. It was happening now.
She stumbled away from the ledge, then leaned against the trunk of a tree, sliding down the length of it until she sat on the frozen ground. The baby… Her breath left her in bursts of frozen vapor as she unzipped her jacket. Just a few inches and she could see the infant’s head, his dark hair swirled on the top. Dana eased the zipper a little farther.
He was sleeping.
Hysterical laughter gave way to tears as she hugged the baby, her thumb tracing circles against his chubby cheek. She’d done it. She might have made a mess of everything else she’d touched in the past year—her marriage, her career… Her thoughts stilled when they reached little Michael Gonzalez.
She’d failed Michael in the worst possible way. What started out as a story segment on the life of a foster child had turned into much more. She’d fallen in love with the sweet five-year-old and wanted desperately to keep his abusive father from obtaining custody. But her overzealous reporting of the abuse had had the opposite effect. Provoked, Paul Gonzalez had stepped forward to claim his son, referring to him as his “property.”
The child who had stolen her heart fell from the window of his father’s second-story apartment less than a month later.
Dana drew the baby against her chest, tears in her eyes. She may have failed Michael, but by God she hadn’t let tragedy claim this little life.
She kissed the top of the baby’s head and stood, making her way to her car. Her cell phone proved useless, its signal no doubt deflected by the mountains. It was just as well. The road wouldn’t be navigable for much longer. She and the baby could freeze to death waiting for help. Still, she tucked the phone in the baby’s diaper bag, along with her billfold, car keys and the map.
She turned to face the mountain.
Was that a pinpoint of light? Hope surged as Dana focused on a distant light that twinkled in the growing darkness. It was the only sign of civilization in the expanse of forest that surrounded her.
She would follow the light and she would make it to safety. Her hands cradled the baby beneath her jacket.
She had to.
The rifle felt good, like an old friend. The woman’s form appeared in the crosshairs of the scope.
Taking down a target was like riding a bicycle. Some things you never forgot…. Things like going hungry, like waking with your own breath frozen against your pillow and hearing your father slowly choke to death on the black silt from the mines.
A lifetime ago, but yesterday. The nose of the rifle trembled, despite the determined fingers that gripped it. If the bitch thought she could waltz in and take everything away, she was wrong.
Dead wrong.
There was no going back. Not after you’d risen from the dirt. The girl should have understood that the first time she was warned. The shot cracked through the frigid silence, and the woman fell. But just as quickly she stood again, darting toward the road.
“Dammit.” 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.
“Damnation!” 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.
“If 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.
“Aren’t you supposed to have a keg of beer or something?”
Sam cocked one round eyebrow and wagged his tail.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
A gunshot cracked through the still night and Luke instantly dropped to the ground, drawing his gun.
“What 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 on what 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 would find it locked. Worse, she would discover that it had been built on the furthermost point of a natural rock crag, chosen to provide rangers with an unrestricted view of the forest below. Flanked only by the impossible rock face of the mountain behind it, there was only one way in—and out.
She would be trapped.
