Page 18 of Outlaw Ridge: Jesse
“Yeah, but something about her tone…” Jesse shook his head as he pulled away from Reardon’s house. The tires crunched against the gravel and made popping sounds. “It wasn’t just grief. She sounded afraid. What’d you find out about her?” he asked, tipping his head to her phone.
“Isabel Markham, thirty-two years old. Born in Houston, but she’s lived in Austin for the last twenty years,” Lauren immediately replied. “Father deceased, and her mother, Felicity, is very old money who hobnobs with people of similarbackgrounds and portfolios. Isabel is widowed. No kids. Her husband died about four months ago from cancer. He was a venture capitalist. Left her a fortune.”
Jesse drummed his fingers against the wheel. “So Isabel doesn’t need anything from Abilene. No inheritance issues. No financial motives.”
Before Jesse could say more, the police radio crackled. “McCain, Dispatch here. No answer on the call back to Isabel Markham. Should we request an Austin PD unit to go check on her?”
His grip tightened. He didn’t like this. Not one damn bit. “Yeah, do that.”
Jesse barely had time to register the spike strip before the cruiser jolted violently. The tires shredded beneath them, the sickening thump-thump-thump of rubber grinding against the asphalt.
Hell. Who had done this?
Was it Reardon? Had he cut through those trees while they’d been on the phone with Isabel and dispatch? Jesse didn’t have time to even consider it before there was another sound. One he didn’t want to hear.
Gunshots.
The first one pinged off the hood of the cruiser. The second slammed into the windshield. The glass was bullet resistant, but the direct shot caused it to crack, fracturing it like a spider’s web.
“Get down!” Jesse barked, drawing his weapon as he got out of his seatbelt and dropped low.
Lauren was already moving, unhooking her seatbelt and grabbing for her sidearm while keeping her head below the dashboard. The glass would hold, probably, unless it took some more direct hits.
And the shooter was obviously trying to do just that.
More shots rang out, the echoes ricocheting off the cruiser, into the windshield and even on the ground around them. Jesse couldn’t see their attacker. The sun had dipped too low, the shadows stretching too long for that. But someone was out there.
Someone who wanted them dead.
That was for certain. And there was another certainty, too. Lauren and he were sitting ducks.
As the shots continued to eat their way through the windshield, Jesse used the voice command on his phone to call dispatch. The sound of ringing was nearly drowned out by the gunfire, but he managed to hear the dispatcher answer.
“This is Deputy McCain,” he blurted. “Deputy Whitman and I need backup now. We’re at the end of Mill Creek Road. Have backup approach with caution. We’re under fire.”
“I’ll get someone out there right away,” the dispatcher assured him.
Jesse ended the call so he could focus on pinpointing the direction of the gunfire. Hard to do now that he could no longer see out the windshield, but he was pretty sure the shots were coming from directly across the road. There were no houses there. Just woods. So, the shooter would have plenty of places to hide.
“I smell something,” Lauren said, the words rushing out. “Gasoline.”
Jesse pulled in a deep breath. And cursed. Because, yeah, he smelled it, too. He lifted his head enough to peer out his side window, and there was enough illumination from the cruiser’s headlights that he could see that the gravel and dirt were wet.
Shit.
Either the cruiser gas tank had been ruptured, or else their attacker had poured gasoline around the spike strip. And there was only one reason to do that.
To set them on fire.
“Hell,” Jesse spat out. “The gunman’s not missing when he’s shooting into the ground. He’s trying to ignite the gasoline.”
Jesse got confirmation of that when the next three shots all slammed into the road.
“How deep is the ditch on your side?” Jesse asked Lauren.
That meant lifting her head so she could look out, and he prayed this wouldn’t be the exact moment the shooter managed to tear through the windshield.
“Deep,” she replied. “At least two feet.”
