slow. She remembered what was supposed to be done. I can do this. Her confidence returned and with it came courage.
When she spotted a backpack in the middle of the road where the two men had been, she yelled to Ty, “The hikers, these guys have got to be the hikers. The marshal said there were three.”
From the opposite side of her SUV, he shouted, “I saw only two.”
The hikers continued to lay down a steady barrage of gunfire. That was a lot of ammo. She regretted using her storage for a second ammo magazine as a carryall for latex gloves. Ty was aiming at a big, chunky boulder that was about ten yards down the road. She guessed the hikers would try to move toward the wrecked sedan, where they’d have a better angle.
Bracing her gun hand against the window frame of her vehicle, she popped a bullet into the space between the rock and the sedan. The action of her Glock felt good in her hands. She was a fairly good shot, the best in the Swain County Sheriff’s Department...which wasn’t saying much, given that Caleb was second best.
“Cover me,” Ty yelled.
Peering through the space between her car door and the windshield, she fired in the direction he’d been shooting. Every bullet counted. She squeezed the trigger seven times, rapid-fire. Her ears rang with the percussive noise.
In a low crouch, Ty darted to the right side of the road, concealed himself in a ditch and took aim. He fired several times in quick succession.
A man staggered out from behind the boulder into the road. With one hand, he clutched his gut. Blood spilled through his fingers. With the other, he tried to steady his weapon. Ty fired again. The man crumpled to the dirt.
One down, two to go. She saw the second man run from the cover of the boulder toward the cottonwood tree where he could hide in the shrubs behind the car. He was closer to her than to Ty. Keeping her head down, she maneuvered toward the sedan.
The heavy smoke hanging over the trees made her think of a battlefield. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She was on high alert, shivering and sweating at the same time. She dodged around the body of Morrissey on the ground. Her gloved hand touched the trunk of the sedan. She saw the hiker beside the tall cottonwood.
Ty ran toward the sedan, blasting as he came. She raised her weapon, took aim. She had the best angle—a head shot that was perfectly aligned. Before she could squeeze the trigger, the hiker was hit. He threw both arms in the air as he fell. Two down, one to go.
She could have sworn that shot came from behind her, uphill to her left. But when she looked, she didn’t see anything but a couple of ragged-edged boulders and a dark wall of pine trees. Squinting, she tried to catch the glint of sunlight off a rifle barrel. If there was a mysterious marksman, he’d have to be using a high-powered rifle. A handgun wouldn’t be accurate from those trees.
“Are you okay?” Ty called out.
“I’m fine. You?”
“There’s another hiker, right?”
When the wind rippled the tall buffalo grass, she glimpsed him in her peripheral vision. He was half up the hill toward the trees. His pistol aimed directly at her.
She wheeled to face him. Somebody else fired first, and his bullet hit the hiker in the upper right chest. The hiker let out a fierce scream. He turned on wobbly legs and stared uphill to the point where she’d been looking. Then he went to his knees and curled up on the ground, moaning.
She rushed toward him, kicked his gun out of his reach and unhooked her handcuffs from her belt. With his shoulder wound, it seemed cruel to force the hiker onto his belly, but she wanted to be sure he was subdued and no longer a threat.
Breathing heavily, she got a lungful of smoke and coughed before she called out, “Ty, have you got the other two?”
“The one in the road is dead. The other is unconscious. I secured his wrists with a zip tie.”
Her attack tally turned to a roster for emergency care: two wounded and two dead, including Morrissey. It was time to call for an ambulance. Proper procedure would have been to dial up the EMTs when they first discovered Morrissey’s body. But she’d figured that the local emergency personnel would already have their hands full, being on call for the firefighters and treating patients with smoke-related illnesses.
As she reached for her cell phone, she looked uphill and saw a tall man in a cowboy hat with his arms raised over his head. This man had fired accurately through the smoke from a significant distance; obviously he was an excellent marksman. He was dangerous. She should have been scared but, for some reason, she wasn’t.
She gave herself a mental slap. Shape up, girl. Just because he had his hands up, he was far from harmless. She could see the rifle strapped across his back and the two holsters on his belt. She lifted her gun and pointed it at him.
“Don’t shoot,” he yelled.
The sound of his voice sliced through her defenses and turned her insides to jelly. “Wade?”
It couldn’t be. He was dead.
But that was her husband walking down the hill. She’d recognize his bowlegged gait anywhere.
He’d come back to her. Either that or she was dead, too. She must have been killed in this shoot-out, and her darling husband had come to greet her and escort her through the Pearly Gates. Their poor little Jenny was an orphan. She shook herself. No way. They couldn’t both be dead.
Ty stepped up beside her. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“He’s still alive.”
“I’m afraid so.”
She slammed her Glock into the holster, dug in with her toes and started running up the hill. There was not one single instant of hesitation on her part. Maybe she didn’t know why he was back or where he’d been. But she didn’t care. He was back. Wade was alive!
For a year and twenty-one days, her heart had been frozen solid. With one sight of him, the glacier shattered, and a warm, gentle feeling spread through her. As she ran, she heard the sound of her own laughter. Not a fake ha-ha but a real, bubbling, delighted sound. As she got closer to him, the smoke seemed to disappear. The whole world was bathed in golden sunlight.
With a giant leap, she flung herself into his arms. The equipment on her utility belt and her armored vest got in the way, but she did her best to have full body contact. Clinging to him with all her strength, she wrapped both legs around him. He felt different, more muscular. He felt right.
Her lips joined with his. There was nothing shy about their kiss. No clumsy fumbling around. No misdirected pawing. When it came to sex, they had always been good together. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and she welcomed the taste of him.
Neither of them was fresh and clean, and she should have been grossed out. Instead, it was the opposite. She nuzzled the bare skin of his throat inside his collar and inhaled his musky, manly aroma. Wade had never worn cologne, and that was fine with her. She liked the way he smelled.
His lips tickled her ear as he whispered, “I missed you, Samantha, missed you so damn much.”
“Me, too.” She kissed him again. “Where were you?”
“It’s complicated.”
She pulled her head back and stared into his light brown eyes. After a year and twenty-one days, after letting her think he was dead, he needed a much better explanation. “Tell me about it.”
“There isn’t time. I shouldn’t have come down here, but I couldn’t be this close and not touch you. You’re an angel, so damn beautiful. But I’ve got to take off, can’t stay here.”
She wasn’t letting him run away after giving her a whisper of sweet talk and “it’s complicated.” She needed a hell of a lot more than that. She slid down his body and planted her boots on the ground. “Sit down, Wade.”
“I