Hunted. Beverly Long

wished the dog had stayed with her.

      Something was wrong.

       Chapter Three

      The front door of the cabin swung open. A light had been turned on. Ethan stood in the doorway, his arm raised, motioning her in. She ran toward him, not caring that it jarred her shoulder.

      “It’s okay,” he said, stepping aside quickly.

      She nodded and for the first time in many days, when she stepped over the threshold into the familiar space, thought that he might be right.

      She took a deep breath and the sense of family filled her lungs. The main living area of the cabin was one big room, with a kitchen on one side and family room on the other. Off to the left, down a short hallway, were two small bedrooms and a bath. The floors were all narrow slats of pine, and the round-log walls were the best that Colorado had to offer.

      It had been in her family for generations. She knew the Donovan cabin was the mirror image. Her great-grandfather had built them both in the 1930s. In the 1960s, Grandpa McCann had inherited the cabins and paid for electricity lines to be strung from the main highway and had dug a well. By the 1990s, they’d been passed down to her dad, who saw no need for two cabins. Baker McCann had sold one to his best friend, Brody Donovan’s dad.

      And her family had kept the other one, spending summers here since she was a child. Both Baker and Mr. Donovan had worked from home. Baker as a computer analyst, Mr. Donovan as a novelist. That flexibility allowed them to come in June and stay until Labor Day. The McCanns had stayed home the summer Sally McCann had died. Baker had barely left the basement and had stopped tinkering with the old helicopter that he was rebuilding. He certainly wasn’t up to vacationing with his two children. Mack had been angry that they’d missed a summer in the mountains. Chandler had been too young to care as much. But by the next year, her dad had pulled himself together and things had gotten back to normal. Except the new normal had included Ethan Moore.

      He and Mack had shared a bedroom, she’d had the other and her dad had slept on the pullout sofa. Every morning, the boys had met Brody Donovan at the end of the lane and they didn’t come home until dark. They’d fished, hiked and swam in the lake. And at night, when Mack and Ethan had returned to the cabin, they’d played cards. It was how she’d learned to play poker, first watching, then finally, when she got the hang of it, they’d let her sit in on a few games.

      “How are you feeling?” Ethan asked, interrupting her memories.

      Every muscle ached and the pain in her shoulder hadn’t gotten any better. “I’m okay,” she lied.

      He reached toward her, his palm open, and with the pad of his thumb, gently brushed the bridge of her nose, then her cheeks. “You’ve got some marks here from the air bag,” he said. “Do they hurt?”

      “Not really.” Her cheeks were too cold to feel much else.

      “We should assess for other injuries,” Ethan said.

      Speaking of assessing... Wow. Ethan had grown up and into his body. At twenty-two, he’d been tall and lanky. At thirty-eight, he was still lean but his frame was thicker with muscle. His hair was still buzzed short, military-style. His face had the same strong chin, high cheekbones and dark eyes.

      He had a long, fresh scratch that started at his ear and ran down the side of his neck. She wondered if there were more scratches and cuts on his back from rescuing her from the tree. “I don’t think I’m the only one hurting,” she said.

      He shook his head. “I’m fine. Nothing a little hydrogen peroxide and ibuprofen can’t handle. I’m going to walk over to the other cabin and get my truck. There’s an emergency room about forty miles away where we can get your shoulder looked at.”

      She shook her head. “It will be fine,” she said. “I think I just sprained it. I don’t need a doctor.”

      “Can I at least take a look at it? I don’t have any formal training but I’ve spent the past twenty years with medics attached to my unit. I’ve picked up a thing or two along the way.”

      “Okay.”

      He unzipped the coat that practically hung to her knees. Very gently, he helped her pull one arm out and then he lifted the material away.

      He gently probed her shoulder area and her collarbone. When he tried to gently rotate her shoulder, it moved but it hurt a lot. “What do you think?” she asked.

      “I think you should go to the doctor. But beyond that, I’m pretty confident that you didn’t dislocate the shoulder. It appears more likely that it’s a soft-tissue injury, more of a sprain. We should get some ice on it.” He walked over to the refrigerator and opened the freezer door. It was empty. “I have ice in my cabin,” he said.

      She nodded.

      “We need to call the police,” he said. “The accident should be reported.”

      “I’ll do it in the morning. I want to get some sleep first.”

      “I suppose it’s not going to make a difference.” He studied her. “Are you going to call Mack?”

      She might have to. But not yet. If she was wrong and the attack had been totally random, she didn’t want to plant seeds of doubt. He hadn’t been crazy about her father and stepmother’s marriage, either. Had said more than once that there was something about Claudia Linder that he didn’t like. “I don’t think there’s much he can do about a car in the trees.”

      “He’d want to help. But if he’s working out of the country, it might take him a few days to get back, regardless of how much he wanted to.”

      “I guess.” Tomorrow, in the daylight, somebody was bound to see her car. If she didn’t report it, somebody else would. The car was registered in her name. It would probably only be hours before the police notified her dad and stepmother that she’d been in an accident and was missing.

      Her dad would be terrified. Her stepmother was the wild card. Would she be grieving alongside her new husband or would she start to hunt in earnest?

      By morning Chandler was going to need a plan. Right now, it simply seemed beyond her. She was tired from the drive, sore from tumbling over the mountain and almost falling out of a tree, and rather discombobulated by suddenly seeing Ethan again after all these years.

      Ethan reached down to pat Molly’s head. The dog was crowding up against his leg, probably eagerly anticipating the next adventure.

      “Like I said before, I’m not sure this is the best place for you.” Ethan looked around the room.

      She followed his gaze. The furniture was covered with dusty sheets. There were cobwebs in the corners and hanging over the stone fireplace. Nobody had been at the cabin for more than six months and it showed. She knew the beds would be stripped of their linens and the refrigerator would be bare.

      It was cold. She desperately wanted a hot shower, but that wasn’t going to happen. Still, she could probably make do. They always kept clean sheets and blankets in a tote in the closet and she wouldn’t starve to death overnight. The lights were a plus. “It’s not great,” she agreed, “but I don’t have a lot of choices right now.”

      “You can stay with me. There are two bedrooms, just like here,” he added quickly.

      “I know,” she said. “I didn’t think it was an invitation to...” She stopped, embarrassed. Of course it wasn’t that. For all she knew, Ethan was married with two kids. She sneaked a quick look at his fingers.

      No ring.

      He noticed. “To hook up?” he said, finishing her sentence. “You’re Mack’s little sister. I value all my appendages.”

      She smiled, appreciating the fact that he was trying to make light of the situation. Ethan Moore asked me to stay over. If she was fourteen, she’d have written it in bold