Free SHATTERED by Alice Sharpe Page A

going to get the money. She must have said I was going to get it from her ex-husband. If he got wind that there was a lot more here than what Mom technically owes, he’ll want every penny of it.” She sat forward and added, “I have to either find the silver or figure out a way to extend the deadline. Otherwise, my mother is dead, I’m dead and now it looks like you’re dead, too. It’s as simple as that.”

Chapter Seven
    Nate’s brow furrowed as he looked into Sarah’s eyes.
    It didn’t make sense to him that men as ruthless as these guys had orchestrated the present situation. There was the fact that someone had come into Mike’s house and killed him in cold blood but never even looked in the barn to see if anyone else was here. Then, after killing Mike, why did he drive away and come back on a snowmobile? He would probably have had to rent it and that would be traceable when all was said and done. It just seemed sloppy.
    But thugs weren’t always the most organized of people, and if the gunman was Bellows’s lackey, he might be making this up as he went along.
    Sarah rubbed her eyes, suppressing a yawn in the process. Running a hand through her hair, she stood and took off her jacket, then offered to help him with his. Although he dreaded moving the arm again, he agreed. The coat came off with a few internalized gasps on Nate’s part and a glistening layer of sweat on his brow. Sarah studied his sleeve for a moment in the flickering lantern light and then met his gaze. “Your arm is bleeding again.”
    “I figured.”
    “Come on, I’ll fix you up.”
    She grabbed one of the lanterns and he followed her down the dimly lit hall back to the bedroom. He sat down on the bed and began fumbling with his shirt buttons while she went into the bathroom to wash her hands. “Let me help you do that,” she said, deftly interceding once she returned. The process was much as before, except that this time they’d recently shared a few kisses and everything seemed charged with awareness. When she peeled the shirt away from his arm, she frowned. He glanced down and saw the bandage had turned red.
    “You need to go to bed for a few days,” she said.
    “That’s not going to happen,” he said as she unwound the bandage and dropped it in the trash can. She smeared antibiotic cream on a pad, which she placed directly over the wound, then she rebandaged his arm. A couple of seconds later, she’d produced another clean shirt from her father’s drawers and helped Nate slide his arm into the sleeve. Mike had been shorter and heavier than Nate, so the sleeves ended above his wrist bones.
    “I’ll make you a sling out of a bedsheet,” she said as she buttoned his shirt. Technically, he could have done two-thirds of these things himself, but the truth was he enjoyed her fussing over him. She disappeared into the hall and reentered carrying a white sheet, which she tore into pieces to fashion a sling. When she tied it around his neck, he reached up to touch her face and she glanced down at him.
    “Thanks,” he said.
    Her smile was warm and quick. She sat down beside him and put her head against his good shoulder. “I’m the one who should be thanking you,” she murmured. She looked up into his eyes and added, “Don’t you wish we could just lie down on this bed and go to sleep for a few hours?”
    “Yes to the lying down,” he said, kissing her softly on the lips. “No to the sleeping.”
    “And with that arm, how would you go about making love to me? That is what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
    “Yes it is,” he said. “And the answer is I would go about it very carefully but with abandon.”
    “I thought you were engaged to be married.”
    “I was. Now I’m not.”
    “What happened?”
    “A few weeks ago I told her I was coming up here to see my friends and she just fell apart. She said I wasn’t the same as I’d been, that I was living in the past, that I’d come home from Shatterhorn a