couldn’t have been wearing a worse color to blend in with the surroundings and to make matters worse her billowy dress bounced and trailed behind them with every step. The breeze toyed with the sinless white material. Her long wavy ringlets blocked his vision and he didn’t want to take in her scent even though it blasted through him, anyway. She smelled like flowers and sunshine on the first warm day of spring, when everything bloomed.
There were half a dozen questions zinging through his mind demanding a response. Answers would have to wait until the two of them were out of danger. He also had a flash of panic that the blood on her dress meant she’d been shot.
Will ducked as another bullet splintered a piece of bark a couple yards away. Thick trees would make getting a clean shot next to impossible and that played to his advantage.
Keeping a calm head no matter the circumstances had always been his strong suit.
Will ran through the situation in his mind as he zipped through the tall trees.
Based on aim, this guy wasn’t a stellar marksman, which played to Will’s advantage. A shotgun wasn’t accurate but the bullet spray might do a lot more damage at this distance. There’d be shell pieces within a range of twenty feet this far away from the shooter. There was a reason it was called buckshot and it spread shrapnel across a decent distance.
The other advantage Will had over the shooter was knowledge of the property. No one knew this area better than a Kent and Will was no exception.
Will weaved through the trees. His speed and sheer willpower kept him a good distance from the shooter. This guy didn’t seem to be a match for Will’s athleticism and he appreciated the fact that Kelly wasn’t fighting against him. He could also thank years of sports in high school and his stint in the military for his fitness. Being used to a daily training routine had him waking up every morning at three o’clock to get in a workout before eating a protein-heavy breakfast and heading out to work an hour later.
The beauty in his arms seemed to be struggling to stay alert. With every few feet of progress, she shook her head or blinked her eyes. She muttered a couple of apologies and he assumed she meant she was sorry for him having to carry her. Although, he couldn’t be sure.
Adrenaline caused Will to run faster. The shooter might not be a great marksman but all it took was one hit for this game of chase to be over. Will knew how to handle the extra power surge that came with adrenaline and he was accustomed to managing the extra cortisol coursing through his body by measuring his breaths to keep them even.
He knew what it was like to have bullets flying past his head and seemingly no easy outs. A smile threatened to crack his lips because a part of him missed the adrenaline rushes that came with his time during combat. The other part of being away from home and coming back to the States in time for his fiancée to ditch him on their wedding day—that had been a humdinger.
Will was good at combat. Real life? Not so much.
Even though he’d grown up in a close-knit family he’d never been one to linger on emotions.
Being left at the altar when he’d believed he and his fiancée were in love showed him just how far off base he’d been. It didn’t seem to matter how many people told him to forget about her. That she wasn’t worth the trouble. He tried to tell that to the beating blob of blood and tissue in the center of his chest. Damn thing had a mind of its own.
Hell, he knew his family was right about Lacey. And normally he’d walk away and never look back. He had a weakness for the woman that defied logic. Or did it? A twinge of guilt pinched his gut. He most definitely felt protective of his ex.
That same protective instinct flared with the woman in his arms and it struck him that he was walking down a path he’d gone down before. Or, in this case, running was more like it, as he dodged another bullet that struck a tree a little too close for comfort.
Keep this up much longer and the law of probability said that even a bad shot would hit his target given enough time and opportunity.
Will needed a plan.
As far as he could tell he was dealing with a lone shooter. His own shotgun was strapped to Domino.
An old treehouse was up ahead around a hill. Maybe he could make it there.
Dodging in and out of trees was slowing his pace. Carrying Kelly was no problem after doing the same for a wounded soldier wearing sixty pounds of gear through mountainous terrain in hundred-plus temperatures.
Of course, he was older now and not nearly in the same shape. His stamina wouldn’t hold out as long. All those factors had to be considered.
Getting to Domino safely without risking a wild shot hitting his horse was risky.
Will didn’t like it, but his only option was to get Kelly out of the woods and to the medical attention she needed. The slurred speech might be caused by blood loss.
But then what? an annoying voice in the back of his mind asked.
STAY AWAKE. STAYING ALERT was Kelly’s highest priority. She hated being in this position, feeling like a victim. There was nothing worse than a feeling of helplessness, but it was taking all the strength she had inside her to stay awake and fight the darkness weighing down her thoughts.
Her mind zinged back to when she was a teenager. It had been two days since her thirteenth birthday had officially ushered her into her teen years. Kelly woke with a cramp in her side that made her double over and left her rocking back and forth in pain.
Her mother walked in after working her shift at the hair salon and gasped when she saw her daughter on the floor. Her appendix had almost burst and she’d been cramping so hard she could barely walk.
“Why didn’t you call me?” her mother had asked.
“I thought it would pass,” Kelly said weakly, in between blowing out breaths to try and manage her pain. She’d done everything she could think of in order to distract herself.
Before she could blow out her next breath, her mother was helping Kelly to her feet.
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” she’d stated and Kelly had heard the panic in her mother’s voice. She had immediately known that she must have looked awful based on her mother’s expression.
After her mother had managed to get her buckled into the passenger seat of the family sedan, Kelly saw how much her mother’s hands were shaking on the wheel. It took three tries for her to get the key into the ignition. Her mother let out a few choice words, glanced her daughter’s way and apologized, before finally finding the hole and starting the engine.
Kelly must’ve been in bad shape because her mother kept repeating, “Stay with me, baby.”
Pain threatened to drag Kelly under and hold her in the current, pulling her further out to sea. Then there were tires squealing as her mother stomped on the brakes in the ER bay. The sun was out, brightening the sky, and would be for hours before plunging into the western landscape. It was an unusually hot afternoon even for August in Texas.
People rushed toward them and then Kelly was being placed on a gurney and wheeled into the hospital. She remembered the rectangles on the ceiling and the bright fluorescent lights. The sound of doors opening and closing while a male voice shouted orders.
She didn’t remember how long the nurse told her she’d been out when she woke from surgery. There was a recovery room and the strangeness of fading in and out. And then suddenly her mother was there.
It didn’t strike her as odd at first that her father was nowhere to be seen. It should have, because he was the family’s rock. Her first thought was that he’d been held up in traffic. Then she’d realized it was Sunday—Sundays were for fishing.
There shouldn’t be any traffic. But still, she reasoned that it would take time to dock the boat and load