Loe raamatut: «Killer Country Reunion»

ONE

Caroline Marsh wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand and sat down on a bench outside, taking a moment to compose herself.

She turned her gaze to the waters of nearby Lake Cobalt, trying to decide whether it would be wiser to let herself have a good hard cry and get it all out of her system, or choke back her grief again—something she’d done a lot, lately.

The attorney she’d just met with had handed over a stack of paperwork and confirmed that, as of today, Caroline was officially the legal owner of her late brother’s business. It was still hard to talk about Owen in the past tense. To acknowledge that her younger brother was really, really gone. His body had been found floating in Seattle’s Elliot Bay, 350 miles to the west, with evidence of blunt force trauma to the back of his head. In the aftermath there’d been no arrests. No suspects identified. Nothing but an open police case that seemed to be going nowhere.

She clutched the sheaf of papers, held together with a black binder clip, a little tighter. Despite the digital age, some things still required paper and actual ink signatures. So here it was, printed in black and white—the official, legal proof that her brother had left her his business and his house so that she’d be equipped to take care of the most precious thing in his life: his son, Dylan.

Pull yourself together.

A four-year-old boy waited for her back at the house with Caroline’s mom. The saddest part was that he wasn’t just waiting for her. A couple of times Caroline had seen him walk to the front window around sundown, his ever-watchful dog, Millie, at his side, to look for Owen. The boy seemed to forget, or perhaps he still didn’t understand, that his dad was never coming home. Every time the heartache over her brother, and for his son, had brought her to tears in front of the boy. She would not let that happen again.

Caroline had little experience dealing with children. She had lived in California while Dylan was growing up here in Idaho. But she was pretty certain it would be best for her nephew if she walked through the door at the house with her shoulders back and a smile on her face. Or at least the closest approximation of a smile she could muster.

A white van pulled up into the parking lot and she heard the side door slide open. It sounded like it was idling at the curb near where she was sitting.

At the same time, she realized a little late-afternoon rain was starting to sprinkle on her legal documents. The lakeside air was already pretty chilly, anyway. Time to go.

She looked up and saw a man walking toward her from the van. His black knit cap was pulled down low. The collar of his jacket was flipped up and concealed the bottom of his face. He strode purposefully, his gaze locked on her eyes.

Unease gnawed at the pit of Caroline’s stomach. The man’s behavior was odd. She thought of Owen and icy fear seeped into her chest. She slid the strap of her purse over her shoulder, took a quick look down at the bench to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind and glanced up.

The man lifted his right hand, calmly pointed a gun at her face and fired.

With a burst of energy born of sheer terror, Caroline lunged down and threw the right side of her body across the bench. At the same time she felt a burning sensation rip across the top of her left shoulder.

Dear God, what’s happening?

The gunman continued walking forward, pointing his gun down toward her head, which she now pressed against the seat of the bench. There was a silencer on the end of the gun barrel. Her father had been a cop. She knew what a silencer looked like. If no one heard the shots, no one would come to her rescue. Not until it was too late.

Do something.

She grabbed the bundle of papers that had slid onto the bench and flung it at him. The binder clip collided with the bridge of his nose and his head snapped back.

Heart pounding in her chest, Caroline shoved herself up off the bench and started running.

The van was still idling at the parking lot curb, so she ran in the opposite direction, toward the lake.

The office complex had two levels. The bottom level was a wooden boardwalk built along the edge of Lake Cobalt. It was Friday afternoon and most people had already cleared out for the weekend. Right now, there was nobody else in sight.

Caroline sprinted for the stairs leading down to the offices that jutted out over the water. Grabbing the newel post, she flung herself around the end of the banister and down, taking the steps two at a time, moving as fast as she could go. She tried to yell for help as she ran, but the terror flooding her body gripped her lungs so tightly that it was all she could do to keep breathing.

She reached the bottom step and a bullet flew past her, tearing up the wooden planking by her right foot.

She ran harder, veering to her left around a corner where she caught her foot on the leg of a bistro table, part of one of the many wrought iron sets placed around the boardwalk. Unable to catch her balance, she fell on her face, stunning herself for the first few seconds. Scrambling to right herself, she saw a smoked-glass office door straight ahead with a light glowing inside the office. She ran for it, grabbed the handle and pulled. It didn’t budge.

“Help!” Desperate, Caroline pounded on the door with one hand while continuing to yank on the handle with the other.

Was there even anybody in there? Terror and frustration burned through her blood like fire. She raised both fists, feeling a sharp pain in her left shoulder, and pounded on the glass door as hard as she could. “Help! Someone’s trying to kill me! Let me in! Please!”

In the door’s reflection she saw the gunman round the corner and jog up behind her, grinning and raising his gun.

A couple of people somewhere in the maze-like complex started yelling, but they sounded too far away to help her in time.

It ain’t over till it’s over. It was one of her dad’s favorite expressions. He had a lot of them, and she could almost hear him in her head. Don’t you ever quit.

She whirled around.

Do whatever it takes.

Options. What were her options? She could run, but continuing down the boardwalk along the straight, long stretch ahead would make her an easy target if the gunman knew what he was doing. She could jump into the water if she had to, but she’d never been a fast swimmer. And Cobalt was a deep lake. Besides, the water in late September was too chilly for swimming. Cold muscles would slow her down.

But jumping into the lake was the only reasonable choice she could find—the one with the best shot at keeping her alive. Too bad she’d taken so long to decide. The gunman was now just a couple of steps away from her. It was too late.

Never give up.

She frantically looked around, and then jammed her hand into a big urn-shaped planter beside the office door. She grabbed a handful of dirt and decorative rocks and threw it in the guy’s face, hoping it would be enough of a distraction for her to get away.

It didn’t faze him.

Ignoring the small projectiles, he snatched her arm before she could get away. “Stop fighting. It’s over.” He lifted his gun and pointed it at her forehead.

Someone in the office behind the locked door screamed.

Her attacker glanced in that direction. Caroline did, too, and saw three witnesses who had moved close enough to the door to be visible and were watching the struggle playing out in front of them.

Maybe in his reflection on the glass the gunman saw what Caroline had just noticed. In the chase, his collar had flattened out and the bottom half of his face was now uncovered. His beanie had also ridden up a little. His appearance was not as well hidden as it had been when he’d started. And even if she was killed, there were other witnesses now who had seen him.

Still clutching her arm, the gunman dragged her away from the door, down the boardwalk and around the corner, back toward the bottom of the stairs. Maybe it was a precaution in case he got caught. None of the witnesses would be able to testify that they’d actually seen him kill her.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Anger at the situation flared up alongside the fear coursing through Caroline’s body. She wasn’t going down without a fight. She twisted her arm, trying to break his grip. When that didn’t work, she kicked out her foot and tried to trip him.

Dear Lord, she prayed, forcing her thoughts away from anticipating the shot that would end this battle. Please protect Dylan.

Who would take care of him if she was gone? Caroline’s mom experienced lingering damage from a heart attack that made her tire more easily than she used to. She could look after the boy for several hours a day now while he was still small, freeing Caroline to take care of all the necessary legal matters, but it wasn’t a permanent solution. The task of raising him as he grew older would likely be too much for her mother, meaning she wouldn’t be able to take custody.

Dylan’s biological mother, Michelle, had decided after eight months of motherhood that she was wasting her youth and missing out on too much fun. She’d walked out on Owen and Dylan, severed all ties and filed for divorce. Through friends in town who’d seen her, Owen knew she’d fallen in with an unsavory crowd. He’d told Caroline that while his ex-wife had never been convicted of a crime, her boyfriend had been locked up on several occasions for a variety of offenses. Most involved drugs.

Owen had mentioned to Caroline that he suspected his former wife used drugs. For that reason, and because he realized their mother’s health was fragile, he had requested in his will that Caroline be given custodianship of Dylan should something happen to him. The court system had agreed.

The poor kid no longer had his dad. And he hadn’t seen his mom or anyone in her family since he was an infant. He had his grandma, but he needed Caroline, too. She couldn’t die—not here, not today. Not when that precious boy needed her.

“No!” Exhausted from running and fighting, Caroline somehow summoned up the surge of strength she needed to twist her body away from the gunman and finally break free of his grip.

Then something happened. She couldn’t see what it was because the action was behind her. But suddenly the full weight of the gunman—plus more—was pressing on her and she was knocked down to the boardwalk. She smacked her head and saw a few sparkles of light. A feeling of drowsiness threatened to overtake her but she fought against it. If she allowed her heavy eyelids to drop shut, that would be the end of everything.

* * *

Zane Coleman kept his focus on the man’s gun. Two tours in Afghanistan had trained him well, guaranteeing he’d never lose sight of a bad guy’s weapon.

Hearing a woman scream “No!” he’d dropped the ranch expansion permits he’d just picked up at the Jefferson County building department and raced to the stairs. He’d run down the first four or five steps before taking a flying leap and tackling a man who was grabbing a woman and holding a gun. His hard landing knocked the wind out of him, but he could tell it did the same to the bad guy, too.

The woman, also knocked down when Zane landed on the guy, was likely getting her face pushed into the boardwalk. But there wasn’t anything he could do about that right now. His focus was on shoving his left hand onto the back of the man’s left shoulder to keep him pinned in place while he reached with his right hand to yank the handgun from the man’s grip.

Unfortunately, the gunman recovered faster than Zane anticipated. Still gripping his gun tightly, the man squirmed and shifted until he’d made enough room to bend his right arm. Zane wanted to punch him and knock him out, but he didn’t dare release his grip on the guy’s shoulder or his gun hand. With just a couple inches of room for movement, the jerk could easily kill the woman he’d attacked. Or he could shift the angle of the gun a little and shoot Zane instead.

Struggling to hold the bigger, heavier guy down, Zane managed to draw in a deep breath of air. Slightly more energized, he pressed harder on the guy’s left shoulder and grunted as he tightened his right hand, determined to wrestle the gun from the man’s grip. This time his fingers touched metal and then he felt the textured surface of the gun’s handle beneath the heel of his hand. He just about had it.

The guy jerked his arm and flung the gun. It slid until coming to a rest precariously balanced on the edge of the boardwalk, with part of the barrel hovering over the water.

The deep boom of a shotgun blast blew past him, followed by the sound of buckshot ripping through the boardwalk beside Zane and the gunman.

“Get up!” The guy with the shotgun commanded. He ratcheted another cartridge into the shotgun’s chamber.

Zane heard the woman crying. She was also praying. He couldn’t make out every word, but it sounded as if she was praying for someone other than herself.

Emergency sirens wailed from a couple of blocks away. Then they went silent. Which meant they were probably cop cars and they’d just rolled into the parking lot.

“I said, get up!”

Cautiously, Zane got to his feet. His thoughts were racing. He might not be able to prevent himself from getting shot, but he could probably do something to keep the woman alive and make sure these guys got caught.

“Hurry up!” shotgun guy barked. “Turn around and let me see your hands.”

Zane complied.

Shotgun guy was short and stocky. He wore a baseball cap and dark glasses. He’d come halfway down the stairway and stopped. Now he continued down the stairs and took a couple of steps closer to Zane.

Behind him, Zane heard the first gunman get to his feet.

Zane slowly took a step back, then turned his head slightly so he could see what the original attacker was doing.

“Take care of her and let’s go.” Shotgun guy said to his accomplice, still keeping his weapon pointed at Zane.

Zane figured once they killed the woman they’d kill him, too. They weren’t going to leave a witness behind.

The woman had stopped crying. From the corner of his eye he could see her getting to her feet, but he didn’t dare turn his head far enough to get a good look at her. Not with that shotgun trained on him.

The boardwalk planks behind Zane squeaked with the sound of sudden movement. The original gunman swore, and Zane glanced over his shoulder to see the woman scrambling to get the handgun where it lay on the edge of the boardwalk.

The gunman shoved her aside and frantically reached for it, knocking it off the boardwalk. He immediately dropped down so he was lying on his belly and lunged his upper body into the lake. He brought the handgun out, its barrel dripping water. Cursing again, he rolled to his side, rose up on his elbow, pointed the gun at the woman, who appeared to be searching for something to hide behind, and fired.

Zane’s heart jumped up into his throat. Then his mind registered the dull snapping sound of the weapon. The wet gun had misfired.

Zane’s feeling of relief was short-lived. Now his attention was back on shotgun guy. Thus far, he had held off on firing—probably to keep from shooting his partner. Now that the partner was a few feet away and he had a clear shot at Zane, he had no reason to hesitate. Zane quickly looked around for something he could use to defend himself.

One of the table-and-chair sets that were scattered around the boardwalk was within reach. He grabbed the back of a bistro chair with one hand while using the other hand to knock aside the shotgun barrel that was pointed at him. The shotgun broke loose from the man’s grip and clattered a couple of feet across the boardwalk.

Zane whirled around and swung the heavy bistro chair. He managed to hit the first gunman who was just now getting to his feet. The blow knocked him flat on his back.

Where was the woman? Zane figured he had only a few seconds before shotgun guy recovered his weapon and started shooting.

A quick glance showed him the woman was moving toward the edge of the boardwalk, trying to get as far away from danger as she could. “Jump!” he yelled, backing toward her.

He didn’t hear a splash. Why was she hesitating?

“There’s no other option,” he snapped. “Get in the water. Now!”

Seconds later he heard her hit the water.

Time was running out.

He spun and flung the bistro chair at shotgun guy who’d just recovered his weapon.

Then Zane turned and ran.

He reached the edge of the boardwalk and leapt off, the boom of a shotgun blast ringing in his ears as he hit the surface of the lake.

The frigid water was shocking as he plunged downward. He opened his eyes underwater, where everything looked dark blue and blurry. Then he kicked his feet and started upward, back toward the light.

He broke through the surface and saw the boardwalk a few feet away. He quickly looked for the two gunmen, expecting shotgun guy to open fire on him. They were nowhere in sight. Lord, please help the cops catch them.

He turned and saw the woman bobbing on the surface, treading water several yards away from the boardwalk. With the water this cold, he wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t been able to swim any farther. He swam over to her. His muscles were already knotting up from the cold water, so the going was slow.

“Hey, are you all right?” he called out when he reached her.

The only response he heard was the sound of her teeth chattering.

Dark blonde hair was plastered over her face. She reached up to move it aside, and he found himself looking into the dark brown eyes of Caroline Marsh.

A voice called out to them from the boardwalk, but Zane didn’t understand a word the man was saying. He just stared at his former fiancée while she stared back.

For the span of a couple of heartbeats it felt like no time had passed since he’d last seen her.

How long had it been?

Eight years. More than enough time for Zane to think of all the things he might say to her if they ever crossed paths again. All of them were some form of a heartfelt apology. Now here she was and he could barely put together a sentence. Could barely even breathe.

“Are you hurt?” he managed to ask again.

“I-I’m all right, Zane,” she stammered, her teeth still chattering.

She lifted her hands out of the water to tuck her hair behind her ears. “Th-thank you for rescuing me. But you don’t need to stay beside me. Go ahead and swim back to the boardwalk. I can take care of myself.”

Despite the horrifying events she’d just been through, she lifted her chin out of the water and managed a weak version of her signature spirited smile.

It would have hurt less if she’d shot him.

Tender memories and old regrets ripped through Zane’s heart. But he didn’t have time to dwell on them now. The grim reality was that two determined gunmen had just tried to kill her.

What had Caroline gotten herself into?