Colton's Fugitive Family. Jennifer Morey

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       Chapter 1

      White Christmas lights twinkled in the otherwise dimly lit log cabin; a fire crackled; It’s a Wonderful Life played on a DVD. Demetria “Demi” Colton hung the last ornament she’d picked up in town. Stepping back, she admired the end result. She folded her arms and smiled, feeling a welcome upturn of the corners of her lips.

      Perfect.

      Teal, magenta, blue and lime-green round ornaments mixed with other fun, animated character ornaments and sparkly sprigs of blue-colored berries. She’d wondered if the end result would be too gaudy but the tree looked beautiful. She’d put it in the corner of the living room, flanked by windows. Only she and Wolf would enjoy viewing the lights from outside—hopefully. She didn’t want company.

      She had worried she wouldn’t be able to have a tree this year, but she’d come up with a disguise so she could go into the little town not far from here. She’d changed the color of her hair from red to black and cut it into a pixie almost a year ago, when she’d first gone on the run. A brown wig, black-rimmed glasses and hippie-themed clothes were diametrically different from how she had dressed before. Working as an independent bounty hunter she had worn practical clothes—clean, neat and tidy—but she also liked to dress up and go out. She did not turn away from a Little Black Dress when the occasion fit.

      Thinking she heard something outside, Demi moved to the front window and parted the heavy drapes that reached the floor. She saw nothing other than darkness beyond the porch lights. On one side of the cabin the front entry jutted out farther than the living area inside, one thing she really liked about the place. There was room to remove winter clothes, put shoes under the white bench and hang jackets on hooks above. She’d bought a no-slip multicolored rug to put over the wood floor.

      The weather forecast had called for snow tonight and tomorrow. She loved snowstorms, one positive about being forced into hiding with a five-month-old baby, and this storm had prompted her to stock up on essentials since it was predicted that over a foot would fall. The single-lane driveway that wound its way a quarter of a mile from the highway would be impassable for days, shaded by a dense, dark forest.

      Snowflakes drifted down right now, nothing too ominous, but a light layer of white already covered the ground. She’d be safe tonight, a rarity.

      Letting the drape fall back into place, she turned toward the living room of the small cabin and shut off the lamp beside the sofa. She left the light on over the stove all night. With the Christmas lights, it was just bright enough to see. The cabin wasn’t big, with a kitchen, dining area and living room, and two bedrooms down a short hallway. One bathroom.

      She had constructed a secret room where Wolf slept, and a baby monitor on the kitchen counter kept her apprised of his well-being. She’d created a hidden entrance in her bedroom closet. She’d divided the second bedroom into two. Call her paranoid, but given her fugitive situation, her first priority was Wolf’s safety. And she had an escape plan if anything went wrong. She slept easier at night knowing her son was locked in a secure place. She shouldn’t have to do any of that. She shouldn’t even be in this preposterous situation.

      Anger flared. Innocent of the alleged murder of her ex-fiancé, framed unjustly, she had no way of finding evidence to clear her name. That infuriated her. It would infuriate anyone in this situation, but her temper demanded some extra control. She screamed into pillows on occasion, banged on the mattress. Sometimes she just did a few laps around the cabin to vent steam. The real killer better not get too close. The least she’d like to do was give him a bloody nose.

      “We aren’t succumbing to anger anymore,” she said aloud. She didn’t feel like going to bed yet, too restless and in one of those moods where, bored and caged, she didn’t know what to do with herself.

      She tried to take in her home, to let it soothe her nerves as it often did. The living room took up the front, with the kitchen to the rear left and the smaller dining room to the right, the hallway between. She’d found a used furniture store in town and used the cash she’d taken from her account to survive on the run. That had been another sore point. She should not have had to tap into her savings, most of which had come from an inheritance from her mother, who had ended up marrying someone with money after she divorced Demi’s father. She had died in a car accident a few years ago.

      A tall dark-wood bistro table with white trim and very few scratches stood in the dining room. She hadn’t hung anything on the log walls. The blue patterned sofa was against the wall near the entry, and two high-backed chairs flanked a wood-burning fireplace near the dining room. A cream and tan area rug warmed the room.

      The kitchen had come with stainless steel appliances and beautiful gray granite countertops with white cabinets and pendant lighting above the snack bar. She sat at one of the two blue-cushioned stools each night for dinner, after she fed her adorable baby.

      If she had to spend a lot of time isolated and on the run, she needed a calming environment, and this cabin had provided that, thanks to a good friend. Being alone had its challenges, however.

      “I just need to be around people more.” Maybe she’d started to go a little crazy being cooped up in this place for so many months.

      If she could socialize again, then she could stop talking to herself. She had Wolf, but a five-month-old couldn’t talk back yet.

      Thankfully, her inventive disguise allowed her to go to the nearby small town for supplies and visits to the library where she kept tabs on the Groom Killer investigation. She’d used the computer there to read news reports and dig into the background of the bogus witness who claimed to have seen her fleeing the scene of her ex-fiancé’s murder back in January. She’d believed he would lead her to whoever framed her. And why. And she’d been right.

      Hearing that sound again—a sort of thump—Demi returned to the window, but when she pushed back the drape a bit, the Christmas lights were reflected on the glass. She saw nothing, but heard a muffled scraping on the other window.

      Heart leaping into faster beats, she hurried to the fireplace mantel where she kept a wooden box containing a pistol. She had mounted a rifle on the wall in the hallway and kept another pistol in her bedroom, on the top shelf of her closet.

      When she heard a piece of glass part from the window and the sound of a gathering winter storm grew louder, she realized that whoever had carved a hole СКАЧАТЬ