The Seduction of His Wife

Chapter Twenty-four

T wo hours later, the snow had stopped, but the wind continued to howl down from the threatening sky. The house felt unusually empty, and Sarah felt unusually edgy, to the point that she hadn’t answered the phone both times it had rung. Worried about Alex, she was in no mood to talk to anyone, much less deal with brokers trying to find the last skidder engine and truck motor. There wasn’t anything worth watching on all one hundred and fifty satellite channels, and every country-western video that came on was too damn maudlin. Sarah finally sat down on the couch with her sewing scissors and started snipping off the bandage on her right hand. Surely she could remove most of the gauze around the two metal splints in a way that would let her use her fingers for more than propping up stuff.

The phone rang again, but Sarah ignored it and kept snipping, again letting the answering machine pick up. She heard Grady’s message, silence, a click, and then the dial tone, just like the first two times.

“Get a phone book and look up the right number,” she told whoever had hung up as she continued to snip.

It took her twenty minutes, but Sarah was finally satisfied. She held up her right hand and opened and closed her thumb and first two fingers, thankful that it was her ring and pinky fingers she’d broken. Now she could do some real sewing.

When she heard some snowmobiles pulling into the dooryard, she frowned. They must be lost. She walked into the kitchen but stopped when she saw three men pulling off their helmets as they climbed off three snowmobiles.

Two of them were the men who had chased her through the woods! Sarah looked at the doorknob and noticed the door wasn’t locked. She ducked down, scurried over, and twisted the dead bolt. Staying bent over, she headed back through the great-room door, turning to stop it from swinging just as the men stomped onto the back porch.

“I called three times,” she heard someone say, the voice muted through the two doors. “No one’s home, I tell you.”

“I’m still checking the place out,” another voice said.

Sarah heard the doorknob rattling, first softly, then violently, and decided that pretending no one was home might be wise. She grabbed the portable phone and ran up the stairs. She rushed into her and Alex’s bedroom but froze when she heard wood splintering and the back door crashing open. Sarah dropped to the floor and slid under the bed. She tugged the quilt down to hide her and hoped they would quickly find what they wanted and leave.

Something crashed downstairs. “Jesus, we’re not here to loot the place,” a menacing voice said almost directly beneath her, which told Sarah they were in the kitchen. Then she heard the swinging door snap back on its hinges and bang into a chair, followed by heavy footsteps in the great room. Something else fell to the floor with a dull thud, and then Sarah heard someone walking up the stairs. Don’t panic. Don’t panic, she told herself, trying to dial 911, only to realize there wasn’t a dial tone. That must have been the phone’s base she’d heard crashing to the floor when they’d ripped it out of the jack. Sarah sucked in her breath when she saw a pair of boots walk past her bedroom door. She heard the boots go into Tucker’s room and then Delaney’s, and she felt like throwing up.

“Come on!” someone shouted from the foot of the stairs. “The place is empty. We need to get out of here.”

But the man continued to work his way methodically back down the hall, going into every bedroom and even the bathroom, opening and closing doors, before finally walking into Sarah’s bedroom. Not even daring to breathe, she waited for what seemed like forever while he looked in her closet before finally walking back into the hall. Sarah closed her eyes and balled her hands to control her trembling. She’d almost hidden in that closet!

“We can at least take a couple of these guns,” she heard someone call out from Grady’s office.

“Some look expensive.”

Glass shattered in the office, and the man searching Ethan’s bedroom ran down the stairs. Sarah’s stomach lurched when the floor beneath her shook with his heavy footsteps.

“Grab what you can carry on the sleds, and let’s get out of here,” one of the men shouted, sounding as if he was running from the kitchen into the great room. “It’s gonna move fast through this old relic. We’ll go out the front and leave the door open to feed it.”

Feed it? What was going to move fast?

“There,” somebody said in a loud growl just as Sarah heard a crackling sound coming from the kitchen. “That ought to keep the bastards out of our hair for the rest of the winter. Come on, Spencer’s waiting up at the caves.”

A stark silence descended over the lodge, broken only by an ominous snapping sound that turned Sarah’s trembling to violent shudders. As the three snowmobiles started up with high-pitched whines and sped away, the crackling grew louder, and Sarah got a whiff of smoke as it swirled up the stairs. Oh, God—they set the house on fire! They’d meant the fire would move fast!

Sarah bumped her head on the box spring when she scrambled out from under the bed and quickly ran down the stairs, over to the front door, and slammed it shut. She rushed through the thickening smoke to the kitchen, pushed open the swinging door, and was met by a solid wall of flames. She cried out in surprise and spun back toward the front door, only to see flames licking at the windows and the door on the front porch. They had set fires on both sides of the house.

“Oh, my God, the caves!” Sarah cried, rushing into Grady’s office. Alex was headed to the caves. He was headed straight to their hiding spot!

She tripped on something lying on the floor, fell to her knees with a startled yelp, and discovered she’d tripped on a shotgun. She grabbed it and scrambled to her feet just as a loud explosion came from the kitchen, shaking the floor beneath her. She made sure the shotgun wasn’t the one without the firing pin, ran to the gun cabinet, grabbed a fistful of shotgun shells, and stuffed them into her pocket. Blinking against the smoke filling the office and starting to cough uncontrollably, she used the butt of the shotgun to break out one of the windows, threw the gun outside, and slid out behind it. She pawed through the deep snow to find the shotgun, then headed toward the machine shed, shielding her face from the wind-whipped flames shooting out of the downstairs bedroom window.

Once inside the machine shed, Sarah ran to the phone on the back wall, praying the fire hadn’t reached the phone lines yet. She dialed 911. “This is Sarah Knight from Oak Grove,” she said the moment an operator came on the line. “Our house is burning.”

“Knight, you said?” the man asked as Sarah heard a keyboard clicking. “In Oak Grove?”

“Yes. We’re eight miles out on the private Knight road by the general store. But tell the firemen they have to turn left seven miles out. Hurry! The house is fully engulfed.”

“Anyone inside?”

“No, everyone’s out. Can you get hold of Sheriff Tate and tell him that Alex Knight is up on Whistler’s Mountain and that the smugglers are heading up there right now? Tell him he needs to hurry. Wait, call Daniel Reed, too! And the border patrol, and tell them the same thing.”

“Just a minute, lady,” the man said calmly. “You have both a structure fire and…did you say smugglers?”

“Yes! The smugglers set the fire. And they’re going by snowmobile up to the caves on Whistler’s Mountain. You have to tell John Tate and Daniel Reed that Alex Knight is also up there. You got that?”

The keyboard pounded furiously. “I got it, lady. Where are you calling from?”

“I’m in the garage next to the house.”

“Get out of there,” the dispatcher calmly ordered. “Walk down the road several hundred yards, and wait for the fire trucks to arrive.”

“How long before John and Daniel can get up to Whistler’s Mountain?”

“Quickest they can be out there is half an hour, maybe even an hour, depending on where they are. Leave the phone off the hook, and get out of the garage right now,” he said.

“Okay.” Sarah dropped the receiver and looked around the machine shed. Even half an hour was too long! Which meant it was up to her to warn Alex.

Unless she could stop the men before they reached the caves. Sarah eyed the skidder in the garage. It wasn’t Alex’s Mean Green Machine; this was their newer skidder, the one waiting for some stupid part.

Sarah grabbed the shotgun she’d set next to the phone and prayed the skidder wasn’t missing anything critical as she climbed up the ladder and opened the cab door. She tucked the shotgun inside and sat down, then frowned at the dash. Damn. Some of the dials and gauges were different. But she could do this; she had to do this. Alex’s life depended on her. Sarah turned the key and held down the starter button until the yellow monster came awake with a grinding sputter that slowly smoothed to a deep-throated idle. But when she looked up, she saw that she’

d forgotten to open the overhead doors. “Double damn,” she hissed as she eyed the pedals, trying to remember Alex’s lesson. Sarah pushed down on what she hoped was the clutch, then shoved the hand throttle all the way up, filling the machine shed with dark, smelly exhaust as the deafening roar of the powerful engine bounced off the walls and ceiling. She ground the gears trying to engage them, took a deep breath, then popped the clutch and smashed right through the doors. She quickly turned the wheel once she opened her eyes and steered the shuddering, screaming monster past the burning Knight homestead.

It took every bit of concentration she possessed to stay between the snowbanks, as well as a few prayers and some luck, but Sarah quickly reached the main hauling artery and turned right. Dammit, where was the tachometer? The engine sounded as if it was going to explode. “Don’t blow up, don’t blow up,” she begged the large diesel engine, which screamed in protest as she swerved down the road toward the new cutting site.

She almost missed the turnoff because of the wind blowing snow off the trees, causing nearly white-out conditions. Sarah cut the wheel to make the turn without even touching the brake. The skidder protested the sudden change of direction, its blunt chains digging into the icy road. The two left wheels lifted off the ground when the skidder slammed into the snowbank, before dropping back onto all four wheels with a jarring thud.

The skidder shook and shimmied and slowly inched its way out of the snowbank. “Come on!”

Sarah shouted, slapping the steering wheel impatiently. She yelped in triumph when it finally broke free and concentrated on steering as she roared up the winding narrow road toward the stream where she and Alex had shot grades.

Oh, God, the stream! Well, if she could get across it, this huge skidder sure as hell could. She approached the sharp corner much too fast, bounced off first one and then another snowbank when she overcorrected, and straightened out just as she sped over a knoll—and saw three snowmobiles sitting in the middle of the road.

She recognized them as the arsonists, two of whom were standing beside their snowmobiles, staring at her in shock, as the other guy bent over Alex’s sled on top of a snowbank, doing something to its engine.

Sarah aimed the skidder straight at the three smugglers’ snowmobiles, not closing her eyes until she heard the explosive crunch of metal connecting with metal. The skidder reared up as its massive tires rolled onto the sleds, bucking violently when it crushed them with a sickening screech. When Sarah finally opened her eyes, she realized that not only was she heading toward the frozen brook, but the collision hadn’t even slowed down the skidder.

She heard shouts behind her and guessed the men had jumped clear. Sarah screamed when something suddenly shattered the rear window above her head, and she instinctively ducked. Another sharp crack exploded through the air, and something ricocheted off the metal beam to her left, showering the cab with glass from the door window.

Holy smokes, they were shooting at her!

Sarah had a good mind to turn around and take another run at them. But she cut the wheel to the right instead and plowed into the woods—just as another bullet hit the skidder’s solid metal frame. Sarah pulled the hand throttle all the way back to slow down once she was in the woods, yet the engine continued to race.

The skidder wouldn’t slow down. She ran over small trees, managed to dodge most of the larger ones, and bounced off those she couldn’t dodge, until the forest suddenly opened onto a trail rising up the side of the mountain.

The trail wasn’t much wider than her yellow monster, but she was getting damn good at steering. Her heart lurched when she spotted Alex’s snowshoe tracks.

“Okay, Hero Man,” she sang out as she steered up the center of the narrow trail like a seasoned logger. “Let’s see if I can’t save you from the bad gu—” The roof of the cab suddenly slammed into a thick branch overhanging the trail.

But the skidder kept on growling forward, seemingly undamaged other than the spidery cracks in the windshield. “Oh, yeah!” Sarah shouted. “Who said heroines can’t rescue their heroes?”

Alex stopped in the middle of the single snowmobile track he’d been following and looked back with a frown, absently unzipping his jacket to release some of the heat his climb had built up. He kept catching a whiff of smoke now and then, and it was puzzling him. He was too far from home to be smelling wood smoke from their hearth, even if the wind was blowing from that direction. And a forest fire was virtually unheard of in the middle of the winter, unless…unless it had been intentionally set. Alex retraced his tracks a short distance down the mountain to a high knoll, then stopped to look at the forest below. He could barely make out Frost Lake, since his elevation was just touching the low-hanging clouds, and what forest he could see looked fine. But then he caught another whiff of smoke at about the same time as he heard the distant, muted sound of a large engine coming from the direction of their main hauling artery.

Had Grady decided to move their equipment today instead of tomorrow? But they had to clean up their old logging yard first, and that should have taken the entire day. The deep, heavy whine sounded as if it was moving closer, and Alex recognized it as a skidder engine. It was on the road of their new site now, but something wasn’t right. The pitch was off—instead of the give and take of a working skidder, this one sounded as if it was traveling at full throttle without a load behind it. In fact, it reminded Alex of his hair-raising ride with Sarah the day he’d discovered she didn’t know the first thing about driving. The skin tightened on the back of his neck.

No. It couldn’t be. Sarah was home safe and sound, probably elbow deep in a bowl of dough as she watched one of her cooking shows. She was not climbing Whistler’s Mountain in a skidder. The one in the machine shed had an electrical problem, and he wasn’t even sure it would start. A loud crash rolled up the mountain toward him like muted thunder, and Alex flinched when it was followed by three sharp gunshots. Shit! Paul must be trying to find him because the smugglers had set the forest on fire!

Alex repositioned the rifle strap across his chest and started tramping back down the mountain, going as fast as his broad snowshoes would allow. But he stopped less than five minutes later when he realized the skidder was heading up the trail toward him, snapping off trees in its path, the engine revving so violently he expected it to throw a rod at any moment.

The ground began rumbling beneath him as the air filled with an increasingly loud roar, and Alex decided he’d better get the hell out of the way. He tramped well off the trail and into the protection of trees just as the large yellow skidder crested the rocky knoll not twenty yards away. He jumped behind a large tree and covered his face with his arms to protect himself from the rocks, tree limbs, and chunks of ice the tires churned up as the skidder went roaring past.

Alex could only gape in disbelief—his crazy, suicidal wife was behind the wheel! And the really scary part was, he didn’t know if she was actually controlling the skidder or just hanging on for dear life. He stepped back onto the trail and quickly tramped after her, torn between putting the woman over his knee when he caught up with her or kissing her until he stopped shaking—about a hundred years from now.

Alex heard a sickening crash up ahead, followed by the sounds of snapping branches and smashing boulders. He broke into a run and saw the skidder jammed up against a giant pine tree, its four massive tires still chewing up the frozen ground and spewing debris into the air. He swiftly unlaced his snowshoes and kicked them off, then ran over and jumped onto the skidder’s ladder. Sarah was frantically yanking on the throttle with her bandaged hand and pushing every damn button on the dash with her other one.

“The electrical system shorted out!” he shouted over the roar, grabbing the cab door as the skidder dangerously chittered sideways toward the cliff. “Just sit still!” he hollered, working his way forward to reach the cowling covering the engine. He didn’t dare risk pulling Sarah out while the tires were churning, afraid her clothes might get caught in the chains and she’d be pulled beneath them. Ignoring the heat billowing from the overworked engine, Alex threw open the hood and started ripping out wires, nearly falling into the grinding front wheel when the machine suddenly lurched sideways. Sarah grabbed his coat sleeve with a scream of warning and tried to tug him back over the ladder. But Alex kept ripping out every wire he could reach, until the large diesel motor gave one last shudder and sputtered to a coughing death. He then reached through the broken window into the cab, plucked Sarah out of her seat, and jumped to the ground—just before the lifeless skidder began to roll backward, its right rear tire sliding off the edge of the cliff.

As Alex backed up the trail with Sarah safely tucked against him, the other three tires slowly lifted into the air with a groan of twisting metal. As if watching a film in slow motion, Alex saw the skidder tilt, turn belly-up, and then disappear over the edge. Trees snapped and boulders shattered as the ten-ton machine rolled down the steep embankment, the loud crashing thuds suddenly stopping with a sickening silence.

Alex tightened his hold on Sarah, unable to get the image out of his head of her rolling down the mountain with it. If he’d been two seconds longer getting her out, she’d be dead now.