A/N: Sorry for the late update but better late than never. This is your Christmas present. Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate).

The heat of the bullet singed her earlobe as it zinged past. Though she had not been hit, she instinctively cupped a hand on her ear and dropped to the dirt next to Carlton. She thanked whatever God there might be that the soil here was fertile and soft, and nothing like the sandy, hard-packed dust that plagued the rest of California.

The shock of the bullet dulled her senses. Everything just seemed…blank. The air was blank. Noise was blank. The dirt was blank. She was floating on a fluffy, weightless cloud in the sky. Gently drifting, floating away into that vast expanse of blue. Slowly getting farther and farther away from her problems…

"O'Hara! O'Hara!"

Carlton's hand roughly shook her shoulder but his voice sounded like it was coming through a paper towel tube, echoing from a distance. His outline was blurry. And where was that god-awful ringing coming from? Was he making that noise? His facial features were tensing more and more with each yell, twisting themselves into a tight, concerned portrait.

"O'Hara? God, O'Hara are you okay?"

His frightened tenor—almost soprano now—repeated the question over and over. With each repetition, the paper towel tube was shortened more and more. Finally, his cries began coming in loud and clear.

"O'Hara! Dammit, answer me!"

The ringing in her ears was soon drowned out by her partner's voice. He shook her roughly, grimacing as he did so. The situation slowly came into focus again and before her partner could jostle her again she took his hands.

"Yeah," she breathed. "Yeah, I'm okay."

In the dim twilight, she watched as the tension melted from his features, but it returned quickly after another bullet whistled over their heads. They both flinched and pressed themselves into the dirt as far as they could. She painstakingly turned her head to look at him. His lips were pursed into a thin white line and his eyebrows were nearly touching his hairline. She'd never seen him so scared—not even when he'd had a gun pressed to his temple. She fumbled in the dirt for a minute before locating and gripping his hand.

Carlton angled his head to try and see behind him, suppressing a grimace. "Where did that come from?" he whispered through clenched teeth.

Juliet lifted her head as far as she dared and scanned the surrounding forest. It was too dark now to make out anything but shadows and darker shadows. The pine trees stood like ominous guardsmen against the deep purple of the evening sky. They, too, held their breath like the vulnerable detectives, waiting for the crack of another gunshot and the dying scream of a wounded animal.

"God, it's like The Village out here." She rolled her eyes at her own Shawn-like movie reference. Carlton gasped in pain. Juliet leaned over him, thinking that he'd been shot somehow without her seeing or hearing. "What? What's wrong?"

Carlton laughed in a low tone. "Relax, O'Hara. Just readjusting my leg." Though he was trying to hide it, Juliet could only guess the amount of pain he was enduring right now. She wanted to smack him. Why did he have to be such a tough guy? If he'd only let his guard down long enough for her to enter that complicated psyche of his, maybe he wouldn't be so grumpy, so unapproachable. But that wall had been built almost since the day he was born, a leftover from having to be the man of the house. She still wanted to smack him, though. She settled for squeezing his hand again. He squeezed back, much harder.

She dragged her thoughts back to their situation. With a gunman (or gunmen) somewhere in those forbidding trees, crouching in the dark with their rifle trained just above the two cops, waiting once again to squeeze off a round into their defenseless bodies, they were sitting ducks. They needed to escape the meadow, and quickly.

"Should've listened to Bambi's mom," Carlton murmured, obviously regretting stumbling into the meadow as well. Juliet patted his cheek gently, not sure if the random thought was serious or if her no-nonsense partner was slowly slipping into shock. She silently prayed for the former.

Squinting her eyes through the darkness (and wondering how the sniper could be so accurate in the nearly pitch black), she spotted a clearing in the trees about one thousand yards to their rear. If she could drag Carlton there, they would be out of the line of fire of the gunman.

She judged him to be about fifty pounds heavier than her, due to height alone. It wouldn't be easy dragging him, especially since he was practically dead weight. As she mentally ran through the best ways to move Carlton, he broke into her thoughts with a dry, cracking voice.

"Juliet," Carlton quietly implored. His eyes harbored a look of determination mixed with grave acceptance. "You need to find cover. Leave me here and get to the trees." Juliet began to protest but Carlton overlapped her. "I have my gun, I'll be fine. I'll only weigh you down if you try and drag me. Just go and come back for me later."

Juliet stared at the older man as if she thought him insane. After all they'd been through together? After all the times they'd nearly died? After all the cases they'd solved together? After all the times they'd saved each other's sorry butts? And he thought that she would just leave him there alone with nothing but his pitiful Glock to protect him? No. She wasn't about to leave her partner behind.

With a renewed determination, she looped her hands under his armpits and began dragging him toward the clearing.

Carlton moaned in pain and latched onto her arms to make her stop.

"Leave me, O'Hara. Get out of here."

She ignored his weak protests and kept laboriously dragging him.

Five hundred yards. Four hundred yards. His feeble attempts to stop her wrenched her heart and she bit back tears as he continued to pull back on her arms.

Three hundred yards. Two hundred yards. Almost there.

One hundred yards.

Fifty.

Twenty…

CRACK.

Another bullet flew by her, just grazing the top of her right shoulder. She doubled over and dropped Carlton's left arm to clap her hand over the burning wound. The pain shot through her arm like boiling water rushing through her veins.

"O'Hara!"

She lifted her fingers to see blood—red, thick, and with the viscosity of warm maple syrup. She was near vomiting as she used her left sleeve to wipe away the blood. An audible sigh of relief escaped her lips when she found that it was only a small scratch.

By this point, Carlton was squeezing her arms so hard that they left fingernail marks. She smiled and hooked an arm under his left armpit again. "It's okay, Carlton. I'm fine." With an extraordinary burst of strength, she yanked him the last few yards into a clump of bushes with her. A few more bullets peppered the ground around them, but none came any closer.

She lowered him to the ground and put a finger to her lips. Carlton nodded and bit down on his lower lip to keep from crying out. His face was the color of a sheet of paper and his whole body shook with exhaustion. Juliet pushed aside her pity for the time being to focus on the meadow—there would be time for bandaging wounds later when they weren't being shot at.

The meadow was silent. No birds chirping, no insects buzzing—completely still. The tension in the air nearly choked Juliet and Carlton as they waited for their sniper to make the first move.

Juliet waited with bated breath for what seemed an hour but couldn't have been more than ten minutes. The sniper still hadn't shot off another round. In fact, she wasn't even sure if he had moved. If he had, she was sure she would've heard in the dead stillness that surrounded them.

They waited another ten minutes, their breath coming out in ragged exhales. The temperature had dropped nearly twenty degrees and Juliet swore she could see her breath coming out in puffs of white mist. However, she was also grateful for the freezing temperatures, as they slowed her bleeding shoulder for the time being. The trees towered above and leaned over them as if to say, We can see you. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a small shudder escape Carlton. She gripped his hand again, taking note of how his icy fingers trembled. She hoped the cold was at least numbing his pain.

Another ten minutes later, she leaned down to her partner and whispered, "I think they left. But we need to get out of here."

The pain of his leg and his bruised body caused Carlton's irritation to rear its nasty head. He unclenched his teeth and muttered, "And which way is out, O'Hara?"

Night had fallen. Though the glow of the half-moon provided some illumination, they could barely see five feet in front of them. Even then, it was only shadows. Trees and bushes nearly surrounded them (except for the meadow), one tree looking very much like another. It would be impossible to tell what direction was which, especially in this light.

"I don't know, Carlton," she admitted. She felt Carlton let out a defeated sigh which turned into a whimper near the end. "But we'll get out of this. I promise."

The moon glinted off his retinas as he tilted his chin up to Juliet and responded, "I sure hope so." The glint was lost as he resignedly shut his eyes. "Wake me when it's my watch." He was soon fast asleep.

Juliet clenched her fists tightly and bit down on a knuckle to keep herself from screaming in frustration. She had gotten them lost. And if they hadn't gotten lost, Carlton wouldn't have hurt himself. And if Carlton hadn't have hurt himself, they wouldn't be hiding out in the bushes, just waiting to get killed. This was all her fault.

"Nothing else can possible go wrong," she mumbled to herself.

"Oh, that's where you're wrong, my dear," a menacing voice chuckled.