24. Colt #2
Two more come around the corner of the house as we hit the open air.
I shove Nora behind a stack of crates and meet them both, knife finding the first man's shoulder before he can level his gun, two hard strikes finishing what the blade started.
The second fires wide, the bullet close enough to hear before I close the distance and take him down into the snow, the fight short and ugly and over before Nora's even finished flinching at the gunshot.
Kane's voice crackles again. “We're on you. Mason and Brock just cleared the last two on the south perimeter. Mansion's secured. Silas is handling the scene on paper. Get your girl to safety, we'll clean up the rest.”
“Copy. Line shack. Don't wait up.”
I grab Nora's hand. “Run.”
We run through the trees, snow slowing us both but I know every path down to the roots under it.
My arm's throbbing steady now, warm under the sleeve in a way that means it's bleeding more than a graze usually should, but it's not the kind of thing that stops a man from getting the woman he loves off a mountain full of armed strangers.
Her breathing goes ragged behind me, but she keeps up, stride for stride, stronger than she looks and stronger than she's ever given herself credit for.
A snowmobile engine roars somewhere behind us. I pull her off the main trail into a stand of pines, my old cache, and yank the tarp off the hidden machine, lifting her onto it in front of me before I climb on behind. “Hold on. I've got you.”
We fly through the trees, branches whipping past, the engine behind us fading fast because they can't follow where I go. Twenty minutes of hard riding brings us to the old line shack I use sometimes, one room, one bed, isolated enough to disappear into for a night.
I kill the engine and lift her down, and that's when she sees it, the dark stain spreading slow down my sleeve where the graze finally decided to announce itself properly.
“Colt. You're bleeding.” Her voice goes sharp with something that isn't fear exactly, more like the particular fury of someone who just realized the person they love got hurt keeping them safe.
“It's nothing. Barely felt it.”
“That is not nothing, that is definitely blood, and you're going to sit down and let me look at it right now, or so help me.” She's already pulling me toward the single chair by the stove, already reaching for the small first aid kit hanging by the door like she's catalogued this shack's contents the same way she catalogued that mansion, and something about watching her do for me exactly what I did for her three weeks ago, checking, wrapping, insisting, settles deep and warm in my chest.
“You're better at this than you were with your own ribs,” I tell her, hissing a little as she cleans the cut.
“I had a very good teacher.” She ties off the bandage with hands that have gone steady despite everything they've been through tonight. “There. You'll live. Barely.”
I catch her wrist before she can pull away, and pull her into my lap instead, careful of the arm but not careful of anything else. “I've got you. All the way home this time.”
She curls into me, and for a long moment neither of us says anything at all, just breathing together in the small warm circle of the stove's light, the storm outside finally starting to ease off after a night that felt like it might never end.
“You're mine,” I tell her eventually, quiet now instead of urgent, my hand in her hair. “Have been since I pulled you out of that wreck. They tried to take that from me tonight. They failed.”
“I'm yours.” She says it plain, no hesitation in it at all. “Have been for a while now, I think. Longer than I probably should have let myself admit.”
What happens after that is quiet and slow and entirely ours, no urgency left in it now that the danger's actually behind us, just two people proving to each other with more patience than words that they're both still here, still whole, still choosing each other on purpose instead of out of fear.
I hold her through all of it and after it, her head on my chest, my hand finding hers in the dark, the stove crackling low and the snow finally starting to taper off outside.
“You're safe now,” I tell her, quiet. “I'll burn the world before I let anyone take you again. We'll go home. You'll give your testimony. Levon answers for what he did. And then you're staying right here, with me, for good.”
She lifts her head, that same stubborn, quirky smile finding her mouth even after everything the night put her through. “Bossy mountain man. I think I like the sound of that.”
“Good.” I kiss her slowly, certain, nothing rushed left in either of us. “Because I wasn't asking.”
We stay like that a long while. I clean the last of the blood off my arm with what's in the pack, feed her what rations I've got, and she curls against me on the narrow bed while her breathing evens out into real sleep for what might be the first time all night.
Kane and the team will handle the rest of it, the mansion, the stragglers, the paperwork Silas needs to make this clean.
I'll take her home once the roads let us, to the one bed, to the life we're actually going to get to build now instead of just talking about building it.
They tried to take her. They failed.
She's mine, and she chose that for herself tonight as much as I ever claimed it, guard counts and hairpins and all, and I intend to spend the rest of my life proving I noticed that difference and it mattered to me.
The mountains are quiet now. The threat's fading with the storm. But what I feel for her isn't going anywhere at all.
I pull her closer, careful of my arm, careless of everything else. “Sleep, darlin'. I've got you. Always.”
She sighs against me, already halfway to sleep.
I close my eyes at last.
The hunt is over.
My woman's home, and this time she helped bring herself there.