The Girl Who Survived(126)

It’s Wesley. He’s on your side. Kara, trust him.

Slowing, she turned around, breathing hard, expecting him to— “Run!” he yelled. “Kara, run!”

Tate’s voice?

Or Jonas’s? As he levered himself up on one elbow to beg her get help. That was real, right? She was running from whoever killed Mama and Daddy and her brothers— The scene in her mind splintered again.

Oh, God, Jonas! His head turning on the spindle came to mind and she twisted, ready to run again, her foot hitting a root or rock jutting upward but hidden beneath the snowpack. She fell forward, against a tree, trying to right herself, icy fir needles scraping her face, branches seeming to claw at her, ripping her skin.

“Run!!!” someone screamed.

Tate’s voice. Yes, Wesley Tate was urging her forward, and she found her footing for a second, only to slip and see him bearing down on her.

Not Tate.

No!

The man she saw was Walter Robinson, older than she remembered, his whiskered face set, his jaw rock hard, his eyes skewering her in an otherworldly and cruel glare. In one gloved hand he held a pistol, in the other a knife with blood smeared upon its narrow, deadly blade.

Oh. Dear. God.

“Kara! Run!” Tate’s voice echoed through the hills.

She scrabbled forward, finding her feet, but glancing over her shoulder.

Not one, but two men chased her. Tate was closer, running a zigzagging course, but Robinson was bearing down fast, the larger man galloping through the trees and swirling snow, making a beeline toward her.

She scrambled forward and as she did, she caught a glimpse of movement, something white and blurry, a pale ghost running parallel with her, hidden by snow and trees.

The apparition turned and faced her for a second.

Marlie?

Kara blinked.

Her long-lost sister was out here?

Impossible!

“Kara, move!” Tate’s voice again and Kara looked behind her. Robinson had raised his pistol.

She cut around a tree, a berry vine snagging her jacket, Cold Lake, flat and open in the distance.

“Stop!” Walter ordered, and in her peripheral vision she saw him take aim.

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,” she 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!”