Collision of The Heart by Laurie Alice Eakes Page A

and Ayden’s arms closed around her, dragging her backward, down beneath the bullet whining overhead like a bee out of season.
    Her head on her drawn-up knees, Mia trembled and gasped and gabbled nonsense exclamations and a few prayers. Ayden crouched beside her, his hand on her head, murmuring soothing, incomprehensible words of comfort. And all the while, the echo of the shot reverberated across the snow-laden landscape and gentle hills.
    “He’s gone now.” Ayden grasped Mia’s arms and lifted her to her feet. “And we should be as well.”
    “To the sheriff, I expect.” While Ayden sprinted to the horses’ heads, Mia stumbled to the sleigh and collapsed onto the seat.
    It rocked with the agitation of horses too well trained and old to have bolted but still restive in their traces. Mia’s stomach shifted in the opposite direction, and if she’d eaten any breakfast or lunch, she would have been sick right there in front of Ayden. She scooped up a handful of clean, white snow and held it to her brow. “What was that all about? Shooting looters on sight?”
    “Possibly, but we weren’t looting. And he didn’t fire until you mentioned the child.” The horses calmed, and Ayden returned to the sleigh. “I don’t think he actually shot at us.”
    “He aimed at me.” Mia faced him on the narrow seat.
    At one time, he was too close and too far away. If he had slipped an arm around her then, she would have succumbed to the longing to be held and rested her head on his shoulder, where she could hear the strong, even rhythm of his heart and inhale his fresh, clean scent from exposure to the winter air. But with them, closeness too easily led to cuddling, and cuddling led to kissing, and only a courting couple intending to wed had a right to that sort of nearness. She couldn’t even hold his hand.
    In that moment, with Ayden mere inches away, Mia missed him more than she had when she was nearly a thousand miles away. They hadn’t just lost their future together; they had lost their friendship from the past.
    Her eyes burned. Her lips quivered. She pressed her snowy glove to her mouth and closed her eyes to hold in the tears.
    “Let’s get to the sheriff.” Ayden’s voice was rough.
    Mia tucked herself into the far corner of the sleigh and drew the lap rug to her chin despite the pain doing so brought to her left wrist. “Perhaps we should stop and tell the other workers or ask them if they know who he is.”
    “If he’s from the railroad, I’ll be surprised.” Ayden’s jaw looked as hard as the railroad ties. “Even a train guard wouldn’t shoot without cause.”
    “Most criminals don’t shoot without cause.”
    Ayden cast her a sharp glance through a veil of newly falling snow. “How would you know that?”
    “I’ve done some reporting on crime.”
    “Mia, how could you? That’s dangerous.”
    “It can also pay well.” She looked past him as he turned the sleigh back the way they’d come. “The men aren’t there any longer.”
    The burned mail car where they had been raking through the debris now lay abandoned beneath the dusting of fresh snow—snow filling in footprints around the tracks and cars.
    “Frightened off, like us?” Mia asked.
    “Or counterfeit train workers, like the man with the gun.” Ayden clucked to the horses and snapped the reins, encouraging them to increase their pace. “I’ll take you home, then go on to the sheriff.”
    Mia stiffened. “You will do no such thing. I’m as much a witness to what happened as you are.”
    “Yes, but the sheriff won’t take you as seriously.”
    “Oh, will he not?” Mia clenched her fists and gasped as pain shot through her left wrist. “Are you telling me that even with the college here with brilliant female students, the law officers do not take the word of a woman as seriously as the word of a man?”
    “The women don’t vote.”
    “Which also needs to be rectified. Do you know that New Jersey’s original constitution