Two Cabins, One Lake: An Alaskan Romance (24 page)

Chapter T
wenty-One

I
was initially awoken by a scream.  I started to get alarmed.  But then I
remembered what we’d done to my brothers, which they were probably just then
discovering.

I smiled, and drifted back to sleep.

This is what woke me up the second time:

“They’re fucking!”

My eyes flipped open to find Rory standing over my bed. 
Staring at me.

Staring at
us
, I realized.  There was still an arm
over my waist, a warm body curved against my back. 
Shit
.  He hadn’t
left.

“What?”  The groggy voice came from downstairs.

“Helly and Gary are fucking!” Rory repeated.  His bloodshot eyes
had lost some of their wide-open shock, and were now starting to twinkle.

I waved at him, trying to get him to go away.  I’d have hit
him with a big fucking hammer if I had one, and if he was close enough.  I
didn’t, and he wasn’t.  And if I lunged up out of the covers at him, he’d see
boob.

“What, right now?” asked a disbelieving Zack.

Downstairs, somebody farted.  Loudly.

I fell back against Gary with a groan, wishing I could
disappear.  He pressed his smiling mouth against my neck, unperturbed by my
crazy family, and not caring that Rory still stood over us like a creeper.

“Good morning,” Gary said, kissing the sensitive spot under
my ear.

Fuck it.
  I leaned back and kissed him with lots of
tongue, hoping to disgust my brother.  He didn’t seem disgust-able.  He just
watched.

“Dammit, Ror,” I finally said.  “What did I say about my
personal space?”

He didn’t look like he was gonna move, so I leaned out of
bed, grabbed a shoe, and threw it at him.  He dodged, and it sailed over the
railing.

I winced as it landed on something in my kitchen with a
crash.

Laughing, Rory finally slid down my ladder and out of sight.

I was still cussing when Gary turned my chin back around and
kissed me again.  By the time we broke apart, I’d hiked a thigh up over his
hip, my fingers were dug into his hair, and I was panting.

I looked into his eyes, so close to my own.  They were a
beautiful green, shadowed by thick black lashes.  “You stayed the night.”

“Oops,” he said.  He didn’t seem the least bit abashed about
waking up in the same bed as me.  His hand had come to rest on my knee, his
thumb stroking little circles on my skin.

I lifted my head, peering out my window.  The sun was up,
the morning well-advanced.  “So is this the key to getting you to let me sleep
in?” I asked.

His mouth had moved up to nuzzle my hairline, and I heard
him breathe in the scent of my mussed hair.  “This?” he asked.

“Tiring you out.  Wrapping myself around you, and not
letting you escape.”  I remember I’d once thought about swaddling him in duct
tape to get him to be silent.  Hardly anything worked better than duct tape,
but it appeared that I just might.

He laughed softly, making me very aware of the way my
nipples pressed into his warm, broad chest.  “Maybe.”

“Gary!  Come on down here, buddy.  We wanna talk to ya.” 
That sounded like Zack.

Gary raised his brows.

I shrugged.  “They like to chase my boyfriends off.”

His eyes were dancing.  “Am I your boyfriend?”

“If I’m not just the flavor of the week, that might be
okay,” I quipped.  I climbed out of bed, not wanting him to see how badly I
didn’t want to be just some fling for him.

“The flavor of week?” he asked.

“You know, the screamer the second night you were here, the
Barbie doll in your shirt.  ‘Ga-ry’,” I said, mimicking her shudder-inducing
tones as I stuck my legs into a pair of pants.

He laughed.  I liked that sound way, way too much.

“Just out of curiosity, was the first a blonde, too?”

He finally flung the sheet aside and rolled out of bed. 
“No.”

I would have liked to have some witty reply, but the sight
of the long, muscular length of him, and that bare ass, arrested my brain as
well as my tongue.  The rear view was downright spectacular.

We finally made it down the ladder, but it was dicey for a
few minutes after he found me standing there topless, staring at him.

My brothers were gathered around the kitchen table.  I
looked back and forth between them, and then over toward the living area.  The
bottle of lube was missing.

Ah, I see.
  They were going to pretend nothing had happened. 
Hopefully that niggling doubt Gary spoke of had been well-planted, because I’d
forgotten to take pictures.

Zack tossed my panties onto the table.  “Have a seat,” he
said to Gary.

Gary looked at my brothers, and then at me, and I saw him do
a mental
oh-what-the-hell
.  He sat.

Zack loomed on the other side of the table like a hungover thug,
with his arms crossed and his ‘game face’ on.  Rory was making a pitiful
attempt to match his brother’s stern expression.  And J.D.?  Entertained, as
usual.

“What are your intentions toward our sister?” Zack asked.

Gary looked at me, hesitating, and suddenly I didn’t want to
hear his answer.  I was only all-too-aware he hadn’t answered the
flavor-of-the-week question.

“I’m gonna go start the generator,” I muttered.

Either they’d come to an understanding, or they’d beat each
other up.  And I was beginning to think Gary could hold his own with my
brothers, so I left him in there with them.  After swiping my panties off the
table, of course.

The air was warm outside, and smelled green.  The sunshine
pouring across my yard had chased all the mosquitos away.  A thin tendril of
smoke curled up from last night’s fire pit, and the camp chairs sat around it
just as we’d left them.

Dozens of beer bottles lay strewn about.  I put my hands on
my hips as I took in the wreckage, and added littering to my payback tally.

Then I found out the generator wouldn’t start.  I’d
pre-warmed it, I did everything I was supposed to do, but got no turnover, not
even a click.  I tried all my usual tricks—tapping this, wiggling that,
checking that it had fuel—but nothing worked.

Throwing my hands into the air, I stomped back to the
cabin.  “The generator won’t start,” I announced, noticing no one was bleeding.

They all looked at me like, ‘And how is this
our
problem?’

“The generator charges the batteries, and the batteries are
where we get electricity,” I explained, slowly.  “If I can’t get that generator
running, there’ll be no showers, no video games.  No internet,” I said, using
the only threat I knew would work.

J.D. practically ran out the door, quickly followed by Rory. 
To my surprise, Zack and Gary followed.  I peeked my head out after them to
make sure it wasn’t so Zack could break his nose without getting blood on my
rug, but all four of them were quickly engrossed in the generator. 
Huh
.

I knew I wasn’t going to be any help, and I figured if they
were going to fix my generator, the least I could do was make breakfast.  So I
scrambled some eggs, burnt some toast, and headed back out to check on them.

As I was walking up, the generator coughed, backfired, and
then roared to life.  Gary was kneeling next to it, and as I approached, he
looked up with a grin of triumph.

His expression morphed slightly as he saw me, his amusement
coming through loud and clear.  “Uh-oh,” he said.  “I’m in trouble now, aren’t
I?”

I was at a loss for a moment, and then I remembered my
comment to Ed about using him for his mechanical skills.

The generator backfired again, and we all frowned at it. 
Then we realized it wasn’t the generator.

It was gunshots.

Chapter T
wenty-Two

T
here
were gunshots coming from next door.

“What the heck?”  I said.  As you’ve probably gathered,
gunshots were a pretty darn common sound in the bush, but these ones were
coming from Gary’s cabin, and Gary was standing right in front of me.  It
sounded like they were shooting something metal.

Gary was at the corner of my cabin and peering around so
fast I didn’t see him move.  I looked over his shoulder, and saw several men
with guns crawling over his property.  One stood to the side with a shotgun,
methodically blowing holes in Gary’s helicopter.

What.  The ever-loving.  Hell?
  Were these the men
that had been breaking into cabins?

Gary turned around and started herding me back toward my
door.  “Into the cabin,” he ordered.  “All of you.  Now.  And get your guns.”

“My guns?”  I hesitated for a moment, feeling a bit in
shock.  I talked big, and I waved my shotgun around, but I’d never thought I’d
have to use them.  Against
people
?

My brothers beat me to my gun cabinet.  Zack put the Glock
in my hands, and I stared at it like I’d never seen it before.

“I’ll take the Remington 700,” Gary said.  It was the rifle
with the scope, the one my brothers had been making neat little groupings with
at a hundred yards away.

“But—” Rory started.

“I was a sniper in the marines,” Gary said.  Yeah, this was
a surprise to me too.

Wordlessly, Rory handed him the gun.

Quickly and efficiently, Gary checked that it was loaded,
safety off.  He accepted a mostly-empty box of extra rounds from Rory.  Then he
lifted the rifle up to his shoulder, and looked through the scope and my window
at the men on his property.  I scooped up my binoculars and looked with him.

The door to Gary’s cabin was open, and I could see them
spilling back out into the yard, shaking their heads.  They consulted with a
man standing stationary in the chaos, a guy whose fashion sense seemed much in
line with those thugs from the other day.  He gestured toward my cabin.  A pair
of them started down the lawn toward us, guns in hand.

“Fuck,” Gary said.  He lowered the scope and turned to look
at us.  “These men are after me.  They want me dead.  I’m going to have to take
them out, but I’m going to aim to disable.  Use your guns as self-defense only,
try not to shoot anybody unless you absolutely have to.  I don’t want you
tangled up in this mess.”

My brothers looked amped-up and eager to shoot something,
but they nodded.  I felt rooted to the floor, watching the men with guns jog
along the beach, getting ever closer to my residence, my quiet, peaceful cabin,
my favorite place in the whole wide world.

Looking at Gary didn’t help—I didn’t know this Gary, the one
who looked calm and predatory when men with guns were coming for him.  Who
was
he?  And why did these men want him?

 “We’re sitting ducks in the cabin,” he said.  “Team up, go
into the woods.  I’m gonna start picking them off.”  Gary met my gaze, and the
look he gave me seemed apologetic.

“Why don’t you come with us?” I asked.  I didn’t want him
hurt, that I knew.  “They’ll never find us in these woods, we can get to the
river, take my boat—”

Gary shook his head.  “I’m done running.  I want to end
this.”

J.D. grasped my elbow.  “C’mon Hel, you’re with me.”

I followed him out of my cabin, still feeling dazed.

Then the shooting began.  They were loud shots, one and then
two.  I turned in time to see the second guy topple to the ground before he
reached the stairs up from my beach.  I heard yelling, and through the trees I
got glimpses of men pouring down from Gary’s lawn.  They were headed to my
place en masse.  A couple more gunshots rang out.

Then J.D. was dragging me into the woods.  I winced and
finally got my head in the game when a burning lash of devil’s club whipped
across my leg.

At about fifty feet in, I heard the rat-a-tat of a fully
automatic weapon.  I winced when I heard glass break.  There was another loud
rifle shot, and the other gun went silent.

After another several long strides, we hunkered behind an
old stump, the currants and wild roses and clumps of grasses growing out of the
top offering ample cover.  I leaned to the side to peer toward my place.

Gary came out the door, hitting the ground in a single
stride.  He crouched down at the corner of my cabin, and started firing again. 
I watched him in awe.  He’d shot for shit with the rifles earlier, but it was
becoming obvious he’d been fudging it on purpose.  Each of his shots was
followed by a pained cry.

Branches snapped as a few of the men ducked into the trees at
a spot level with my burnt blueberry patch.  I heard a shot and then grunts, so
I was guessing Zack and Rory had engaged.

A few more reached the stairs up from the beach.

Gary fell back to my generator shack, and then dropped
another man on my lawn.

I saw movement from the corner of my eye.  One of the men
was creeping along the edge of the woods.  Just twenty feet ahead of our hiding
spot, he stopped and peered around a tree.  He brought his gun up, waiting for
Gary to stick his head back out.

My gun hand twitched upward.  He’d said try not to shoot
anybody, but I wasn’t going to let Gary get shot.  Even if he had told me some
half-truths about his past.

“Stay here,” J.D. whispered.  He dashed out from behind our
cover.  He crossed the distance without seeming to touch the earth, and slammed
a hard kick into the man’s side before he had even turned.  He struck his gun
arm, the gun went flying, and then the other guy was just completely screwed.  I
winced as my brother ruthlessly pounded the man to the ground.

When I glanced toward Gary again, I saw he was fighting
someone hand-to-hand next to my generator shack.  The two seemed evenly
matched, and the punches and kicks being thrown were brutal.

Movement on the lawn drew my attention to one of the men
he’d felled.  He was crawling toward his gun.  And Gary was standing in the
open, completely exposed.

I didn’t even hesitate.  I shed my cover and flew through
the woods, disregarding devil’s club and any bullets that might be flying my
way.  I sprinted out and kicked the gun out of the thug’s hand just as his
fingers started to curl around it.  Then I stood over him, breathing hard, my
gun aimed at his forehead.

I almost shot him when somebody grabbed me from behind.  A
hard arm wrapped around my throat, threatening to cut off my air, and a cold
muzzle pressed to my temple.

“Drop your gun,” a voice growled in my ear.

I dropped it, and the man dragged me along so that our backs
were against my new shed.  I could feel his knees pressing against the backs of
my legs as he hunkered down, using me as cover.

When I looked up, I saw that the man Gary had been fighting
was on the ground, and Gary had popped back out of sight.

“Gary, I’ve got your girlfriend!” the man yelled.  Was this
one of those situations where I was the last to know?  “Drop your weapon and
come out here,” the man ordered.  When I struggled against him, he dug the tip
of that gun into my head, so I wised up and quit.

Gary peered around the building, and then stepped out,
tossing the rifle away.  The man holding me made a sound of satisfaction.

On our right, Rory stumbled up the steps from the beach.  A
huge guy came up after him, his gun pressed to my brother’s back.

“I know she’s got three brothers, and I wanna see all of
you, hands up, or I shoot her,” the man yelled.

“How do you know that?” I asked, tugging at his arm, trying
to give myself some breathing room.  I looked over at Gary, worried about him. 
He was watching me with a look that easily transcended ‘worried’.  Maybe I
was
his girlfriend.

“Gentleman by the name of Brett,” my captor said.  “He was
actually pretty eager to sell you out.”

I growled as J.D. and Zack stepped out of the trees and
tossed their guns onto the ground.

“Let them go,” Gary said.  “It’s me you want.  I’m the one
who shot your men.”

Seeing them all so vulnerable, weaponless in the face of
armed thugs, was making me angry.  I tugged on the arm around my neck again. 
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, trying to buy them some time.  My blonde
hair had fallen loose, and I hoped I looked like a complete ditz.  I needed
them to underestimate me.

“Oh, you didn’t tell your girlfriend what you did for a
living, how you were able to afford that helicopter?” the man said, caressing
my temple with that damn gun.  His foul breath was against my cheek as he said,
“He killed people for us.”

“Who is us?” I asked, making sure my voice came out high and
fearful.  It wasn’t much of a stretch.

“They’re criminals.  A drug cartel operating out of New
Orleans,” Gary said.

I stared at him.  He wasn’t denying it.  He just stood
there, looking wonderful, and he wasn’t denying it.  Damn me for always falling
for the wrong ones.

“Gary betrayed us,” the man hissed from behind me.  “He
botched a job, he got caught, and he rolled over on us.”

I glanced at my brothers.  J.D. was eyeing the guy holding Rory,
and Rory was eyeing J.D.  They both glanced over toward me as the man holding
me began to rant about what a traitor Gary was.

Mocha chose that moment to make her entrance.  She darted in
from around the shed, and sank her teeth into my captor’s calf.  Snarling, she
yanked his leg right out from under him.

He shouted, his gun hand flying out as he tried to catch his
balance.  We stumbled sideways, and his grip loosened.

I took my opportunity.  In one swift movement, I stepped to
his side, thrust my knee in behind his, and reach up over his back and around
his face.  I dug my fingers into his fucking eyes and yanked him over backward,
slipping his hold.

Gary surged forward, knocking my captor to the ground almost
before I was done with him.  The man’s gun flew out of his hand, Gary got his
hands around his throat, and they started grappling.

“Run!” Gary growled.

I hesitated.  I heard a shot, and turned to see that Rory
and J.D. were fighting the man who’d been holding a gun on him.  He was so
frickin’ big, J.D.’s blows weren’t doing much.  A few feet away, Zack was on
the ground holding his side.

The blood leaking from between his fingers crystallized
things for me.  In a millisecond, my fear morphed straight to anger.  Like hell
I was gonna run.  Nobody hurt my brothers.  Nobody but me.

I scooped a gun off the ground.

Behind them, another man limped up from the beach, his eyes
trained on them, his gun lifting.

I shot the bastard.  He toppled back off the stairs.

I heard a branch snap, and whirled to shoot another one
approaching through the woods.  This one went down with a yelp, rustling brush
as he fell.

I swung around, training my gun on the giant my brothers
were wrestling with.  They were moving fast, but the man who’d shot Zack was a
pretty damn big target.  I waited for my opening, and then I shot him, too. 
J.D. and Rory rode him to the ground.

Gary was on top of the guy who’d held me, pummeling him with
angry fists.  That fight was all but won, so I turned my attention to Zack.

Keeping my gun ready in one hand, I hurried over to my
bleeding brother and knelt next to him.

“I’m okay,” Zack croaked, when he clearly wasn’t.  He was
kinda pale, and it wasn’t a lot of blood, but the bullet hole was in his
abdomen, and that couldn’t possibly be good.  I bunched his shirt over it and
helped him apply pressure.

J.D. and Rory had restrained their guy, and I glanced over
at Gary, wanting to help him, but saw that I didn’t need to.  The man who’d
seemed to be their leader was barely fighting anymore, his punches weak pushes
and bats to Gary’s shoulders and sides.  His face was a bloody mess.

Gary leaned back slightly—and then he snapped the guy’s
neck.

I looked on silently with all three of my brothers as he
climbed off the guy he’d just killed.  Gary was breathing hard, his fists
bloody.

His eyes went immediately to me.  “Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded dumbly.  I had no idea how I felt about all this. 
My brother was bleeding on my lawn.  My newly minted boyfriend was some sort of
hitman.  I’d just shot three people.  And I had a dozen dead and injured men on
my property.

His gaze fell to Zack.  “We need to call EMS.”

What followed was a flurry of activity.  The State Troopers
came in their helicopter first, securing the scene.  Then the air ambulance
landed.  They bundled Zack and two others onto gurneys, and left.  The Troopers
swarmed over my property, taking pictures and gathering evidence.

They took the five of us to Anchorage, where they took our
statements.  Rory, J.D. and I were released that evening, after it became a
pretty clear case of self-defense.

Zack had had a bullet extracted from his gut, and was making
jokes by the time the three of us showed up at his bedside.  I sat with him in
the hospital overnight, but it was obvious he was going to be fine.  So the
next day, I caught a flight home.

The Troopers were still doing their thing in my yard, but
they let me into my cabin.  I fed the dog, and then I sat down at my writing
desk.  I looked out my big picture window at my lover’s cabin, and the
bullet-peppered helicopter sitting out front.  It was pretty out, not much
different from the day he’d flown into my life.

A long crack in the glass obscured my view.  I followed it
up to a bullet hole in the upper corner of the window, which I could just imagine
letting in mosquitos.  There were some things I couldn’t fix, but this…

I went and got my duct tape.