A deafening blast fills the room. The worker who had previously had his head in a vat screams and runs into the side room full of ripening cheeses.
“Cherry, get down!” Nate yells.
The tray in front of us topples over, and wheels of cheese roll in all directions. I drop to the floor, and Nate grabs two wheels of cheese that roll close to him. He flings them over the upturned cart, and I hear one of the men grunt. Nate grabs more cheese wheels, continuing to fling them at our attackers.
Another shot rings out. Nate grunts, and I scream.
“Move!” Nate grabs my hand and yanks me behind him. He topples another tray full of unripened cheeses to the ground, blocking the men’s path. Nate keeps throwing more cheese as he backs away, shoving me toward the door. I swing it open, and he turns to run with me out the back door.
We run through the parking lot, past the post office, and into the trees beyond the buildings. The snow begins to fall faster, and huge flakes cover us both. I glance behind me, but the snowfall has obscured my view, and I can’t tell if anyone is following us.
“Nate! Where are you going? The house is that way!”
“Can’t go to the house,” he says. “I’m not armed, and we need to get away first. Where can we hide?”
“Hide?” I shake my head and huff out breaths as Nate pulls me along. “Where are we going to hide?”
“That’s what I’m asking you!”
A single shot echoes behind us, but the sound is much farther away. Despite the apparent distance, the sound still makes me jump. I look around, but we’re partly surrounded by trees and snow, and there is a field ahead of us, but the snow obscures any familiar landmarks, and I can’t figure out exactly where we are.
“There should be a main road to our left,” I say. If we go there, I can get my bearings.”
We find the road, completely covered in snow. I can’t see more than a few feet ahead of us, but I have a pretty good idea where we are.
“That’s the Drane House over that way,” I tell him. “It’s right next to the cemetery where we were earlier.”
“Drane house? Who are the Dranes?”
“Historical landmark. No one lives there.”
“Let’s try it.”
It doesn’t take long, but by the time we reach the Drane House, I’m shivering so hard I can barely talk, and my feet feel like they’re about to freeze to the ground. I can’t even feel my toes. Nate grabs the handle of the door, but it’s locked.
“Dammit!” He kicks the door, but I grab his arm.
“Nate, stop it! This isn’t Cascade Falls! You can’t just break into places!”
“I’m fucking freezing,” he says, “and you are, too. We need to get inside.”
“You can’t break that door, Nate! They spent years restoring this place!”
“Are you serious? Cherry, people are shooting at us!”
I don’t know why, but the thought of breaking the Drane House door horrifies me. I glance around, looking for alternatives, but I swear the cold is affecting my thinking. Through the snow, I see the outline of another structure.
“Over there!” I shout as I pull on Nate’s hand. “There’s a building over there!”
We run through the snow. My hands and face are burning from the cold, and my feet are completely numb. When we reach the small building, I realize what it is.
Without any other options available, and with Nate refusing to try to get back to my place, we end up sheltering in the Drane’s old outhouse.
“Nate, you’re bleeding!”
“It’s not bad.” He shifts around in the cramped space, trying to get a look at his shoulder and the blood that has soaked through the top of his coat.
“Did you…” I gasp, unable to say it.
“Relax,” he says quietly. “It just grazed me.
“Relax?” I shake my head. I have no idea how I’m supposed to relax when I’ve just realized he’s been shot. However, he seems so calm about it, I can only hope he’s telling me the truth. “We should get you to a hospital!”
“Is there a hospital around here?” Nate grins, but I’m not finding his remark funny.
“About a half hour north of here, yes. It’s not that far.”
“Except we’re stuck in an outhouse in the middle of snowstorm. Even if we made it back to your place, which I’m not going to risk, there is no way your car is going to do anything on these roads but slide right into a ditch.”
“At least let me look at it!” I have no idea what I’m going to do once I see it, but I’m worried and need to do something.
Nate sighs, pulls down the sleeve of his coat to expose his left shoulder, and I see that it is indeed just a scratch on the top. I guess I was expecting a hole in his flesh, but there isn’t one. It’s barely bleeding anymore. Though he tells me I’m being ridiculous, I insist on covering up the scratch with some little finger bandages I find in the bottom of my purse.
“Feel better now?” Nate asks, still grinning.
“No.” Tears well up in my eyes.
“Hey, now,” Nate says softly as he pulls his coat back up. He reaches out and gathers me into his arms, sitting down on the old boards covering the outhouse hole. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“It could have been a lot worse.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t.”
“You knew who those men were.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But when they came
