“Leave my daddy alone!” The familiar voice sent panic through his system. Blood dripped from one eyebrow as his eye swelled shut, but Benning didn’t mistake Olivia’s small frame running as fast as her legs could carry her toward him.
“Olivia...” The brutal attack from the man above him ceased as the bastard turned his attention on his daughter. Suddenly, the physical pain, the exhaustion, the haze closing in, it all disappeared. A growl tore from his throat. “No!”
His son had already been taken from him. Ana had come back into his life only to be ripped away. The SOB wouldn’t take Olivia, too. Ever.
His daughter swung the tree branch between both hands at his attacker as hard as she could, but her target stopped the attack before she could make contact. Ripping the makeshift weapon from her hands, the man in the mask advanced. Olivia tripped, landing on her rear, bright blue eyes widening in terror.
“Stay the hell away from her.” Benning used everything he had left to get to his feet. The ground threatened to fall right out from under him, but he used the temporary rush of adrenaline to stay upright. “Your fight is with me.”
“You’re right.” His attacker pivoted, keeping both Benning and Olivia in his peripheral vision on either side of him. One second. Two. In the blink of an eye, the shooter withdrew a gun from his low back and took aim at Benning. “It’s time to put an end to it.”
He pulled the trigger.
Olivia’s scream echoed in his head as Benning collapsed to his knees. “Daddy!”
Chapter Seven
The gunshot ripped her from unconsciousness in blinding fury.
A gasp tore from her throat as the reality of what’d happened closed in, second by second. The intruder, the fight, the window. Ana tucked her chin to her chest, trying to sit up. A large piece of glass pierced straight through her thigh. A soft whimper escaped from between her lips as she tested the injury with one hand. Hijo de perra. She collapsed her head back into the snow, barely registering her stiff joints and muscles. How long had she been out here, unconscious? She searched the sky, the sun well behind the Smokeys. The only source of dim light came from the motion-detecting spotlights around the corner of the cabin, which ran off batteries instead of the main power or generator. But that gunshot had come from nearby. Tears burned in her eyes. “Damn it, Benning.”
No. She swallowed the sob building in her throat. Emotions led to mistakes. Mistakes risked lives. She had to get up, had to find him, find Olivia. Given the fact she was conscious, the glass must not have cut through an artery, but she couldn’t take the chance of removing it without cutting off blood supply first—just in case. Okay. She had to use something as a tourniquet, then take care of the wound. Should be relatively easy. She’d been shot less than twenty-four hours ago, and it hadn’t stopped her from doing her job. A piece of window in her leg wouldn’t slow her down, either. She locked her back teeth in an effort to distract her from the pain. “Get up, Ramirez. You’re not finished.”
Leveraging her weight into her elbows, she searched her surroundings and caught sight of her SUV parked in the driveway along the other side of the cabin. There had to be something inside she could use. Rope, a bungee cord. Something. Thirty feet. She could make it thirty feet. Her exhales didn’t crystallize in front of her mouth, her body temperature dropping too fast, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. She had to make it. There were no other options. Not for Benning, and not for his family. She stretched one arm out above her head and slowly rolled onto her side, careful not to nudge the sharp tip of glass that’d cut straight through her. One hand pressing into the ground, she balanced with the other until she’d put nearly all of her weight into her uninjured leg and straightened. A wave of black washed over her vision, gravity doing everything in its power to bring her back to earth, and she had to force herself to breathe through the pain in her side. “Move, damn it.”
One step. Then another. Blood slid down the inside of her pants. She only pushed herself harder. The faster her heart raced, the faster she’d bleed out, but she’d take that risk if it meant getting to Benning in time. She wasn’t going to deny the ache she’d had to live with since that night she’d slipped from his bed and disappeared. Throwing herself into her work hadn’t helped. Making herself numb to emotion or caring about the people around her—the people she saved—hadn’t helped. Nothing had. Until he’d kissed her.
It’d been reckless and dangerous and wrong, but she hadn’t done anything to fight it. She’d laid out the rules in no uncertain terms when it came to what’d happened between them, but in that moment Benning had broken past the defenses she’d taken so long to build with a single sweep of his tongue past her lips. Just as he’d always been able to do. He’d stirred things inside her she hadn’t let herself feel in so long, and there’d been nothing she’d wanted more. In those few seconds she’d been stripped bare, left raw and exposed to the truth. That she... She’d been in love with him, too. She’d denied how she’d felt in the name of saving lives, when deep down the real reason had been festering all along.
She
