Soldier's Christmas Secrets

Because he’d hit his target? He wasn’t sure.

He waited another five minutes before edging along the ground toward the nine o’clock position. The man was lying there, dead from a gunshot wound to his chest.

Hawk sighed and rose to his feet, staggering a bit. Four men taken down total, one dead. A wave of despair hit him hard. He hated knowing that he’d killed a man even though it was in self-defense.

After a long moment, he pulled off the man’s ski mask, realizing this guy was the same one who’d been in Jillian’s house. Searching for ID proved fruitless, but he did find a set of car keys. Hawk tucked them away. Returning to the snowmobile, he fired it up and rode back to the tree with the deer blind.

“Jillian? You and Lizzy okay?”

“Yes,” came the faint response. “Just cold.”

“I know. Did you call Mike?”

“Not yet.”

“Good.” He gathered every ounce of strength and determination, knowing he’d need it get up the tree and back down with Lizzy and Jillian. It was much harder this time: his left arm was weak and he didn’t have the same surge of adrenaline roaring through his veins. But he managed, and soon the three of them were back on solid ground.

“Now what?” Jillian asked, her body shivering with cold.

He indicated the snowmobile. “Now we find the vehicle belonging to the men who came to find us.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but he gestured for her to get on the snowmobile first with Lizzy. He slid in behind them and reached out to grab the handlebars.

The trip to the highway didn’t take long, and he quickly found the black SUV, a newer make and model compared to his own.

“We need Lizzy’s car seat,” Jillian protested as he ushered them inside.

“I know.” Hawk didn’t want to stay at the cabin for much longer, fearing more men were on the way, but the cabin was only a half mile up the road. Getting the car seat didn’t take much time, and soon they were back on the highway.

He cranked the heat for Jillian and Lizzy while considering their next move. They’d been found at the cabin far too quickly. He never should have gone there in the first place.

The weight of Jillian’s and Lizzy’s safety was incredibly heavy on his shoulders.

He couldn’t afford to make another mistake.

Jillian gratefully absorbed the warm air blasting from the vents of the SUV. She’d prayed the entire time they’d been up in the tree stand, and God had answered by not only keeping them safe but providing a method of escape.

Between Hawk’s ingenuity and God’s support, they’d made it out the woods alive. Yet it was difficult to relax. She felt certain the danger was far from over.

She wrestled with the fact that Hawk was really James. She’d lived next door to him for five months—how could she not have figured it out? This all seemed like some sort of twisted movie plot rather than something that happened in real life.

She glanced over at him, searching his profile for signs of the man she’d once married.

Now that she knew the truth, it was easy to spot the similarities and differences. His intense blue eyes were the same, but the prominent cheekbones were gone, and she felt bad about the deep scar grooving his face. Hawk was leaner and more muscular than she remembered, and his voice, which always sounded hoarse now, made her wonder if there had been some sort of internal damage to his vocal cords as a result of the plane crash.

Hawk didn’t laugh the way James had, or talk as much. He was serious and to the point.

She turned away, mourning the loss all over again. Maybe Hawk was right to claim James had died in the Appalachian Mountains. The man sitting beside her, the one who’d climbed up and down a tree with her and Lizzy on his back, seemed very different than the man she’d married.

And for the life of her, she couldn’t look at him and think James. He was Hawk.

“You’ll need to stop at a drugstore. I need bandages and other supplies to take care of your wound.”

He gave a small nod. “Later. Right now I need to figure out a place to go where we’ll be safe.”

“You mentioned a place with individual cabins and a playground for Lizzy,” she reminded.

He hesitated and shrugged. “Yeah, that’s where we’re headed. But it’s just five days before Christmas and I’m not sure they have openings.”

“I can’t imagine individual cabins being a hot place to spend Christmas.”

He glanced at her in surprise. “It is for me.”

“Because you’re a single guy without a family.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she wished them back. “I mean, until now.”

Hawk didn’t respond and she knew that she’d stuck her foot in her mouth, big-time. Yet it was hardly her fault. She’d only known he was James for a few hours.

Terrifying hours that they’d spent hiding from armed men wearing ski masks.

The silence grew uncomfortable. More proof that they were virtual strangers rather than husband and wife.

“How do you know about this place with cabins and a playground anyway?”

“Used it last summer when a friend of mine needed to hide out for a while.”

“Mike Callahan? That friend?”

He nodded.

More silence, and it occurred to her that attempting to have a conversation with Hawk was harder work than panning for gold. Not that she’d ever tried panning for gold.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said.

He frowned. “For what?”

She let out a sigh. “For insinuating that you don’t have a family. It’s just—difficult to wrap my mind around all of this.”

“Understandable. And as I said before, it doesn’t have to change anything between us.”

But it did, she thought. Knowing Hawk was James changed everything.

She found herself thinking about the future more than ever. How her relationship with Hawk would move forward after the danger was over.

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Lizzy said plaintively.

Glancing at the clock, she was surprised to see it was approaching eleven o’clock in the morning. Considering they’d been up by six and running for their lives since seven, she couldn’t blame Lizzy for wanting to eat.

“We’ll stop at a restaurant soon,” Hawk surprised her by saying. “There’s one not too far away. And there’s a drugstore nearby, too.”