His abandoned flashlight painted a steady white circle on the wall. It was the only thing he could see as he darted for the door. He reached it without incident, but as soon as he stepped through it he heard another blast.
This one wasn’t from his gun, either.
Then he felt the pain.
The sound of gunshots woke Laurel from a deep sleep. She blinked against the darkness, wondering if she could’ve dreamed the sound. Had she been reliving that night in Colorado as she so often did?
She didn’t think so. After a few seconds of trying to catch her breath and sort out the thoughts and feelings bombarding her from all sides, she heard another shot.
That was when she knew it was real.
“Myles?” she called.
No answer. It felt as if she was completely alone in the house, but she knew he’d never leave her without someone else being there. Not in her current predicament. And not without good reason.
“Myles?” she called again.
The familiar influx of adrenaline began to pour through her. Something was wrong. Something terrible.
Where was her gun?
She had to rack her brain to remember. It was in her purse. But she hadn’t fallen asleep in this room, hadn’t brought it upstairs with her. The last she remembered was that she’d had it in Myles’s kitchen while he was cooking her meal.
“God, please,” she mumbled. She wasn’t praying for anything specific. Nothing she could identify in this hellish moment. She was praying for all of it. Safety. For herself, for Myles, for everyone in Pineview. For Virgil and Rex and the children. She didn’t want to find the sheriff dead. She couldn’t take that. Not after what she’d seen that night in Colorado.
More shots rang out. Whatever was going on hadn’t ended. She had to get out there and help, if she could. But she didn’t even have her jeans. After Myles had carried her to bed, she’d shed them for the sake of comfort and curled up under Marley’s blankets.
Where were they? Probably on the floor somewhere, but she was already in the hall and wasn’t willing to waste so much as a second going back.
Running down the stairs, she rushed into the kitchen to get her gun. She could see a light burning upstairs at her house, but that didn’t surprise her. What did was that she didn’t hear any sirens or police activity out front.
Where was the rest of the police force? Had Myles gone over there by himself? If so, what had motivated him to do that?
She found her purse on the table, where she’d left it, and pulled out her gun. Then she ran through the living room and out the front door. There’d been no new shots since she’d left Marley’s bedroom, but she didn’t hear Myles making an arrest, or coming back home, either.
Why not?
“Myles? Where are you?”
“Get back…in the house…and lock the door!”
Relief flooded through her as she recognized his voice, but she didn’t turn back as he asked. It sounded as if he was in pain, as if he could hardly talk, let alone yell.
She imagined him bleeding on her front porch.
She glanced around, looking for danger, but saw nothing and hurried closer. A series of dark, amorphous shapes surrounded her, but she realized those shapes were her car, her chairs, her hibiscus plant, the columns on her porch. Whatever had happened was over.
“Myles?”
“Didn’t you…hear me?” he said hoarsely. “I have a deputy…on the way. He’ll…help me. Get…inside. Now!”
If Ink and his partner were around, they would’ve fired again. At her, if not him. But she wasn’t sure it would’ve stopped her. She had to get to Myles right away, before it was too late. That was all she cared about. So she lowered her gun and ran hell-bent for her porch.
She found him lying, alone, on her welcome mat. “Have you been shot?”
“Just…in the leg. I’m…okay.”
He was okay if the bullet hadn’t struck a major artery. She stepped over him to turn on the porch light and saw that he’d actually been shot twice. Once in the leg and once in the neck.
“Turn that off!” he growled, but she didn’t. She could hear a siren now. The deputy was on his way. Ink and his partner were gone. She had to stop the bleeding.
Tears streamed down her face as she ran inside to get a clean sheet she could cut up and tie around his leg. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. She’d brought The Crew to town, and now they were hurting the people who meant the most to her.
She returned as a parade of cop cars drove down their street. The neighbors closest to the corner had been roused from sleep. They stumbled out of their house and stood in front, rubbing their eyes and yawning as they watched to see what was going on. A few began to walk over. But she ignored them. In situations like this, seconds mattered.
Using a pair of scissors, she cut the sheet and tied a strip above Myles’s thigh, where he’d been shot. The leg injury looked worse than the wound in his neck, which appeared to be a simple grazing. She was wiping the blood away when she felt his hand slip beneath her underwear and cup her ass.
“What are you doing?” She sniffled, surprised. The porch railing blocked any view of her from the oncoming cop and the neighbors, but that would change within seconds.
His teeth flashed as he gave her a lopsided grin. “Hey, stop crying. I don’t think I’d want to touch you so badly if I was about to die.”
Laughing, she pushed his hand away and laid her head on his chest. The bulletproof vest wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but nothing had ever felt better than the tenderness he showed her by running his fingers through her hair. “It’s going to be okay,” he murmured. “I’m fine.”
And that was when she knew. He might be fighting it—might be as scared of falling in love again as she was—but he cared about her every bit as much as she cared about him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you? Run!” L.J. whispered harshly. They didn’t have time for Ink to limp along. They were dead if they didn’t get out of Pineview fast. It seemed as if the police were coming from every direction. The flashing lights on top of their cruisers made L.J. dizzy with their strobe effect.
He moved deeper into the forest, into the welcoming shelter of the trees, but the red of those lights seemed to reflect all around him, and the sirens were deafening. The cops were too close…?.
“I’m…coming,” Ink gasped, but he wasn’t making great progress, and L.J. didn’t want to wait. Why should he? Ink was nothing but a crazy old gimp. The heartless son of a bitch had dragged him into some deep shit, and now it was all going wrong, just as he’d known it would.