“Just Make It Quick” She Whispered. Three Mountain Men Drew Her Into Silent Lodge, Kept Her Warm

Chapter 9

The bullet came through the window and hit the back wall three inches above the water pail.

Willa was already moving before the second shot. She grabbed the pail and pushed it toward Elias, who was heading for the back door to check the roof. The orange light climbing the rear wall wasn’t subtle. It moved fast, the way fire does when someone’s helped it along.

“Full moon’s tomorrow,” Tate said. “Crane changed his mind.”

Gideon had his rifle up, positioned left of the broken window. “Or he panicked. Either way, he’s here now.”

Two more shots came from the tree line below — high warning shots, maybe, or bad aim in the dark. Willa didn’t wait to find out which. She took the second water pail from the shelf and carried it toward the back, where smoke was already finding its way under the door. The fire had caught the rear section of the roof — the part above the woodshed, which connected to the tunnel. They all knew it. Whoever had started it had known exactly where to stand.

Elias got the back door open and the smoke pushed in hard. He pulled it shut again. “Roof’s gone back there. We can’t fight it from outside.”

“Then we fight it from in here as long as we can,” Gideon said.

They did. Tate managed the window with his good arm, watching the tree line, calling out when he saw movement. Elias and Willa carried water to the back room, soaking the interior wall to slow the spread. It bought them time. Not much. But some.

Willa was coming back through the main room with an empty pail when Gideon turned from the window and headed toward the hallway.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“My brother’s compass is in the back room.”

She stepped in front of him — not to block him exactly, just to make him look at her. “That wall is on fire.”

“I know where it is. I can get in and get out.”

“The ceiling’s going to come down.” She looked at him steadily. “You know it is.”

He looked past her at the hallway. The smoke was darker now, thicker. The orange at the edges of the doorframe had turned red.

“Gideon.” She said his name quietly. “Your family is in this room.”

A long second passed. The ceiling in the back room cracked like a gunshot. Something heavy shifted and gave way, and smoke poured under the hallway door like water.

Gideon didn’t move toward the hall. He looked at her. Then he turned back toward the window and picked up his rifle.

She let out a breath and didn’t make anything of it. There wasn’t time.

It was Willa who said the tunnel first. She’d been thinking about it since the fire started, running the options while she carried water. The main road was blocked — Crane had men at the bottom of the trail, and no one was getting through that way without a fight they couldn’t win. The front door was a kill shot waiting to happen.

That left the tunnel under the woodshed.

“Virgil already knows about it,” Tate said.

“Yes,” she said. “But the roof over our heads is on fire. So we go through the tunnel, and we deal with Virgil on the other side.”

Nobody argued. There wasn’t a better option, and they all knew it.

They moved fast. Tate carried what he could with one arm. Elias took his medical bag and the account book they’d brought back from the freight shack. Gideon grabbed ammunition and the food pack that Willa had staged near the door three days ago — she’d put it there because she’d thought something like this might happen. She didn’t say so. She just picked up her end and helped carry it.

The tunnel entrance was in the floor of the woodshed, under a false layer of planking. Gideon went first. Then Tate. Then Elias. Willa went last and pulled the planking back into place above her head, more out of habit than hope.

The tunnel was low and dark and cold. She could hear the fire above them — a deep crackling that moved through the ground like something alive.

They came out the far end into the tree line behind the house. The clearing was lit orange from the burning roof.

Crane was there.

He had four men with him, arranged in a loose line. He was watching the rear exit the way a man watches a door he knows is about to open. He looked at Willa, and he smiled. Not warm. Satisfied.

“I’ll give you credit,” he said. “The tunnel was a good idea. I just had a better one.”

He took one step toward her. Tate moved, and one of Crane’s men raised a pistol and pointed it at Tate’s chest.

“Don’t,” Crane said.

Tate stopped.

Crane looked at Willa. “I need you to walk over here. Willingly or not — that part stopped mattering about an hour ago.”

“She doesn’t go anywhere,” Gideon said.

“You’re going to lower that rifle,” Crane said, “because if you don’t, that man shoots your friend, and I make this harder on everyone.” He looked at Gideon the way he looked at everything — like a debt he was collecting. “She’s coming with me. That’s already decided. The question is how badly tonight ends for the rest of you.”

Gideon’s rifle didn’t move.

Willa stepped forward. “Gideon.” She said it clearly. “Put it down.”

Gideon looked at her. She held his gaze, and she made sure he saw that she knew what she was doing.

“Do not come alone,” she said.

It took him a moment. Then he lowered the rifle. Not dropped it. Lowered it.

Crane’s man let Tate breathe again. Crane moved to Willa’s side and put his hand on her arm. She let him. She walked with him across the clearing without pulling away, and she didn’t look back, and she kept her face completely still.

Behind her, she heard Tate say something low and urgent to Gideon. She heard Gideon answer. She didn’t hear the words.

But she heard the tone. And the tone was two men agreeing on something. Which was enough.

Crane brought her down the mountain to the logging camp. It took two hours in the dark and cold, and he didn’t speak much, which suited her. She spent the time noticing things. How many men were with them. Where they positioned themselves. The layout of the camp as they rode in — which she mostly remembered from his tour months ago, when he’d been trying to impress her. The office building. The payroll desk she’d seen through the open door. The large cabinet on the back wall where he kept his records.

He put her in a storage room off the main building. The door was old, the hinges original to the structure — iron, rusted, set into a wood frame that had been softening for twenty years. She sat down on the floor and started testing them immediately.

The window had been nailed shut. The lock was solid. But the bottom hinge had a nail that shifted when she pressed it. Not much. Less than a quarter inch. But it moved.

She reached into the inside hem of her dress — where she’d kept her mother’s small sewing scissors since the second day at Stillwater — and she got to work.

She didn’t hurry. Hurrying made mistakes. She worked the nail for an hour, loosening it in the old wood, pressing and releasing, pressing and releasing, until she felt the hinge plate lift slightly on one side.

Not enough to open the door.

Enough to know she could.

Then she stopped, and waited.

At some point she heard Crane giving instructions in the next room. The wedding was set for morning. He’d arranged two witnesses. She heard him say her name, and the word willing.

And she kept her hands still in her lap, and breathed evenly.

He came in once before dawn, the marriage papers under his arm.

She looked at him without any visible emotion. “I want time to change my clothes,” she said, “and arrange my hair. I’ll be presentable, if we’re doing this. I’m not doing it looking like I’ve been dragged off a mountain.”

He studied her.

“Give me an hour,” she said. “I’ll sign the papers. I’ll say what you need me to say.” She kept her voice flat, practical. “But I want to look like I’m doing it willingly. That’s what you need, isn’t it? Witnesses who believe it.”

He considered that for longer than she would have liked. Then he nodded, and set the papers on the shelf.

“One hour,” he said. “There are two men outside this door.”

“I know,” she said.

He left. She heard the lock turn.

She gave it five minutes. Then she stood up, put her shoulder against the hinge side of the door, and pushed — slow and steady — until the hinge gave, and the door shifted in its frame.

Not open. Just loose enough.

She waited.

When Crane came back, he opened the lock and pushed the door inward — and she was standing just inside, her expression cooperative, the papers in her hand.

He reached for them.

She dropped the papers, grabbed the scissors from her hem, and cut the strap of his gun belt in one motion.

The holster hit the floor.

She ran.