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Tate leapt out of the woods just as Walter pulled the trigger.
Blam!
Tate’s body lurched in midair.
He landed with a hard thud onto the snow.
“Noooo!” Kara cried, sliding to a stop as Walter, too, had quit running. Walking with a deadly purpose, his pistol in one hand, the bloody knife in the other, he took aim at Tate’s limp body.
Kara started toward him. “Don’t! Stop! For the love of God—”
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Three shots fired in rapid succession.
Blood spurted from Walter’s chest. His body jerked wildly backward. Gasping and moaning, he fell to his knees, his fingers still tight over his weapons, his eyes wide with surprise. And then he keeled forward, his face landing in the snow.
Kara staggered back, her knees threatening to give as she screamed at the top of her lungs, her shriek echoing over the frozen water.
The ghost of her sister appeared, stepping from behind a copse of saplings.
“Marlie,” Kara whispered as the apparition became real, a living, breathing woman, stepping out of the frozen landscape.
“I’m sorry, Kara-Bear,” she said, and Kara wondered if this was all a horrible nightmare where the past blended with the present and the savagery she’d witnessed all those years ago had finally cracked her frail psyche to pieces. “I didn’t mean to leave you in the attic; I just wanted to keep you safe.” She slid her pistol into her jacket pocket and was walking toward Kara, but it was Marlie. Her face was scarred, slightly uneven, while one arm hung limply at her side, but she was still recognizable.
“But where . . . where have you been?” Kara asked, though her concentration was split. Tate lay facedown in the snow and she forced herself around the bigger man, kicking the gun from his hand.
“Trapped,” Marlie spat, anger radiating from her as she stared at her father’s motionless form.
“With Walter?”
She nodded, her lips compressed.
Kara found her feet and reeled forward, dropping to her knees at Tate’s side. She felt for his pulse and found it. Thank God. “Help me,” she said to Marlie, and though the whole scene was surreal, she saw that Tate was coming around, his eyes blinking against the snowfall.
Please. Please. Please.Please let him live, please don’t take him. Not Tate. Please.She sent up her tiny, heartfelt prayers to a God she sometimes hadn’t believed existed.
She bit off her gloves, then with frozen fingers unzipped his jacket and tore open his shirt, finding the wound, high in his shoulder. “Wesley,” she whispered, forcing him to focus on her. “God . . . are you okay?” Her voice caught.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, blinking and wan, ’til he focused on her and a ghost of a smile touched his lips as his gaze locked with Kara’s.
“You’ve been shot. Walter Robinson was chasing me and you . . .” Her throat closed. “You saved my life.” Tears filled her eyes and she bit her lip, overwhelmed by emotion. He was alive, but bleeding.
“Let me,” Marlie offered, kneeling next to them as the wind rattled through the frozen branches and snow continued to fall. “I know how. I’m good at this. He”—she shot a glance at her father lying still in the snow—“he taught me. We couldn’t go to any hospital, of course, and he’d been a medic when he served in the military. So . . .” She worked fast, tearing a strip of cloth from Tate’s shirt to bind his wound and stop the bleeding, while Kara, her head finally clear, called 9-1-1. Her teeth chattered, her head pounded, but she was able to rattle off the address. “Just hurry. Walter and Jonas are dead, another wounded!”
Tate was struggling to get to his feet.
“Not a good idea,” Marlie warned, holding up a hand. “Just let me finish up here.” She wound the strip of cloth over his shoulder, tied it off as best she could.
“Marlie Robinson?” he asked, his head seeming to clear a bit. Grimacing against pain, he leaned on his good elbow so that he could see Walter Robinson lying facedown and motionless in the falling snow. Then his gaze returned to the woman helping him. “You’ve been alive all this time?”
“Yes,” Marlie said, then, “You should lie down. Really.”
“I’m okay,” he insisted, and offered her a half smile before wincing. “I’ve been through worse.”
“I don’t think so,” Kara said, and took his hand, then seeing that Tate was going to pull through, asked her sister the question that had been plaguing her for decades. “Why? Why didn’t you come back?”
“He wouldn’t let me go,” Marlie said, still kneeling as she hitched her chin toward her father’s still form. Her lips twisted into a dark frown. “Not after what I’d seen.” Sighing, she leaned back on her heels to glance at her father. Her hair caught in the wind, billowing away from her face, exposing the scar beneath one eye. As if she felt Kara noticing it, Marlie touched the jagged line slicing her cheek. “This? Dad didn’t do it. No, this is compliments of Jonas.” She smiled bitterly. Her voice was as cold as the night, and her eyes seemed to deaden. “I made the mistake of getting in my stepbrother’s way.”