Page 6 of Turn the Tide
“He has a gun!” the man hissed. “Stay here and staydown.” Not waiting to see if she followed his commands, he moved quickly but quietly to the end of the aisle and slipped out of sight.
“Iknowhe has a gun,” Molly grumbled, even though he couldn’t hear. “He was arrested for armed robbery.Of coursehe’s carrying a gun.”
Even as she muttered under her breath, trying to pretend her heart wasn’t trying to beat out of her chest, she crouched low and peered around the endcap. All she could see was Hall’s back, and she grimaced. She could only assume he had the gun trained on the clerk, and trying to take him down now could get the poor guy shot.
As she watched, Hall’s gaze jumped around—looking for her and the grabby stranger, Molly assumed. She shifted out of his line of sight and tapped out a text to the deputies as quietly as possible, updating them on the situation and asking if they could speed up their arrival. Tucking her phone back in her pocket, she returned to the end of the aisle. Staying as low as possible, she shifted until she could barely see Hall through the bottles of vodka, waiting until he turned to look behind him. As he turned, the gun shifted as well, rotating with his body until it was pointing away from the clerk.
Even as her brain screamedWhat are you doing?Molly launched herself out of her concealed spot, driving herself forward as she aimed for the weapon. Her hands latched around Hall’s wrist, dragging down his arm as the gun went off, the expected roar sounding like a merepopto her ears.
Grabbing the barrel with one hand, she jerked it upward, and Hall gave a sharp scream as his fingers snapped. His grip loosened, and she yanked the gun free, tossing it away from them. A fist glanced off her temple, knocking her head to the side. Hall had punched her with his other, unbroken hand, but the angle was awkward, not giving him the force he needed to really hurt her. Before he could give it another try, she gave him a palm strike to the chin, knocking his teeth together with an audibleclack.
He yelled, shaking off the hit and bunching his fist, shoving her against the wall. Her back hit painfully against the edge of a shelf, and she swallowed a yelp. Before she could recover, his forearm pressed across her throat, pinning her. She forced herself to hold still, to not fight the thick arm currently blocking her airflow. As fast as her heart was beating, it didn’t take long for bright sparks to dot her vision, but she still struggled to wait for her chance to knee him in a sensitive spot.
There was a roar behind them, and then the arm across her throat was gone. Sucking in painful, rough breaths, she blinked the sparkles out of her eyes, staring as the stranger threw—literallythrew—Hall into a display of chip bags.
“Whoa,” she said, blinking, and then snapped out of her fog as the wail of approaching sirens grew steadily louder. She wasn’t about to have gone through all of this and not get Hall’s bounty. Shaking her head to get rid of the odd floating feeling, she pounced, rolling a groaning Hall from his side to his stomach and cranking his left hand behind his back as she settled a knee against his spine.
The stranger watched her, his furiously protective expression slowly returning to a more neutral one.
“You okay?” he asked.
She gave him her bestyou’ve got to be kiddinglook. “No thanks to you. What was all that?” Since her hands were occupied with keeping a still-dazed Hall in place, she jerked her head toward the far aisle where the doofus had blown her entire plan out of the water.
Now the guy was looking irritated at her—ather!“I was saving you from getting shot. Don’t you know who he is?”
“Of course I do.” She frowned back at him, ignoring the noises coming from the traumatized clerk. From the sound of it, the poor guy was throwing up his lunch behind the counter. “Do you think I just drag random people back to jail?”
His frown deepened as he propped his fists on his hips. “If you knew that was Hall, why’d you go after him? You only pick up the nonviolent skips.”
“Who are you, and how do you know that?”
Before he could answer, two deputies—Molly recognized them as Darren and Maria—burst into the store with guns drawn. After they took in the situation, Darren holstered his weapon.
“Is that Cameron Hall?” he asked the stranger. “Nice catch.”
“Hey!” There was no way Molly was about to let him get credit for bringing in her skip. “He’smynice catch, Darren. Me. The one sitting on him.”
To her annoyance, the deputy gave the stranger a questioning look. If she’d had a free hand and a convenient projectile, she would’ve thrown something.
“Yeah, he’s hers,” the stranger agreed, surprising her. So far in their short acquaintance, he hadn’t gone out of his way to make her life easier. “It was impressive.”
“His gun’s over there.” Molly dipped her head toward the weapon. “I tossed it after Idisarmedhim.” She gave Darren a glare.
“Sorry.” He gave her an apologetic shrug as he moved to cuff Hall, who’d been oddly quiet. As Molly moved off of him, she saw that he’d passed out.
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t feeling too forgiving at the moment. Her neck hurt. “Careful with his right hand. I broke his fingers disarming him—Cameron Hall, the skip that I just took down all by myself, with no help from any random weirdos.”
“Hey, I helped.” The stranger sounded more amused than put out, though.
Fine. She had to give him that much. “After you mucked everything up.” She tried to hold on to her annoyance, but the idea that she’d done it was finally sinking in. She’d brought in Cameron Hall, a skip with a bounty large enough to pay for a whole year of Cara’s tuition.
“I was trying to keep you from being killed.” Leaning back against the counter, the stranger crossed his arms over his chest, and Molly struggled even more to hold her scowl. Did guys learn to do that, to make their biceps bulge in that specific way? Was there some kind of class?
Shaking off her distraction, she focused on holding his gaze. “I can do that just fine by myself. Who are you, anyway, and how do you know my name—and what kind of skips I go after?”
“John Carmondy.” His smile was slow, curling up at the edges before it spread to his cheeks, revealing a killer pair of dimples. “Fellow bounty hunter.”
Tipping her head back, she groaned. Of course he was. Everything was so much clearer now. Reopening her eyes, she directed a stern look at him. “Were you trying to steal my skip?”
