“What? Is he okay?”

She blinked at her daughter, her mouth moving but no words forming. She shook her head at Violet.

Chris tightened his grip, pulling her attention back to him. “What happened?” he repeated. He led her up the porch steps, wanting to get out of the exposed yard. She pulled away from him and yanked off her jacket, holding it out from her as if it were poison.

“I don’t know. We had just stepped out of the cabin when someone shot at us. Twice. I managed to get out of the way, but Frisco . . . and they broke a window of my Suburban. Someone is over there. We need to go to the police,” she pleaded with Chris. “And there was a dead man in the cabin—he’d been shot and burned. That’s what you smelled.”

Violet clamped a hand over her mouth and stared at her mother in shock.

Chris’s brain shifted into analysis-and-survival mode. “Did you see the shooter? Did they have a vehicle? Was there just one person?”

“I didn’t see anyone. Or a car,” Gianna forced out. Her pupils were dilated and Chris saw a vein pound at the side of her neck.

If they come by foot, it could take half an hour to get here. We left a clear trail to my cabin yesterday.

By vehicle, they could be here any minute.

“Let’s get inside,” he ordered. He gave Violet a small push on her shoulder. Her wide-eyed gaze was still locked on her mother’s bloody face.

“No! We need to go to the police!” Gianna argued, planting her feet.

Chris pointed at the snowmobile. “That won’t hold three of us.” He thought about his vehicle in the shed and for the hundredth time analyzed the depth of the snow and ice. It might handle these conditions. Or would I be risking our lives even more? Basic survival rules indicated that they stay with the shelter, but the murder had changed the rules. “Who do you pick to stay here alone?”

Gianna looked from him to Violet, who’d stepped just inside the door and into some semblance of cover. She stared back at her mother.

Indecision fluttered across Gianna’s face.

Chris had already done the analysis. He wouldn’t let the two women leave on their own, and he wouldn’t leave anyone behind in the cabin. That left the three of them hunkering down. Unless we risk traveling through the snow in my vehicle.

At least he was well armed.

“Can you shoot?” he asked Gianna in a low voice.

She pulled a gun out of the pocket of the bloody coat. “I took this off Frisco after he went down. I wanted something to protect myself with. But no, I’ve never shot one.”

Crap.

“Inside.” He took the weapon and coat from Gianna. They entered the house and he locked the door. “Violet, would you check all the locks on the windows? And close all the shades.” They should already be locked, but he needed to cross the verification off his mental list.

He spread out the coat on his kitchen island, keeping the human-tissue spatter from touching the surface. He grabbed a roll of paper towels to tackle the worst of the goop.

“You can’t do that! That’s evidence!”

He met Gianna’s gaze. “If we have to leave the house, this coat is all that stands between you and freezing to death. Do you want some of this cleaned off so you can use it or do you want to save the coat for a crime scene technician?”

She didn’t answer.

He handed her the roll of paper towels, and strode across the room to his gun safe and spun the dial. After a moment of silence, he heard the tearing of a paper towel and the soft sounds of her jacket being wiped. He felt like an ass, but someone had needed to get her brain thinking in the right direction. Survival mode.

He’d spent years in survival mode, always looking over his shoulder and lying awake at night waiting for sounds that indicated he and Brian had been hunted down. When the assassin finally arrived, his preparation had paid off, and he and Brian survived.

When the assassin had Brian in his grip, Chris had learned he was capable of taking human life.

He pushed away the memory, but the adrenaline raced through his veins again and he welcomed the reminder to keep his guard up—even when his ghost had been eliminated. Frisco’s murder proved that evil still moved in the world. Avoiding society as much as possible didn’t prevent horrors from touching Chris’s life.

The buzz in his veins was familiar. Like a song he hadn’t heard in a long time. His skin tingled with an awareness that he’d nearly forgotten, and he wondered if his reflexes had grown rusty. He pulled a rifle, a double-barreled shotgun, and another pistol out of the locker. His primary weapon lay in a drawer in the kitchen island where Gianna silently worked on her coat.

Why didn’t I grab that first?

Rusty.

He lay the three weapons on the counter next to Frisco’s weapon and reached around Gianna to push in on a nearly invisible drawer. It popped open, and she gaped at the gun inside. He hadn’t worried about either of the women finding it. It was on an end away from the other drawers and required a special release. Brian knew how to open the drawer. Chris had schooled him early in gun safety and use. His son had a healthy appreciation for the power of guns and treated them with respect.

“What the hell is going on?” Gianna said under her breath. She tossed a bloody paper towel in the garbage and ripped off another. She dampened it and attacked the smears on her coat. She’d removed 90 percent of the matter and it looked good enough in Chris’s opinion, but she scrubbed at the brownish discolorations with fervor. He watched her hands and saw them tremble.