Page 16 of Can She Get Home for Christmas?

“No.” He stamped snow off his boots. “And I was hoping that maybe you can stand guard for a few hours while I lie down.”

“Or course.”

“Do you want to make a trip to . . . the . . . bathroom first?” he asked.

“Probably a good idea.”

He was still uneasy when they went out, but he kept guard while she was doing her business and she did the same for him. When they returned to the cabin, he brought the night vision goggles and his weapon with him and set them on the floor beside the bed.

“You’re sure you’ll be okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He lay down, vividly aware of her gaze on him. “I’m going to look like I’m sleeping,” he said. “But I won’t be.”

“Okay.”

He fixed the pillow behind his head, trying to get comfortable. He wanted to tell her not to stare at him, but then he might have to explain why it might make a difference.

It was a strange experience, lying in the same room with Sam and at the same time trying to ignore her physical presence while he focused on her the way he had been over the past month.

At first, he was totally unable to do it, and he thought he might have to give up. But because a terrible urgency was beating at him, he kept trying to do what felt like the impossible.

From where he lay, he imagined he could hear Sam breathing on the other side of the small room, and he tried to shut that distraction out of his mind while he focused on the sound of the wind. Gradually, the gale became his focus, and that turned his inner senses to the exterior of the cabin.

And all at once he was into the brain wave state that let him zero in on a person who might be in trouble. It was a weird sensation because in his mind he saw her sitting with the gun in her hand and at the same time he was aware of evil close in on her from outside the cabin. At first it was simply a vague sense of dread, and then the scene in his mind sharpened, and he saw a man moving stealthily through the falling snow.

Chapter 7

Jax sat up in the bed so quickly that he saw the gun in Sam’s hand flash toward him. Then she lowered the weapon, and he knew she’d been reacting to his sudden movement.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

“Why?”

“He’s coming.” As he spoke, he pulled the bed aside and threw open the trapdoor in the floor.

She blinked at him as though she couldn’t process what he was doing. “How . . . how does he know where we are?”

“That stick was part of an alarm system.”

He snatched up the weapon and the goggles he’d left on the floor. “Come on. Quick,” he said, crossing the room and urging her toward the yawning opening.

“Down the ladder,” he said. “Hurry.”

She was still moving stiffly. “What’s going on?”

“Patton is coming.”

That got her moving faster. She set the safety on the semi and tucked it into her pocket before climbing down into the tunnel, slowly at first and then more quickly.

When she had left enough room for him on the rungs, he also pocketed his weapon and stepped onto the ladder, closing the trapdoor above him before joining her on the dirt floor below.

“Down the tunnel,” he urged. Again she did as he asked, but neither of them got very far before a deafening explosion shook the walls around them. Sam stumbled, fell, and hit the dirt floor. Jax came down on top of her, shielding her body with his own as dirt and debris fell from the ceiling of the tunnel.

The ground continued to tremble with aftershocks as Jax kept his position. He heard a roaring above them and felt heat radiating down from the cabin. When he saw flames licking at the boards above them, he stood. “Come on. We have to get farther away from the cabin.”

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