Free Baby, It's Cold Outside by Jennifer Greene, Merline Lovelace, Cindi Myers Page B

the bed board—the master bed was practically big enough to sleep five—ignored the shot of pain, whisked into her dad’s closet and scrabbled for the push-button battery light. She spotted the gun cabinet at the same instant she remembered that—of course —it was locked.
    She backtracked into the bathroom, yanked open the medicine chest. Her dad kept the cabinet key in an empty bottle of Midol—which he called theft protection. Her dad’s brand of humor. She shook out the key, dropped the open vial in the sink, ran back to the cabinet.
    Inside were two rifle-type guns, both long, and to her, both ugly. Her dad had forced her to learn how to shoot, always saying that you couldn’t visit a place like this without being able to protect yourself. She got it, always had, just couldn’t scare up a liking for guns. Now, though, she chafed at how long it’d been since her dad had made her exercise the how-to of putting in ammo and shooting them. Years, for sure.
    The first try, she put the wrong ammo in the wrong gun, swore at herself in a scream, got it right the second time. She hurled back downstairs, thinking Rick had to be all right. He had to be.
    She had a moment’s panic when her fingers touched the dead bolt. It wasn’t quite that simple, being willing to go outside, face the bear again. So she gave her heart three seconds to quit its stupid slamming, pushed the dead bolt loose and opened the door. Immediately the bear smell assaulted her nostrils—it was so distinctively rank and feral. Accelerating adrenaline far more was the immediate rush of sounds—the growls and roars of thebear, the sounds of wood being heaved. The snowy yard between the shed and house was almost completely littered with debris now.
    “Rick?”
    There was no response—except from the bear, whose head showed up in the shed doorway. He’d been in there. With Rick.
    “Just tell me—are you hurt?”
    It was a stupid question, she knew. Whether he answered or not didn’t alter what she had to do—which was get rid of the bear. Whatever it took. There was no other option, no other choice, nothing to think about. The only way she could get to Rick was by getting rid of the damned bear.
    The critter appeared no happier than when he’d last spotted her. He heaved up on two feet, rolled his head and growled, loud enough to shake her inside and out. She could see blood coming from his shoulder—not a lot—but enough to guess Rick had managed to cut him with the axe, not enough to maim the bear, not enough to stop him. Apparently just deep enough to infuriate him.
    Even more worrisome, Emilie realized, was that Rick might no longer have the axe. If he’d thrown it at the bear, it was his only weapon—and she couldn’t imagine him using the axe unless it was absolutely his only option.
    She flicked off the safety and hefted the repeater rifle to her shoulder—the monster weighed a ton . The bear had just plopped on all fours and was coming toward her, fast. Who could imagine how fast the huge animal could be? So she just shot.
    And shot.
    And shot.
    Tears blistered her eyes. It hurt. Every pull of the trigger sent a bruising kickback to her shoulder. She vaguely remembered her dad instructing her on how to hold the gun, but it just wasn’t a moment when she could access those old lessons. This was about doing it. Getting it done. Whatever it took to get to Rick.
    When her vision cleared—could it only have been seconds?—the rifle was empty. The strong smell of cordite choked the air. “Rick.”
    She couldn’t see the bear. Didn’t know if she’d hit it, hurt it or scared it—and didn’t care. Her first impulse was to run to the shed, to Rick, but the more rational decision was to run back in the house and get more ammunition, until she knew exactly what had happened.
    But then she heard him. “Is anything on the continent still alive out there, Doc?”
    He probably thought he was being funny. Not. She galloped into the shed,