Kidnapped At Christmas. Maggie K. Black

road, but if you turn left you’ll reach civilization eventually. To be totally honest, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to defuse this thing. If I do, I’ll come find you.”

      She hesitated. So he’d had no actual plan other than taking her place and substituting her life with his?

      An engine roared from beyond the trees. From inside the house, she could hear the dog barking again, and only then realized it had ever stopped. Someone was coming.

      “Samantha!” Joshua’s voice sounded clear and commanding. “Get out of here. Now!”

      Headlights shone through the trees, then flashed across her face.

      She ran.

      * * *

      The glare of approaching headlights filled Joshua’s view. As much as he hoped it wasn’t a foe, he hated the idea of putting any friend in the situation he’d found himself in. Samantha had disappeared into the shadows and he couldn’t see where she’d gone. He looked down at the small land mine he was now keeping depressed with both hands at once. He’d seen this kind before. Round and beige, his buddies in ordnance disposal said there were thousands of them still littered over the world’s abandoned battlefields. Not that he ever expected to find one in Canada. Or be in the situation he was now.

      Whoever Samantha is, she knows her land mines.

      A truck pulled down the driveway. The engine cut and doors slammed.

      The headlights faded slowly, as a lightly bearded man started down the driveway, with the kind of smooth, confident walk Joshua had secretly spent a good chunk of his teen years trying to copy.

      Thank You, God! A prayer filled his heart. Alex and Zoe were back. Alexander Fletcher had been Joshua’s best friend since kindergarten. While Joshua had been overseas serving his country, Alex had tried studying first to be a doctor, then quit to become a paramedic, before dabbling with the idea of a career in law enforcement and spending a few years teaching high school math and gym. He was the smartest man Joshua had ever met, even if Alex had spent years going through life like a boat searching for its anchor. But he’d finally taken up Daniel’s offer of moving to rural Ontario to help him start up Ash Private Security.

      Alex was one in a million. And there wasn’t a single person on earth Joshua knew more about, which just might save them now.

      “Code yellow jacket,” Joshua shouted. “Big, huge, code yellow jacket.”

      It was their own private in joke, which they’d used to warn each other of serious trouble ever since a teenaged Alex crashed Joshua’s first truck when a wasp flew in the window.

      Alex froze. “Zoe, stay back.” His arms shot out to keep her from coming any closer, looking like an umpire calling a runner in safe. “Josh? Where are you? What’s going on?”

      “On the porch. Holding a live land mine.”

      “And you went with ‘code yellow jacket’?”

      “Figured you were more scared of wasps than explosives.” Nothing like a friend you could joke with when you were one wrong move away from death. “It’s pressure sensitive. Small blast radius. I’m leaning into the detonator right now, keeping it down. If I let go, it explodes.”

      “Okay.” Even in the pale morning light he could tell Alex’s face had gone white. “Zoe, we got a situation.”

      “Tell me what you need.” Zoe leaped out of the vehicle. She was tiny, barely four foot eleven, with the kind of sharp, single-minded focus her stepbrother had occasionally lacked. Her chin-length hair was currently black with a few streaks of red. A world-class athlete in both gymnastics and mixed martial arts, Alex’s sister had been Daniel’s second private security recruit. It was her dog, Oz, who’d been barking just moments ago. Couldn’t hear the pup now.

      “All right,” Joshua said. “Zoe, open the kitchen door, get Oz out of here, drive until you get a cell phone signal and call the police. Tell them we’ve got a live land mine. If you run into a beautiful blonde woman wearing my leather jacket, her name is Samantha. I think she needs help, but I don’t necessarily trust her and you probably shouldn’t either.”

      He could feel his teeth grind at the very thought of warning them against Samantha. But what did he know about her really? Nothing. Except that she’d appeared on his friend’s porch tied up tight with an explosive underneath her. And after witnessing too many foolish men implode both their military careers and personal lives over meaningless war-zone infatuations, Joshua had learned there was a whole lot of truth to Gramps’s warning against trusting any attraction sparked in a moment of crisis.

      Zoe didn’t even pause, she just ran for the side of the house. Alex started quickly but carefully toward the steps. “And what do you want me to do?” Alex asked.

      “Find something we can replace my weight with. Something big and heavy. It’s a pressure trigger and it’s armed, so if I let go of it something else needs to take my place.”

      “Should I ask who this beautiful blonde is and how you got into this mess?”

      “I don’t know who Samantha is,” Joshua said. “I just found her here on the porch, freezing cold and tied up on top of a land mine. She said she was a fact-checker. And yeah, she’s staggeringly attractive—unbelievably so—like the kind of woman you don’t just run into in real life. So if there’s any chance I’m dreaming, now would be a really great time to pinch me.”

      “I’m afraid not.”

      “Didn’t think so. Anyway, whoever Samantha is, she’s lost, she’s in trouble and she’s absolutely terrified of whoever left her here.”

      Oz shot past. The dog tore down the driveway. Seconds later, Zoe and Samantha came back around the corner of the house, dragging a bag of cement between them.

      “I take it that’s her?” Alex’s eyebrow rose.

      “Yeah, but I told her to run.”

      “Hey, I’m Alex.” He ran toward them and grabbed the middle of the bag, sharing the load. “I see you’ve met my sister, Zoe.”

      “I did.” Her voice strained under the weight. “I’m Samantha. Hope you don’t mind but I let the dog out. Sounded pretty frantic. Found this by the garage. Thought you could use it to counter the pressure on the land mine.”

      Joshua didn’t know if he was more relieved, impressed or amazed by her plan. Not that he exactly liked the idea of her doing the exact opposite of what he’d just told her to do to save her own life. But she was quick-thinking. And brave. He had to give her that.

      Slowly, Samantha, Zoe and Alex hauled the cement up to the bottom of the steps, then started climbing up toward him. They reached the top step and he directed them until they were holding the bag right over his hands. Then they lowered it, inch by inch, until the weight rested on top of his fingers, pressing them deeper into the trigger. He took in a sharp, painful breath.

      “Now, you all go. Run. I’m going to inch my fingers out of here and we’ll all pray it doesn’t blow.”

      The three of them ran back down the steps. Alex and Zoe made it almost as far as the truck before stopping. But Samantha stopped in a faint pool of light at the bottom of the stairs.

      “Samantha, please.” His eyes searched her face.

      “You just saved my life. I didn’t hear one quiver of doubt from you when you were doing this for me. Your nerves were rock steady.”

      Yeah, but that’s only because I was so totally focused on saving you I blocked out the danger that I was in.

      “So, logically you’ll be safer if I stay,” she went on. “Just do what you did with me, only do it in reverse and don’t blow up. I believe in you.”

      He inched his fingers out slowly, one by one, feeling the weight of the unmixed concrete sliding in to take their place. First one hand,