Page 40 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Izzy whirled.

A gunshot cracked through the foyer.

~*~

Ava heard the shot, and her whole body went still and hot and tight as a sprung hare’s, before her pulse skyrocketed and adrenaline flooded every nerve. It had been a loud, booming shot, a cannon blast not unlike that of the .357 she’d used to dispatch the pretend Mercy in her mudroom.

Not anything Tenny was carrying.

Not a service-issue nine mil that a fed would carry.

Boyle.

Ava pulled her own gun – the deceptively light .45 she’d nicked from her dad’s personal stash – and charged across the street toward the house.

Skkkkkkreeeeeee–

Tires. Those were squealing tires.

Ava registered the sudden, winding-down roar of an engine, and skidded, and jumped, and saw a Honda sedan slam to a halt in the center of the street, just inches shy of where she’d been a moment before.

She caught herself hard with one hand on the pavement, felt grit and gravel score her palm, then scrambled back to herfeet and found herself face-to-face with the driver’s side window, and the driver beyond it.

It was Boyle.

“Fuck.” The word exploded out of her, along with all of her breath, and she saw his lips form the same word.

Then the tires squealed again as he stomped on the gas.

“No!” She saw the license plate receding from here as if in slow-mo, the letters and numbers searing into her brain. Then she lifted her gun and fired.

The back window shattered. Black-centered silver flowers bloomed along the bumper and the trunk. She aimed for the rear tires, but the car was moving too quickly, and then whipped around a corner and disappeared.

“No!” she shouted again, arms shaking where she still held the gun aimed down the street.

Then another shot echoed from inside the house – the neat, staccato pop of a semi-auto thatwasTenny.

“Fuck,” she swore again, and went charging across the lawn and up the porch steps.

The scene that greeted her in the front hallway contained far too many blonde women.

Tina Bonfils stood nearest the door, both hands clapped over her mouth, eyes wide and staring.

Isabella Duet was sitting with her back against a doorjamb, one hand pressed to her left arm, blood leaking between her fingers, her teeth clenched, face pale with pain.

The other blonde’s minidress had gotten rucked up around her thighs to reveal a scrappy teal thong and bottle-orange thighs. Tenny was up by her head, kneeling on her shoulders and pinning her down. Her right knee was a bloody, pulpy mess. Tenny’s hand clapped over her mouth had turned what were doubtless ear-piercing shrieks into muffled grunts and whimpers. Mascara had run down her face in black streaks, andher eyes bugged out of her face when she spied Ava. There was recognition there, and anger, and fear, and no small amount of pain.

“Here.” Tenny lifted a hefty, blue-barreled .38 over his shoulder, and Ava took it and jammed it through her belt. He grunted as he shifted his weight and shoved the woman’s head roughly to the floor. Her eyes squeezed shut after thethud. “Lucky for Alex’s lady friend, this one’s a terrible shot. Who wereyoushooting?”

“Boyle.”

His head snapped up, brows lifted.

“He was in a car. Almost ran me over. He got away.”

“Bastard,” he said absently. “There’s a syringe in my back pocket. Come get it.”

As Ava walked around behind him, she caught Duet’s eye and said, “You okay?”

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