Free Longest Night by Kara Braden Page A

sheet out of the typewriter and tipped it toward the oil lantern. She only had to read a few lines before she sighed in frustration and threw it into the discard basket below the desk. So much for story focus.
    Of course, there was the other story, the one her agent didn’t know about, the one she’d started not with the intent of sharing but to exorcise her demons one word at a time. That one came all too easily to her, as though the more her world of childhood fantasy slipped away, the more the nightmare took its place. But she wasn’t ready. Not yet. One page a month, maybe two—that was the most she could handle.
    She thought about Ian’s beautiful blue eyes and how he’d reacted to the sight of her scars.
    Before she even realized she was moving, she was up out of her chair and crossing to the bedroom. He looked up abruptly but didn’t follow. He had a book in his lap, one of the books taken from the bookshelves that lined almost every available wall of the cabin.
    She entered the eight-digit combination to the gun safe and swung open the door. The tiny halogen light mounted in the top of the safe came on, casting a harsh white glow over oiled metal and matte black composite and softer wood stocks. She got out the .22, an old, lovingly tended Remington, and slung it over her shoulder. The ammunition was dirt cheap and stocked in quantity in Pinelake, which made it perfect for target shooting.
    Rather than going back into the living room, she cut through the bathroom, not ready to answer any questions he might ask. She put on the patched, threadbare jacket that she kept in the kitchen. She didn’t bother with gloves, though she knew her fingers would go stiff, then burn with the cold, and finally go numb if she stayed out long enough.
    It was a couple of hours until midnight, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Cecily walked out back, keeping her head down, and went to the airstrip. It made a convenient target range for everything but the sniper rifle. At the far end of the runway, she’d hung scrap metal plates from tree branches. She put the box of ammunition down on the edge of the gravel and crouched, not looking up at the sky as she dropped the magazine into her palm. It only held ten shots, which would force her to take a breath every few seconds while she reloaded.
    When she pressed the first bullet into the magazine, her hands shook.
    Her internal dissonance had to be caused by having Ian there in the house, a living, breathing presence where before there had only been silence. It didn’t help that he was fucking gorgeous, with those eyes and that voice and that strange sense of calm intensity. He didn’t fill the air with meaningless conversation; he was content to sit in silence, but he always watched whatever she was doing, wherever she went.
    Even now, she kept an ear out for the creak of the back door. She wondered how long it would take between the first shot and when she heard the squeak of hinges. Probably only a few seconds.
    She pushed the magazine home and rose, snugging the rifle to her right shoulder. The old wound still ached, especially in the cold; she wouldn’t be able to fire too many rounds from a higher-power rifle, but the .22 she could fire all night.
    The scope wasn’t very powerful, but that didn’t matter. She could barely see her target area, much less an actual target, so she looked in the right direction and brought the rifle up into her line of sight, waiting a few seconds while she tried to distinguish anything. It was pointless—without moonlight, even the infinite stars overhead weren’t enough to light up her target—so she eased her finger against the trigger, changing pressure in slight increments until she heard the sharp report of the firing pin striking. A .22 sounded more like silverware dropped on a tile floor than the boom of a higher-caliber round, and the recoil was too slight for her to detect.
    She