Christmas Alpha by Carole Mortimer

kitchen floor.
      He and Eva had left the generator on to power the alarm earlier, but turned off all the lights when they went to bed, in an effort to preserve the petrol supply needed for the generator. Finn didn’t have a lot of faith in the electricity company’s reassurance that ‘power will be resumed as soon as possible’, knowing the company’s first responsibility would be to the more populated towns and cities.
      Finn decided to leave the lights off as he instead used the small beam of the flashlight to see by. Switching the lights might have enabled him to see more easily, but that also worked in reverse; Moira would also be able to see him too.  
      His movements were stealthily soft as he searched all the rooms downstairs, with no success, before going lightly up the stairs to search the bedrooms.  
      As far as Finn was concerned, this latest stunt of Moira’s meant she had crossed over the line from obsessed to just plain crazy.  
    Crazy enough for her to be a serious threat. It was—
      What the…
      Finn came to an abrupt halt as he reached the bottom of the stairs after the search upstairs had also proved futile, the beam of light from the torch now picking out patches of melting snow on the darkness of the hall carpet.  
      Patches of melting snow the size of a woman’s small foot.  
      Patches of melting snow that led right to the closed door of the sitting room, where he had told Eva to stay put.
      Sweet Jesus, he had thought he was protecting Eva by going off alone, and instead he had left her alone and at the mercy of a crazy woman!

    A crazy woman with a gun, Finn discovered, after he had quietly turned the door handle and stepped into the room.
      A cold shiver ran the length of his spine, the color draining from his face, as he took in the scene in front of him.  
      Eva was kneeling on the duvet in front of the fire, a trickle of blood leaking from a wound at her temple and dripping down her otherwise deathly pale cheeks.
      Standing across the room, arms raised, the gun in her hand pointed directly at the kneeling woman, was Moira Summers.  
      Moira’s pale blue eyes fever-bright as she turned and saw him standing there. “Merry Christmas, Finn!”  
      Just as if she had come here on a visit, and wasn’t currently pointing a gun at another human being.  
      Finn’s jaw clenched. “You—”  
      “Finn, I was just explaining to Miss… Moira,” Eva cut in quickly as she saw the anger blazing in the darkness of his eyes, “that she’s mistaken about—”
      “Did I give you permission to speak, bitch?” The other woman turned on her viciously, her beautiful features twisted into an ugly snarl.  
      And Eva couldn’t dispute that Moira was a beautiful woman; possibly in her late twenties, tall, blond and stunningly beautiful. As Eva would have expected any woman to be that Finn had once been involved with.
      The other woman was also dressed in a pink all-in-one ski suit, as if she had just stepped off a ski-slope and dropped in for a visit on her way back to the ski lodge for a warming glass of schnapps or mulled wine.
      When in reality Moira had actually just broken into the house her ex-lover was staying in, and was now pointing a gun at Eva’s head.
      The same gun she had used to strike Eva on the temple with a few minutes ago, when Eva had hesitated too long after the other woman had instructed her to kneel on the duvet.
      Eva had just been preparing to leave the room, after hearing Finn go up the stairs, when the door to the sitting room had opened and the other woman had stepped inside and softly closed the door behind her.  
      Eva had been so surprised that for a moment she hadn’t been able to believe that she was actually seeing a woman pointing a gun at her. It was just too surreal. Too unbelievable. Too insane.
      Waiting, praying for Finn to return, while she tried not to do anything to alarm or anger the other woman