by K. M. Fawkes
“That idiot has backed us into a corner, and half of us are here unarmed,” Garrett groaned.
He peered around the corner and glanced quickly across the square in front of the schoolhouse. Everyone had fled, thank God, and he could see several of the townspeople peeking around corners, their guns up and ready. At least some of them were armed. But not nearly enough of them.
Even worse, they hadn’t had any warning—which meant they hadn’t been able to use any of their explosives on the outskirts of town. They might have caught some gang members in their traps, but not enough of them.
“Wait a minute,” he said suddenly.
He started scuttling backward on his butt, moving quickly toward the back of the schoolhouse, where it hit the desert. From there, he knew, he’d be able to see the front of town, the place having been built on a fairly even square. From the back of this building, he should be able to see the guards—the men who should have been guarding the town.
When he arrived at the opposite corner and looked one way, toward what he thought of as the front of town, and then the other way, toward the other end of Main Street, he saw… nothing. Ben and Greyson had been on watch, he remembered, seeing the schedule in his mind’s eye. Ben on one side, Greyson on the other. They’d always taken the night shift because they were some of the best with guns. Manny and Garrett had been their backups.
But he didn’t see either one of them in their places at the ends of Main Street.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Shots were ringing out from all around him, now, and people were screaming. His people were screaming. Garrett didn’t see any bodies outside of town, but he was guessing that Greyson and Ben were both either dead or taken prisoner. And it didn’t take much to guess at who had done it.
He’d known the Helen Falls gang was going to arrive to take their revenge. He’d put plans in place to be ready. But those plans depended on some sort of warning—or the guards at least calling out when the bikers arrived. Each guard had been armed with a flare, specifically to light the explosives at either end of Main Street. The explosions should have not only alerted the townspeople but also thrown any invaders off their game.
He had no idea how the bikers had managed to sneak up on both Ben and Greyson. But that also didn’t matter right now. What was done was done, and Garrett had to figure out how to save his people.
He scuttled back up to where Alice was still sitting, his shoes filling with sand, his breath coming hard and heavy.
“Ben and Greyson are both gone,” he said. “The Helen Falls crew must have surprised them.”
He snuck an eye back around the corner and looked desperately out into the street, in one direction and then another. He needed to know where those shooters were. He needed to know how many of his people were armed—and how many were already hurt, or dead.
“And now we’re in trouble,” Alice confirmed. “And half of the guns are still in the houses. God.”
Garrett blew out a quick breath. “Exactly.”
At that moment, he realized that Steve was still out there—and alive. It looked like he’d been shot in the leg, because he was desperately crawling for cover, one leg dragging out behind him as he worked his arms to drag himself forward. The sand around him was flying up in spurts, though, as bullets hit the ground surrounding him. At this rate, he wasn’t going to make it.
And though he might have been Garrett’s enemy in town, he was still a member of the community. Garrett wasn’t going to let him be shot like that.
He was up and moving into the square before he could question the decision, his gun shoved into the waistband of his jeans and his feet flying over the sand, his hands over his head as he ducked for some sort of cover.
He swerved back and forth as he ran, hoping it would make him a more difficult target—and that those bikers weren’t actually very good shots—and didn’t even slow down when he reached Steve. Instead, he snagged the man’s shoulders on his way by, jerking the man to his feet and then hauling him along as he made for the corner of another building, and the shelter it promised. Steve was screaming in pain and horror, but still Garrett didn’t slow down.
At least he was still screaming. If he was shot again, whatever chances he had would be gone.
When they slid around the corner and skidded to a halt in the sand, he turned and saw why Steve had been screaming. It wasn’t his leg that had been shot. It was his body.
A wound gaped in his stomach, the blood spurting in a way that made it look like some major vessel had been hit. Potentially an artery, given the amount of blood and the spray. Garrett might not have had any medical training, but he did know that being able to see the man’s intestines was a bad sign. If those were ruptured, there was no way they would be able to save him. They had virtually no medical supplies left, and the bacteria in Steve’s intestines would likely contaminate the entire body cavity.
The man was going to die. Dammit.
Garrett put it on the back burner for the moment. He didn’t have time to mourn one of his own. He had to do what he could to try to save the others.
He paused to listen for a moment, and realized that the gunfire was getting heavier, and though he might be imagining it—because how could you really tell—he thought the shots were coming from closer now. As if their assailants were actually getting closer to the square. They must have realized that Garrett’s people didn’t have many guns with them, and were only sporadically returning fire. They must have figured out that they had the upper hand here.
Well, they weren’t all unarmed. He could see Shane and Manny on the other side of the square, each of them with a sniper rifle, each taking careful aim at someone. Wherever Alice was, she had a rifle as well, and Garrett was guessing she hadn’t hesitated to start using it. He had cover. Just not enough of it.
He cast his gaze out into the street and the buildings beyond, wondering exactly where those guys were. They wouldn’t have made it into many of the buildings, he thought, which meant they must be out in the street or hiding around corners, just like he and his people were doing. And that should mean…
Ah, there one was. At the side of the bank, shooting away as if his life depended on it, and not even bothering to aim. Well, that was his mistake.
Garrett leveled his Glock in front of him, sighting down the barrel and breathing out as he’d been taught to do. He needed to make this one count. Couldn’t afford to miss, not with how scarce bullets were and how many bikers there might be out there. He shifted the nose of the gun slightly to the left, to take into account the fact that it would inevitably pull to the right with the pressure of the trigger, and then let off a shot.
He barely had time to congratulate himself on the guy going to his knees when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
He turned and found another biker on the other side of the street, just aiming his gun at what could have been any of the people from town. Garrett steadied himself and pulled the trigger again, though he didn’t aim as carefully this time. The bullet still hit, and the man flew backward into the wall, leaving a blood spatter on the concrete behind him, and was still.
Then another flash of movement caught Garrett’s attention, this time from behind him.
Whirling around, he found another biker right behind him, gun out and already pointed at Steve. The man pulled the trigger, killing Steve with a bullet to the head, and then looked up at Garrett, his eyes wild.
Garrett bit the inside of his cheek. Lance. Here with the biker gang, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that he’d been doing recon when he was here before. Trying to figure out how much weaponry the townspeople had—and probably even what they were doing to defend themselves. And Garrett had had him released into the desert. There was no telling when he’d come back, and whether he’d seen the defenses themselves. Hell, he was probably the reason the Helen Falls gang had known exactly how to get into Trinity Ranch without triggering any alarms.
He should
have known that guy was a liar and a cheat. Should never have given him the benefit of the doubt.
Well, that ended right now.
Garrett jerked his gun up, aimed, and pulled the trigger twice, sending bullets right into Lance’s face. The man fell without a sound, flying back into the sand and seeming to crumple in on himself, and then Garrett was whirling around and moving again. There was nothing else he could do for Steve. He needed to start gathering the rest of his people and getting them the hell out of town before the bikers took them hostage—or killed them outright.
Chapter 11
Garrett ran into the street, uncaring about the bullets flying past, and made straight for one of the corners. He could see the flash of bullet fire coming from the shadows there, and that meant only one thing: someone was shooting from that area. Given that they were shooting toward the schoolhouse, they weren’t one of the townspeople.
He didn’t have a plan. Not yet. But whatever he did, it had to start and finish with taking out as many of the bikers as he could.
He raced past several bodies, not slowing down to look at who they might be, and skidded to a stop directly next to the corner where he’d seen the muzzle flash. Just on the other side of the wall from him—not two feet away—would be one of the bikers. A biker who was trying to kill his people, and therefore needed to die.
He took a deep breath and turned the corner, gun up and arms straight, finger on the trigger. When he saw the short, pudgy man with long, graying hair in front of him, his brain did a quick calculation—older man, not Bubba, didn’t match the description of any of the people in town—and pulled the trigger twice.
The man’s knees collapsed and he folded to the ground, finished.
Not pausing to catch his breath, Garrett grabbed the rifle the man had been using—reprimanding himself now for not having taken Lance’s gun as well—and rushed back out into the street. Now he did have time to look at the bodies lying there, and he gulped heavily when he recognized one of them as Alan. The other two looked to be bikers, though, and he rushed to them, rifled through their clothing for clips, guns, and grenades, and shoved all the new weaponry into the pants of his pockets.
His sister had always made fun of him for wearing carpenter pants that included at least five pockets, but they’d been incredibly useful in his line of work, where he always needed to carry pencils, papers, screwdrivers, rulers, a calculator, sometimes a tablet, and almost always some sort of hammer. He’d never in a million years dreamed that he’d be shoving extra guns—safety on—and grenades—pins safely turned to the locked position—into those pockets.
Kady would have had a fit if she’d been able to see him now. She would have been lecturing him about the danger. And he would have told her that he would take on as much danger as it took if it meant keeping her safe. If it meant keeping anyone safe.
He yanked a handgun off the last biker in the road, still dodging and weaving in an attempt to avoid bullets, and sprinted for cover in another alleyway. He had to figure out where everyone was, and how to get them to safety.
Slipping to the ground in the shadows of the alley, he tried to force himself to breathe normally for a second—and think. There had been so many people in the square when the shooting started, and he hadn’t seen many of them since then. He knew where Shane and Manny were, and he’d assumed that Alice was close, but aside from the dead man in the street…
That was when the screaming started.
It was far away, toward the front of town, and he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman with the pitch. Whoever it was, though, they needed help. And quickly.
Jumping to his feet, he turned down the alley and sprinted away from the main street and the square in front of the schoolhouse. This alley connected to one of the smaller streets in the town, and that street ran parallel to Main Street. If he was lucky, he’d be able to get down it with less exposure. The bikers had probably gone right for where the people were—and at the moment, that was Main Street.
Hopefully they hadn’t even considered looking at the other streets.
When he hit Ash, he veered left and increased his speed on the sidewalk, dodging around long-defunct light posts and leaping over the trash the people had left there. A bench had been knocked into the way of his sprint, but he soared over it, barely stopping to notice it. The screaming was still going on in the distance, and he needed to get there now.
Suddenly someone tore out of the alley to his left, nearly colliding with him, and Garrett veered to the right and directly into the street, shouting in surprise. But when he looked over, already trying to get his gun up to fire, he realized that it was Alice.
“What are you doing here?” he huffed, increasing his pace again.
She snorted. “Same thing as you, I suspect.”
Garrett dodged a pile of furniture—one of their now-useless barricades—and nodded, though he realized she wouldn’t be looking at him to see it. “Do you know where everyone went?”
“They’ve all gathered in the houses,” she answered quickly. “I sent them back there for both shelter and their guns. You were right; no one had their weapons with them. At least half of them should be armed by now, though, and fighting back. If we’re lucky. If they’re still alive. If the bikers didn’t trap them in the houses.”
“You’re a real ray of sunlight, Alice, have I ever told you that?” Garrett quipped. “Get back to wherever they are and get them the hell out of town. Give them the directions to that cave.”
“Due east from here, one mile, group of about one hundred cacti, hole in the middle that leads down into an underground rock cavern,” she repeated.
“Right,” Garrett muttered.
It wasn’t the map he’d planned on drawing for everyone, and the directions had a lot less detail than he wanted. Ideally, he would have sent Greyson with them to direct them. But that was no longer an option.
“Think they’ll even make it?” Alice asked, reading his hesitation correctly. “Those aren’t exactly detailed directions, and we’re not sending out the most… organized group.”
No, he wasn’t sure they’d make it. But he didn’t exactly have a choice.
“Doesn’t matter,” Garrett said bluntly. “Whether they do or not, they’ll be safer out of town. And enough of them have been out in the desert that they’ll be able to navigate it—or find another town. The only thing I know for sure is that they can’t stay here. Stay here and they’ll die for certain. At least out there they have a fighting chance.”
“And you?” Alice asked, her voice quieter now.
“I’m not leaving this fight until it’s finished,” he answered grimly.
She didn’t ask anything else, just veered into the next alleyway and was gone, and Garrett pressed forward on his own, refusing to think about the fact that Alice might be telling the townspeople to go out into the desert to their deaths. Refusing to think about the fact that he might never see her again. He didn’t have time for sentimentality right now. The screaming was starting to waver, and he could hear shouts coming from behind him.
Shouts that came from men. And if what Alice said was right about the placement of the townsfolk, then the men behind him were the bikers. Not friends.
He rounded a slight turn in the road and found Elisa there. To his surprise, she was alone—not in the middle of being terrorized by bikers. She was, however, trapped against the side of a building, bullets flying through the intersection she’d found her way into. He’d never envisioned her to be a screamer, but she was frozen in horror, her eyes too big for her face and her skin devoid of color.
He jerked to a stop next to her, grabbed her arm, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“You’re going to draw them right to you if you don’t shut up,” he hissed. “They’re all over the place. The last thing you want is to tell them where you are.”
She managed to focus her eyes on him and nodded slowly, indicating that she understood. Whatever had taken hold of
her and led to the screaming, she seemed to have it under control now. He took his hand away from her mouth and brought her closer so he could whisper in her ear.
“Everyone else is back at the houses and Alice is marshaling them to move out. Get back to your house. If no one is there, head to Alice’s, or the place Greyson was staying. Anyone who recognizes you will call out to you and bring you in. Go with the rest of the people, do you understand me?”
“But I—” she started.
He drew back from her and stared down into her face. “I know you want to help,” he said, knowing her well enough to realize what it was she was going to ask him—and knowing now that she was absolutely unprepared for the battle that was to come. “But I need you safe. I need to know that you’re getting out of this town and away from the fighting. We’ll regroup after I’ve got these men taken care of, understand? But I need you to get to the cave and hide, and from there to a safe town. One where you’ll have better protection. I need you to convince all the people to do that. To lead them. Can you do that for me, Elisa?”
She shut her mouth and nodded again, once, and he nodded as well, then pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Go. Stay in the alleys and stick to the smaller roads. And take this.” He fished one of the spare guns out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Shoot anyone you don’t recognize. Can you do that?”
“I-I think so,” she stuttered.
He put his hand over hers on the gun. “You can. Remember the target practice we did? You hit the middle of the target every single time. Just think of them as targets.”
She nodded, then turned and dashed into the alley, just as he’d told her to. He watched her go for a moment, sending a fleeting prayer after her that she would be safe and find the others. That they would manage to get out into the desert and find the cave. And that they would find a safer place to go after that.
He had just turned to keep running toward the edge of town—to do what, he still didn’t know—when a bullet pierced his thigh. Garrett went to the ground, holding his breath at the fire rushing through his blood and the absolute agony in his thigh, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. But a moment later the adrenaline kicked in and his body began to burn with a different fire. The fire of needing to get up and go.