A Man Worth Keeping

Good—Nell, the baby and Anders are still alive.

“You’ve got a bullet in the groin and it looks like another one creased your neck and cheek.” Anders was putting a good face on it, trying to smile, but Max could feel his partner using both hands and all his weight to stanch the blood pouring out of Max’s body.

“Hurts.”

Anders laughed. “I should think.”

“Groin?”

“It’s bad, lots of blood. But you’ll live to love another day.”

“Where—” The blood made it difficult to talk, but he spit out more and tried again. “Where’s Tom?”

“Tom?”

“The dad. Adult male.”

Anders glanced briefly behind him, where blue shapes and the screaming and the frog all lingered just out of Max’s focus.

“The wife is hurt, but not bad. The infant is fine, but we were too late for the dad. The first bullet was right through the chest. He died instantly.”

Justice, Max thought, is too damn complicated.

Medics approached, pushing Anders out of the way. But Anders wasn’t a man easily pushed and he hovered over a medic’s shoulder.

Max was glad. He didn’t want to die alone.

“The teenager?” Max asked as the medics lifted him onto the stretcher. Hot shards of pain, like glass, like blowtorches and firebombs, blazed up his body from his leg. He screamed, warm blood spilling into his mouth and he choked.

“Jesus, guys. Careful,” Anders barked, and the medics ran to get Max out of the nursery room that had turned into a bloodbath.

“The teenager?” he cried, pushing against the black edges that lingered and taunted him with sweet relief.

“You got him,” Anders said, pride and regret in his voice. “He’s dead.”

Max had done his job. He let go and the world went dark.

Chapter One

Two years later

MAX MITCHELL SLID the two-by-four over the sawhorses and brushed the snow off his hand tools, but more fat flakes fell to replace what he’d moved.

It was only nine in the morning, and the forecast had called for squalls all day.

Winter. Nothing good about it.

Of course, spending every minute of the season outside was a surefire way to cultivate his dislike of the cold. But lately, walls no matter how far away—and ceilings—no matter how high—felt too close. Like coffins.

The thick brown gloves didn’t keep out the chill so he clapped his hands together, scaring blackbirds from the tree line a few feet behind him.

Even the skeleton structure he’d spent the past few months constructing seemed to shiver and quake in the cold December morning.

He eyed his building and for about the hundredth time he wondered what it was going to be.

It wasn’t one of the cottages that he’d spent last spring and summer building for his brother’s Riverview Inn.

Too small for that. Too plain for his brother, Gabe, the owner of the luxury lodge in the wilderness of the Catskills.

Max told everyone it was going to be an equipment shed, because they needed one. But it was so far away from the buildings that needed maintaining and the lawns that needed mowing, he knew it would be a pain in the butt hauling equipment back and forth.

Still, he called it a shed because he didn’t know what else to call it.

Besides, the construction kept his hands busy, his head empty. And busy hands and an empty head stymied the worst of the memories.

The skin on the back of his neck grew knees and crawled for his hairline and he whirled, one hand at his hip as if his gun would be where it had been for ten years. But of course his hip was empty and, behind him, watching him silently beneath a snow-covered Douglas fir, was a little girl.

“Hi,” he said.

She waved.

“You by yourself?” He scanned the treeline for a parent.

She nodded.

Talkative little thing.

“Where’d you come from?” Max asked.

The girl jerked her thumb toward the inn that was back down the trail about thirty feet through the forest.

“Are you a guest?” he asked, although it was Monday and most guests checked in on Sunday. “At the inn?” She shrugged.

“You…ah…lost?” Max asked.

She shook her head.

“Can you talk?”

She nodded.

“Are you gonna?”

She shook her head and smiled.

His heart, despite the hours in the cold, warmed his chest.

“Do you think maybe someone is worried about you?”