What a beautiful word, a name she feared she would never hear again. Her arms locked around him and held tight. The sweet smell of him filled her senses.
“Evan!” Her breath hitched on a sob, and she hugged tighter. “I have you, baby. Mommy’s got you.”
“Missed you, Mommy.” His sweet words puffed clouds into the subfreezing air. “You was gone a long time, so I snuck Daddy’s phone away and called you.”
With a familiarity that broke Dee’s heart all over again, Evan clutched a lock of her hair and nuzzled it to his face. So often as a baby he’d done that very thing, like clasping a security blanket. How frightened and confused he must have been during his time away from her.
“I’m here now and nothing’s going to make me leave again.” The sound of the revving engine sent shivers down her spine. Blane was so close. Enough of happy reunions. She needed to get Evan away, fast. “We’re gonna go for a ride.”
“What about Daddy?” Evan glanced over his shoulder. He gripped her hair until she winced.
“Shh, sweetie,” Dee whispered as she stumbled back toward the cluster of trees. Evan’s extra weight threw her off balance. She forced herself to sacrifice speed for a more surefooted pace. The last thing she needed was to sprawl in the snow. “It’s Mommy’s turn to see you for a while.”
“Okay.” He smiled, innocently oblivious to the trauma all around him. “I was sick from the candy bar but Daddy gave me a sticky pin.”
Thank God Blane had remembered about the extra Epis she always kept around Evan. “Good, that’s great. But I need you to be very quiet. We can talk all you want once we get to the truck.”
Hugging her son closer, she started back toward where she’d come. If she could just make it back out of the clearing, she would have cover. Where was Jacob? Taking on life solo stunk. She could have used his clear-thinking steadiness.
And suddenly, there he was, tall, strong, dependable. Only a few yards away with his back to her he darted around a thick evergreen. Did she dare call out to him and risk alerting Blane? What choice did she have? She would have to take the chance.
“Jacob!” she called, gasping, stumbling as her feet hooked on a root. She twisted to protect Evan as she tumbled into the snow.
“Dee!” Jacob shouted as he broke through the trees, one arm outstretched. The dread on his face broadcast far greater concerns than a simple fall in the snow.
“Deirdre,” a chilling voice echoed from behind her.
Chapter 17
Ten yards too far away to help, Jacob watched Dee tumble to the snow with her son clutched to her. A medium-build, blond man who matched Lambert’s mug shot with eerie accuracy approached her, gun in hand.
Jacob felt as if his brain had been cleaved in two. One part of him assessed the situation with a calm of old. The other part urged him to fling himself on top of Dee and her child, shield them from the evil only three steps away. Why the hell had she left the truck?
“Deirdre,” the man beside her called, each step toward her a menacing promise. He kept his eyes fixed on Jacob, his gun trained on Dee.
Her body jerked as if she’d been slapped. Dee’s face tightened and she squeezed her eyes shut as Evan whimpered in her arms.
“Blane.” The whispered name carried a wealth of disillusionment. She curved her body protectively around a strong-limbed preschooler to keep him from seeing the gun.
Jacob absorbed the waves of pain radiating from her as if they were his own. And they were. He’d brought her here, to this. He’d promised to find her son and keep them safe.
Frustration and rage both slammed into him. And love. Hell, yeah, love.
He loved her so damned much his chest hurt with each icy breath. No more dodging the truth. What a time to figure it out.
Evan tipped up his face and thrust out his bottom lip. “Hurted my nose when we tripped.”
“Sorry, sweetie.” She clutched him tighter, pressing his face against her chest as if to comfort while keeping his eyes shielded from the horror unfolding. “We’ll wash the scratch very soon.”
Lambert closed in on Dee. “Well, my dear, imagine seeing you here, and with such a hulking companion. I thought you’d died out on that road, but you certainly landed on your feet—” he paused, gesturing with his gun to her crumpled in the snow “—figuratively speaking.”
“Well, I’m very much alive,” Dee answered through gritted teeth and poorly disguised fury. “Unlike that man in your Suburban in the river.”
Blane shrugged. “Skidding away from you, I blew out my tires. I needed another ride that would be able to pull the trailer I’d already arranged to pick up. So I pulled over and pretended my car had broken down until the perfect Good Samaritan stopped by—one with a big truck.”
The implication slapped over Jacob in an icy splash. Lambert had left Dee for dead, then hadn’t hesitated to kill a total stranger just to steal his vehicle. The bastard was pure evil.
Then Jacob’s brain snagged on an earlier part of the man’s diatribe. Lambert had thought Dee died, too. But he had to know she was alive if he’d been stalking her at the Lodge. It didn’t make sense.