High Intensity (High Mountain Trackers HMT 2G #2)

Chapter 16

Sixteen

Jillian

My eyes snap open when a large hand presses down over my mouth.

Even in the dark I recognize Wolff’s face just inches from mine, his index finger pressed against his lips.

“Quiet. Someone’s here,” he whispers barely audibly.

Now I’m wide awake. He takes his hand from my mouth and backs off, so I can sit up. He’s just wearing a pair of jeans and reaches for his gun on the nightstand.

Then I hear it; the soft creak of the loose floorboard by the front door. Emo sometimes lies on the mat in the front hallway, but I don’t hear the telltale sound of the tags on her collar rattling when she moves.

In fact, I can’t hear the dogs at all. If someone is in my house, why aren’t the dogs alerting?

Something is very wrong.

But when I start to move, Wolff grabs me firmly by the shoulder and shakes his head.

“You…bathroom,” he mouths, as he grabs for the sweats I stripped out of last night and left on the floor, shoving them at me. “You hear anything, get out the window.”

The bedroom window is facing the front of the house, but the small bathroom window over the tub faces out the back.

“The alarm…the dogs…”

“I’ve got it,” he says, handing his phone to me. Mine is in the kitchen on the charger. “Get away from the house, hide, call 911, then High Meadow. Code is 1537 to unlock.”

“But—”

“Go. Now.”

He’s already reaching for the door when I dart into the bathroom.

My hands are shaking as I try to get my feet into the legs of my sweatpants. Shit , I don’t have socks. By now, my heart is hammering so hard it’s all I can hear. I shove Wolff’s phone in my pocket and carefully climb into the tub. I use the wide windowsill to store my shampoo and body wash, and quickly remove the bottles, setting them on the floor.

Making every effort to be as quiet as I can, I manage to take out the screen, unlock the window, only to find the window stuck when I try to slide it up.

The next moment, an ungodly loud crash sounds from somewhere inside the house, followed by the sharp crack of a gunshot. The sudden surge of adrenaline has me shoving at the window, putting all my weight into it, and with a high-pitched squeak, it slides open.

I perch on the narrow ledge of the tub on my toes and pull myself through the small window opening. Not ideal to go headfirst, especially not when I realize the bottom of the window is at least six feet from the ground, but I don’t have a choice.

More cracks of gunfire have me heave myself through, panicking for a moment when my hips get stuck, but with a good kick of my legs and a hefty push off the window frame with my hands, I launch myself at the ground below.

I’m grateful for the snow breaking my fall, but the impact still stuns me for a moment. Or maybe it’s the cold hitting me all at once. Still, I scramble to my feet; I have to get moving.

I aim for the back of my yard, and duck behind the shed next to the dog kennel, already pulling Wolff’s phone from my pocket. My hands are shaking so hard it takes me three tries to unlock it. Then I call 911. I give the woman who answers the basics, but when she starts asking asinine questions, I hang up and quickly dial the ranch.

Jonas answers, and it’s clear I woke him.

“The fuck, Wolff. Something better be on fire for you to call at this hour.”

“It’s me, Jillian. Someone has broken into my house. Seventeen Terrace View Drive,” I rattle off in a whispered voice. “Wolff is still in the house. Shots were fired.”

“Where are you?” Jonas snaps.

“Behind the dog kennel out back.”

“Stay there. Don’t move. We’re on our way.”

Abruptly the line goes dead and a heavy silence settles in around me. I strain to hear noises that may be coming from the house, but if there are any, I’m not hearing them; the snow cover may be muffling the sound.

My body starts shivering to try and ward off the cold creeping up from my feet. Those are turning into ice clumps and I can’t feel my toes anymore. In hindsight, I wished I’d grabbed a towel or something from the bathroom I could’ve wrapped myself in, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

The fear I’ve been able to keep at bay so far is fast taking hold, and my imagination runs away with me. Visions of Wolff lying in a pool of blood make it hard to follow through on Jonas’s instructions to stay put.

What if he’s hurt and needs help? I’m a nurse, I know mere seconds can mean the difference between life and death. I’ve done what Wolff asked of me, but I can’t simply hide here like a coward when I could be making a difference. That’s not my style.

Determined, I slip from my hiding spot and—sticking to the fence separating my property from the neighbor’s—retrace my steps back to the house. There’s no way I’ll be able to get back in the house through that bathroom window, it’s up too high for me to reach. My best option is to go around the side of the house and see if I can get safely in the front.

I keep my eye on the house as I approach but don’t detect any movement. I carefully lift the latch on the gate when I reach it, but can’t prevent the squeal of one of the hinges in desperate need of some oil. The sound cuts through the silence and I freeze for a moment, waiting for some kind of reaction. When I don’t hear anything, I slip through.

With my back to the side of the house, I keep my eyes fixed on the front, inching my way forward, when I’m suddenly grabbed from behind.

A surprised yell is trapped inside when a large hand clamps over my mouth.

Wolff

I’m second-guessing myself the moment I slip from the bedroom.

Maybe it would’ve been better to keep Jillian close. There may well be more than one intruder. In fact, it’s more than likely there are.

As I sneak down the hallway, I can feel chilled air coming toward me. I’m guessing the window or door they managed to come in through was left open. Fuck , I sent Jillian out in that cold.

I hear a rustle of clothes, moments before the narrow beam of a pen light comes into view. Someone is moving through the living room.

Pressing my back against the wall, I try to stay out of sight as I cautiously move toward the intruder, my gun in hand. My best chance is the element of surprise, so I have to stay out of sight until I can get a bead on them.

When I see the light move into the kitchen, I peek around the corner and take a step into the living area, my eyes fixed on the guy’s back. I’m hoping I can sneak up behind him and put my gun to his head before he even knows I’m here. But as I inch up on him, trying to stick as close to the wall so I’m partially blocked by the fridge, I’m suddenly shoved from behind and slam into the side of the appliance.

I was afraid there was more than one.

By some miracle, I’m able to keep a firm grip on my weapon, and when a bullet whizzes by my ear, I’m able to return fire at the figure I’d followed into the kitchen. I immediately pivot around and fire a shot in the general direction of whoever it was that shoved me into the fridge, but that individual is already darting out the front door, which is wide open. When I turn back, the original shooter is rounding the island, trying to get a better shot at me, but I’m already on the move.

Harder for him to hit a moving target, and his next shot hits the fridge behind with a loud ping. But his action leaves him partially exposed and I quickly fire off a responding shot, hitting him in the shoulder. He immediately drops his gun and—clutching his shoulder—starts running toward the front of the house.

The temptation is strong to go after him, but then I remember the other guy didn’t seem hurt and is already outside. Chances are good, I poke my head out the door, and someone’s going to take a potshot at it. No thanks.

Instead, I stop at the front door and slam it shut, not that that’ll do much. Then I turn and catch a glimpse of something I can’t afford to take the time to investigate closer. I have to make sure Jillian was able to get away safely and beeline it back to the en suite bathroom. She isn’t there and the window is open, so I assume she made it out. The only problem is, now the two intruders are out there with her.

Running into the bedroom, I grab my shirt and pull it on, then I rush to the front door to grab my boots and parka, before going out the sliding door in the kitchen to look for Jillian. I peer toward the tree line at the back of the yard to see if I can spot her, but she’s hidden well. I don’t see anything.

I’m about to head back there to find her when I hear the squeal of a hinge on the side of the house. Jumping off the deck, I rush toward the sound, peeking around the corner of the house. Halfway down I spot Jillian’s red hair and sneak up behind her.

Her body freezes the moment I slip one arm around her midsection and clamp a hand over her mouth for the second time. I’m positive I’ll be paying for that at some point, but for now I don’t want to risk alerting anyone at the front of the house any more than we already have.

I have no doubt whoever is here is looking for Jillian, but they’ll have to go through me to get to her.

“Me again,” I mumble against the shell of her ear.

She instantly swings around and burrows her shivering body against me. She feels cold in my arms and I immediately wrap my coat around her, lifting her off her feet. I only now notice those are bare.

“Wrap your legs around me,” I softly instruct her.

She hops up, her arms around my neck and her legs clamped around my waist, hanging on like a child. At least this way my body heat and the down lining of my coat will keep her warm. She’s not that heavy, and I have no problem holding her in place with one arm so I can aim and shoot with the other if necessary.

“There’s at least two of them,” I whisper as I carry her into the backyard.

My main concern is Jillian and I’m not about to go to the front of the house, where those guys might still be lingering around, with her in my arms. In fact, I don’t want her near the house at all, in case they decide to return. So instead, I carry her to the trees in the back, where I thought she’d been hiding in the first place.

“Jonas is on his way,” she tells me when I stop behind a cluster of trees. “And he said he’d make the 911 call.”

I can still see the house, but I doubt they’d be able to spot us.

“Good. We’ll just hang tight until they get here.”

Jillian tries to push off but I hold firm.

“You have no shoes on,” I remind her.

She stops struggling, but her eyes are panicked. “My dogs. What happened to my dogs?”

The sound of sirens approaching saves me from having to describe what I thought I saw in her living room.

At least for now.

“Drugged.”

“How?” Jillian wants to know, sitting on the floor with Nugget’s limp body in her lap.

“I let them out one more time at about midnight,” I inform her. “They looked fine when I brought them in, but I didn’t see what they were up to outside. It’s possible they ate something.”

Those guys could’ve tossed something in the yard to incapacitate the dogs. It makes sense. They would’ve waited until they were sure it took effect before making their next move, which apparently was to kill the power. That effectively disabled Jillian’s house alarm, which is hardwired into the electrical and does not have an alternate energy source. After that it was a matter of getting inside, which turned out to be too easy.

Unfortunately, there was no sign of the two when the cavalry rolled in, but I felt some satisfaction when the sheriff’s deputy was able to recover the gun the guy dropped when I winged him. There was also a blood trail they were able to follow to an empty house a couple of doors down. The owners have apparently gone south for the winter.

“JD is on his way with Doc Richards,” Bo announces. “She’ll figure it out.”

Janey Richards is our local vet, who took over for Doc Evans when he retired last year. She’s young, but she’s already proven she knows what she’s doing, looking after the horses at High Meadow.

Bo is sitting on the floor taking care of Hunter. He’d already been here working on the dogs by the time I figured it was safe enough to bring Jillian back inside. She’d surprised me, keeping a cool head as she went down to her knees by her dogs and asked Bo what she could do. Both of them have medical backgrounds and I guess when push comes to shove, some of the basic principles remain the same, whether dealing with people or animals.

Peanut, Emo, and Murphy—the three bigger dogs—are groggy but seem to be coming out of it. However, the two smaller ones, Hunter and Nugget, are not faring as well. Their breathing is shallow and neither of them are responding to stimuli.

Twenty minutes later, the two smaller dogs are sufficiently stabilized for Doc Richards to take them back to the veterinary clinic, where she plans to keep a close eye on them. If not for the other three still needing care, I’m sure Jillian would’ve insisted on going, but Janey convinced her she’d be more useful looking after the bigger dogs, and she promised to keep her up-to-date on Hunter’s and Nugget’s conditions.

“Let’s pack up the dogs,” I tell her after JD and Doc leave with the two sickest animals.

“What do you mean?”

Bo, Dan, Jackson, and Jonas already left, but the sheriff’s department is still here waiting for the FBI to arrive. I would like to get Jillian out of here before they do, otherwise we’ll be stuck here all night. The feds can wait until tomorrow, when we’ve had some rest and hopefully know Jillian’s dogs are going to be okay. We won’t be able to get that here with people going in and out all night.

“This place will be swarming with law enforcement, and we need to decompress and find a quiet space for the dogs.”

For a moment, it looks like she is going to object before exhaustion slumps her shoulders and she shakes her head.

“Where are we going?”

“The ranch.”