“I’m so sorry, Lainey,” I said, coming back to the present. “I stuffed the gloves in my pockets so I could comfort Lochlan with warm hands. He was so pitiful, his little leg caught in that trap. I guess I didn’t tuck in the gloves as well as I thought. One must’ve fallen out on our way back to your house.”
Lainey took calming breaths, then stood and headed for the coat rack by the front door, calling behind her, “You stay here with Loch. I’m going to go look for it.”
I was beside her in an instant, tugging her black wool coat from her hands. “No, I’ll go.”
Lainey pried the coat out of my grip, determination in her gaze. “I should never have grabbed Mom’s gloves. She calls them her ‘lucky’ pair since they’re from Ireland. I was just in a panic over Loch. Getting the glove back is my responsibility.” When she shrugged one arm into her jacket, panic gripped me.
“Listen to me!” I squeezed my eyes shut as I reached for her hand, expecting a bone-jarring shock. When my fingers connected, but nothing happened, my eyes flew open and I exhaled a breath of relief. “You’re
not
going.”
The same stubborn look I’d seen on her face during study hall resurfaced. She started to speak, but I cut her off. “I’ll go shopping with you on Thursday if you let me go look for the glove, Lane.”
Lainey clamped her mouth shut. She knew when I called her “Lane” I was speaking from the deepest part of our friendship, which meant she needed to listen. Excitement suddenly flickered in her gaze. “You’ll go?”
I nodded. “Now put your coat back. You don’t know the path Drystan and I took. You’ll be wandering around out there forever. I can retrace our steps and be back here in minutes,” I said, tipping the scale in my favor.
Lainey sighed and nodded her agreement. She grabbed my red pageboy from the rack, then jammed it on my head. “Here’s your hat back. The temperature’s dropped.” As I buttoned my jacket, she glanced at my hands with an exasperated look. “
Really
, Nara? Where are your gloves?”
I smirked. “Why does this sound familiar?”
“You nut,” she murmured, then commanded, “Stay here.”
I frowned after her, but waited, wondering what she was up to.
She came back swinging a bright red gift bag. I stared at it, confused. “What’s that?”
“Happy early birthday!” she said with bright eyes. “I wasn’t going to give this to you yet, but…” She paused and skimmed her gaze over my jacket. “It seems your aunt and I were on the same wavelength.”
As I took the bag from her, I said for the second time in as many days, “But my birthday’s not for another couple of weeks.”
Lainey smirked. “Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Open it.”
Setting the bag down, I pulled out the white tissue paper and unwrapped a beautiful bright red cashmere scarf. “Oh, it’s gorgeous! Thank you, Lainey.” I wrapped the scarf around my neck.
When I looked up at Lainey and spread my hands wide in a “ta-da!” stance, she was holding a smaller tissue-wrapped package out to me. “You had two presents in the bag. Here’s the second one.”
When I unrolled the white paper and a pair of black fingerless gloves fell into my hands, Lainey said, “I thought about getting you the capacitive ones for your touch screen, but they’re bulky. These are sleek, bad-ass, and totally go with your leather jacket and lace-up boots.”
That was Lainey, ever the fashion conscious. Once I slipped the gloves on, she gripped my fingertips on my right hand, her hazel eyes glimmering. “Now you can text with Ethan anytime, anywhere. No more stiff fingers.”
Lainey had put a lot of thought into my gift. And the fact she hadn’t forgotten about Ethan was an added bonus that effectively ripped Harper’s assumptions about her to shreds. Oh, how she’d gloat if she knew the truth. Either that, or she’d bitch slap Harper. Probably both, I thought with an inward snort.
As I stared at Lainey’s fingers gripping mine, gratitude and emotion tightened my throat. I was so thankful for my ability to see my next day. I would keep her safe. Pulling her into a tight hug, I sniffled. “Thank you so much, Lainey. Your gift is perfect in every way.”
When I leaned back and we locked eyes, her lips were set in a determined line. “I should go with you.”
“You can’t leave Lochlan.” I glanced at her dog, who was snoozing in his bed by the fireplace. “He’ll try to walk on that cast if you go outside too.”
She heaved a grunt of frustration, then walked beside me into the kitchen where she opened the back door.
While I jogged down the deck stairs, she called after me from the doorway, “Hurry, Nara. I don’t like this at all!”
The moment I crested the small hill just outside the entrance of the woods, I knew I was cut off from Lainey’s line of sight. I jerked the red hat from my head and just as I started to tuck in into my jacket pocket, I remembered that hunters wear bright colors so they
are
seen. Then again, Lainey was wearing my bright red hat when she got shot. As the next thought,
Isn’t the center of a bull’s-eye red?
flitted through my mind, I quickly pulled off the red scarf, then shoved it in the other pocket.
My breath plumed in puffs of frost as I jogged deeper into the woods. Lainey wasn’t kidding about the temperature, I thought wryly and shoved my hands into my overstuffed jacket pockets to keep my fingertips warm.
Pine and the smell of moist underbrush assaulted my senses as I walked in the direction of the creek, scanning the ground for the missing glove. Sunlight shined through the canopy of leaves above me, briefly brightening the fall colors that had faded to duller yellows, reds and oranges. The leaf coverage wasn’t near as thick now. Winter’s harsh bite would soon strip them all from the trees, shriveling them to brown husks.
Leaves crunched under my boots as I scanned the underbrush on the forest floor. It didn’t help that the dead leaves were the same color as the glove I was trying to find. Why couldn’t
it
have been bright red? I sighed and kept scanning.
The crack of a branch echoed in the woods in the direction I’d come. My feet locked in place. Heart racing, I jerked around, looking for the source in the stand of trees behind me. Was someone lurking behind one of them? My eyes skipped from tree to tree within my periphery, touching on any one that was wide enough to hide a person.
Nothing.
I tried to slow my breathing, to focus my hearing, but all I heard was the rustle of leaves in the trees. Blood rushed in my ears as I quickly spun in a full circle, checking each trunk for the edge of a shoulder, the bend of a knee or the straight line of a leg.
Anything
that was out of place.
When a group of birds took flight from a tree to my left, my attention shifted to the trees below them to see a shadowy blur zip away from the trunk. It was so fast that I blinked, wondering if I’d actually seen anything or if it was just my imagination.
Kaun, kaun, kaun
,
kaun
a raven squawked somewhere in the trees, but to me it sounded like
run, run, run, run.
I didn’t need any more prompting. I took off toward the creek. If the glove was anywhere, that’s where I’d find it. Digging my boots’ thick soles into the moist ground, I pushed toward the hill that led to the creek. I thought I saw a shadow to my right, so I veered to my left, still heading toward the hill that led to the creek. I’d come out farther down and would have to follow the creek bed to make my way back to the area we’d found Lochlan, but at least I’d moved away from the shadow.
My feet scattered the crunchy leaves and underbrush, making it impossible to hear if anyone was behind me. I desperately wanted to check over my shoulder, but doing so would slow me down. I’d check once I reached the hill.
At the top of the hill, I halted and glanced over my shoulder, doing a quick scan of the woods. A hundred feet away, a couple of deer had stopped grazing. They stared at me with wide-eyed apprehension, as if they were debating if they should abandon their feeding area for safer ground.
I waited while my breathing quietly sawed in and out. The deer would hear any type of disturbance in the woods far sooner than me. I’d take my cue from them.
When they began to amble in an unconcerned fashion down the hill toward the creek, I breathed a heavy sigh and followed at a much slower and quieter pace. My dream had spooked me into imagining all kinds of scary intent-to-kill scenarios. Lainey getting shot was probably an accident. Plus, I wasn’t anywhere near where Lainey had been found.
After that pep talk, I gathered my courage and made my way to the spot we’d found Lochlan by the creek. Sure enough, lying on the bed of leaves still indented in Loch’s form, I found the other glove.
I picked up the glove, and as I shoved it deep into my pocket past my hat, I mumbled, “If you have any good luck in you, please make sure I get back to the house in one piece.”
Taking a deep breath, I took off running up the hill, the deer scattering with my sudden burst of movement.
I exited the woods, and as I approached the small hill, I slowed from a fast run to a brisk walk, my thudding heart stuttering and slowing down to a rapid thump with my relief.
I’d made it out.
Just as I started up the slight incline, Drystan came running over the hill in full-on speed right in my path. He looked so intense, I froze. At the same time he yelled something, a loud boom detonated, ringing my ears.
Chapter Nine
Disoriented from the deafening sound, I tried to dodge out of his way, but my body moved as if I’d been dropped into a vat of molasses.
Drystan launched toward me, grabbing me by the waist. As we flew toward the ground, he curled inward, taking the brunt of our fall before we tumbled down the rest of the incline in a fast spin of flailing limbs.
We rolled to a stop with Drystan on top, his weight whooshing the air out of my lungs. Wheezing, I panicked and tried to push him off. Drystan gripped my arms and held me down, hissing, “Stay down, Nara. Just stay the ’ell down.”
It seemed like we lay there forever, Drystan breathing heavily in my ear while my ponytail dug into the back of my head. Just as my breathing shifted from frantic pants to stuttering breaths, a siren sounded in the distance. Tension eased from Drystan’s hard frame and he released his death grip on my wrists, rolling off me. “Thank God! The police are here.”
“I almost got shot, didn’t I?” I said quietly.
Drystan sat up and pulled me to a seated position too. In our current position, the hill still blocked us from the house’s view. “You knew you were going to get shot?” Shock registered in his green eyes.
I gulped. I hadn’t meant to say it like that. I’d blurted my thoughts before I had a chance to think of the right way to say it. “Um, I meant…did you just save me from getting shot? How did you know?” Drystan opened his mouth to speak, but two police officers, a man and a woman, came running over the hill, guns drawn.
“Let’s get you both inside and under cover,” the stocky red-headed woman said in a gruff voice. While the blond officer stared off into the woods, scanning for the shooter, the female officer escorted us into the house.
As soon as we walked inside, a babbling, hysterical Lainey immediately folded me in a hug so tight, I could barely breathe.
“I’m okay, Lainey,” I rasped. While I stroked her French braid to calm her, I saw the worried look in Matt’s gaze as he stood behind her. Fists clenched by his sides, torture reflected in his eyes when they flicked to Lainey, then back to me. I saw what he was thinking,
It could’ve easily been Lainey.
You have no idea, Matt
.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Nara. Drystan insisted we call the police. He thought he heard gunshots that sounded way too close,” Matt said, sounding shaken.
“Yes, thank goodness he was there just when I needed him,” I murmured. My gaze locked with Drystan’s over Matt’s shoulder, but he broke eye contact when the redheaded police officer asked him to give her a play-by-play of exactly what happened.
* * *
Mom freaked the moment I walked in the door. She grabbed my shoulders and yanked me into a tight hug, breathing hard against my hair. “I was so scared when I got the call from Lainey’s dad. I let him have an earful that he didn’t call me until you’d left to come home. I would’ve picked you up.”
“I was fine to drive myself, Mom,” I mumbled into her shoulder, but that didn’t stop me from hugging her back just as tightly. I’d waited almost twelve years for my mom to show strong emotion and hug me with such intensity. I wasn’t passing this opportunity up for anything in the world.
Mom pulled back to look at me and mistook my tears of joy for fear. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You’re safe now.” Yanking me back into a quick hug, she huffed, “You’re not allowed to go back over to Lainey’s until they arrest this psychopath poacher.”
The unknown poacher was the only logical explanation the police could come up with for the shooting. I’d shivered when I heard Drystan tell the officer he’d heard the bullet whiz past, barely missing us. They’d scoured Lainey’s yard and house as well as the surrounding yards and houses, looking for the bullet, but didn’t find anything.
“Understand, Inara?” Mom said, bringing me back to the present as she tightened her hold.
I nodded against her shoulder, basking in the warm, protective mama bear hug. The frantic fierceness, the I’ll-kill-anyone-who-tries-to-hurt-my-baby tension in her hold…there really wasn’t anything quite like it. I wished I could bottle it to save for potential future reassurance needs.
Mom and I had a great dinner, where I finally got to hear how her date with Mr. Dixon went. Listening to her talk about Mr. Dixon didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Maybe it was because I was distracted, but she seemed less stressed than she usually was, even a bit giddy. I knew she rambled for my sake, but her happiness helped me to forget about the close call I’d had today.
After we finished dinner and were gathering the takeout containers, Mom brought up the shooting while spooning leftovers into a plastic storage bowl. “I tried to call your aunt to let her know you were okay—just in case she heard about it on the news—but I got her voice mail.” Mid-scoop, her brow furrowed. “That was hours ago and I still haven’t heard from her. I hope she’s okay.”