In The Arms Of A Stranger. Kristen Robinette

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.

      Chapter 2

      She wasn’t going to die. Gonzalez—it had to be Gonzalez—wasn’t going to win. Dana clawed at the