Page 67 of Killer on the Homestead
He rushed forward toward it. Then forced himself to think, to slow down. He couldn’t rush into potential danger without thinking things through, even if he hoped with all he was this was just a strange misunderstanding, not danger.
He thought he maybe saw shadows moving around in the trees. But he couldn’t be sure. So he tried to keep a low profile, crouching down as he walked so he was hopefully hidden by grass if anything…bad was out there.
Or should he just rush forward? Guns blazing? She’d been hurt. Bleeding. Why was he being patient?
But something inside of him seemed to insist upon it. A cautiousness. Because this was all wrong, so it required…tact.
He couldn’t really see through the grasses, but once he was close to the trees where he thought he’d heard things, he straightened a little so he could see.
Across the way, Rosalie was sitting down. He nearly rushed forward, called out, did everything wrong in the moment. But her head was kind of bowed, and he realized she wastiedto that tree. She lifted her head a little, and he could see even from a distance that her face was a bloody mess.
Duncan’s whole body went ice-cold. Then, worse, another body moved into his vision. And even though the man’s back was to him, Duncan knew who it was.
Terry. A man Duncan hadtrusted. The fury, the disgust, roiled through him along with the utter terror that he had Rosalietied upand a gun in his hand.
But Duncan couldn’t think about betrayal right now. He couldn’t think about his worry for Rosalie. He had to think about how he was going to get her out of this.
He had a gun, but so did Terry. Duncan could see it there glinting in the man’s hand. He thought Terry was speaking, the faint grumble of words on the breeze, but Duncan couldn’t make them out.
Should he get closer? He had to get closer. He could hardly just crouch here hoping something magically worked out right. He had to get in there and somehow…
Hell, he was no cop, no white knight. The idea he should be the one tosaveher seemed ludicrous, but there was no one else to do it.
He gave the cluster of trees a wide berth, trying to move closerslowly, with the grasses providing cover and the breezedistorting any noises he might be making. He found himself with a profile view of both Terry and Rosalie, and he could actually make out the words Terry was saying.
“We can wait him out. We can wait him out.” It was the kind of repetitive thing someone said to themselves to convince themselves of something that was becoming less and less true.
“Seems to me there’s sirens in the distance, Ter,” Rosalie said. She sounded…tired, but she’d managed to infuse the sentence with some of her usual sarcasm. Even as awful as her face looked, bloody and bruised.
He swallowed down everything. This wasn’t all that different than taking the mound in a World Series game. Sure, it was life or death, but if he shoved that away, it was the same process. Block out the noise. Settle into your body. Focus.
He carefully lifted the gun, using his right arm to support the dominant left one. His shoulder ached and throbbed andburned, which couldn’t be good, but he knew how to play through pain.
He tried to remember all the advice his dad had given him, but that gun had been different. Hell, Duncan had been different—a kid, essentially, when his dad had taught him how to do this. Still, it had to be done, so…
He curled his finger around the trigger, aimed at Terry, and pulled. Swore at the jolt of sheer agony that went from shoulder to fingertip.
Duncan cursed his bad arm as the bullet hit a tree about two inches to Terry’s right, and Terry whirled toward him, lifting his own gun.
He didn’t shoot right away though. He aimed, Duncan aiming right back. He could hit his target this time. He would.
“You wouldn’t shoot me, Duncan. You don’t have it in you. And even if you did try again, you missed the first time.”
“I won’t this time,” Duncan said, pulling the trigger after the wordwon’t.
And he didn’t miss—Terry jerked back, even as Terry’s bullet whizzed past Duncan, far too close…but not close enough.
Rosalie figured she’d screamed, and she didn’tthinkshe’d been hallucinating sirens, but who knew? Who knew?
Her teeth were chattering, and she could only barely make out what had happened with the second shot. Terry lay writhing on the ground. Duncan ran over to her.
He was saying things, but she couldn’t quite make sense of them. She thought maybe he was trying to untie her.
“Well, I didn’t have getting saved by a baseball player on my life bingo card.” But he had. She really hadn’t had a way out of this one. Tears threatened—not just emotion, but pain and relief and a million other things as her arms fell to her sides.
She couldn’t really feel anything. A creeping numb feeling was overtaking her, but he’d untied her. And then she felt him lifting her to her feet. It took his grip on her arm and her leaning against the tree to manage to stay upright, but she was free and standing.
“I’m carrying you,” he said.
