by Nicole Helm
But Ethan immediately lunged, tackling him at an awkward side angle. Cam saw the flash of the knife and managed to roll away from the first downward strike, but Ethan was on top of him quickly.
Cam grabbed his wrists, holding the sharp point of the knife away, but Ethan being on top gave him the better angle with which to force the blade down. Cam tried to kick or struggle, but most of his strength was focused on holding off the blade.
Cam took a chance at looking around the room, trying to figure out where the hell Zach was, but then he saw him. At the door, trying to push Hilly back out.
Straining to hold off the increasing force of Ethan’s push, Cam gritted his teeth. “Run, Hilly,” he ordered.
He couldn’t hear what they were saying, or see if Hilly listened to him or Zach got her out of here. The knife was inching closer and closer to the vulnerable flesh of his neck. Ethan’s eyes glittered with malice and hate.
Then Hilly appeared in his vision with Zach’s rifle in her hand. She skittered behind Ethan and shoved the barrel into his back. Her eyes were wild and her breath was coming in pants. “Get off of him, now,” she ordered.
Ethan looked down at Cam. Everything in his gaze was cold, dead almost. It gave Cam a full-body chill. For a second, he truly believed he would make Hilly take the shot.
“I’m your sister,” Hilly said breathlessly. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you don’t stop this right now.”
After a moment of continued struggle, Ethan began to ease off. He didn’t let go of the knife, but he began to move it away from Cam’s throat as he slid into a crouch. Cam kept a hold on Ethan’s wrists anyway. He wasn’t about to believe even with a gun on him Ethan would give up easily.
Cam surreptitiously tried to move his legs so he could keep Ethan from making any sudden moves, but that only made Ethan laugh. In the midst of that laughter that seemed to startle everyone, he twisted and grabbed the barrel of the weapon, jerking it out of Hilly’s grasp.
Cam moved to his feet, but he ended up only getting into a sitting position before he broke Hilly’s fall. She crashed into him hard, and he fell backward a little, but he quickly maneuvered to position himself between Hilly and Ethan.
Ethan stood there, Zach’s rifle secure in his hands, pointing it right at Cam. Hilly was struggling behind him, but Cam wasn’t about to let her in front of him.
“Ethan,” Zach said, breathless horror in his voice. “You’re not going to shoot your own siblings.”
Zach moved, but Ethan trained the sight right on Zach’s chest, making Zach freeze.
Ethan jabbed the gun toward him and then Cam. “I could kill all three of you and frame James. His prints are in here. He could finally pay for what he did to my father.”
“Please,” Hilly whispered, getting to her feet. “Don’t make this worse.”
“It’s already worse!” Ethan screamed.
Cam jumped to his feet. Without having to say anything, Zach inched closer so they created a barricade between Hilly and Ethan. Ethan ordered them to stop, but Cam wouldn’t. “I won’t let you kill your own sister, Ethan. Not if I can help it.”
“You can’t,” Ethan said, the gun trained on Cam. He put his finger on the trigger and Cam sucked in a breath.
Hilly pushed at him and Zach, but Cam would be damned if he moved. He’d take a bullet for her ten times over. He’d tackle Ethan before he shot, then Zach would have a chance of getting Hilly out of here.
But another voice joined Hilly’s protests. There were footsteps from behind them, then James came into view. He looked grim and determined, red-faced and panting, but calm nevertheless.
“You want to kill someone, you kill the man you’re really after,” James said gruffly.
Ethan’s gaze sharpened, and the gun’s barrel moved with swift accuracy to James’s chest.
Cam didn’t think, didn’t even breathe. He lunged.
Chapter Eighteen
“No.” Hilly wasn’t sure if she only thought it or if she screamed it, but the red splotch that bloomed on Cam’s thigh and his subsequent crash to the ground had her swaying on her feet. Then rushing forward, trying and failing to soften his fall.
He cursed under his breath, writhing in pain as he grabbed at his leg. “Would someone get all his weapons,” Cam said through gritted teeth, his body shivering. “I’m a little done with being his punching bag.”
Hilly shook, but she focused on what she had to do. Zach—the man who’d led them around the decoy camp—was taking care of Ethan, and whatever fight they were having Hilly couldn’t pay attention to. She couldn’t think about how he was her brother, how he was mixed up in this. How her other brother wanted her dad dead. Cam was shot. Shot.
She looked up at her dad—she wished she could think of him as James, as a stranger, but he was her father. Secrets didn’t erase twenty plus years. “We need bandages.”
Dad shrugged. “Leave him. It’d be the best thing for everyone if we just leave him.”
Hilly gaped at the man she’d called father. “He saved you,” she seethed. “You will do everything in your power to help him or I will shoot you myself.”
Dad’s jaw went hard, and he didn’t move. Hilly felt tears filling her eyes, but she blinked them away.
“Fine. I’ll do it myself. Bandages. I can find bandages. You stay put.”
“S-stop the bleeding,” Cam said, the shivering getting even worse as he cursed. “You need to stop it, Hilly.”
She swallowed and nodded. She made a move to unzip her coat, but Dad finally stirred, crouching next to Cam’s leg. He pushed a bundle of fabric onto the red seeping wound. “Press this hard. Even if it hurts. Harder you press, less blood.”
Even though her hands shook, she did as Dad said, pressing the fabric onto the wound. Cam hissed out a breath, but he didn’t tell her to stop.
“We need to get him help,” Hilly said. “This is bad.” She gently touched his neck underneath the nasty-looking gash.
“Survived worse,” Cam gritted out.
“When?”
“Okay, maybe not worse exactly...”
Hilly looked over at Zach and Ethan. Her brothers, apparently. It appeared as if Zach had won the fight. He was now tying Ethan to a chair. She hoped to God it was tight enough to keep him there. Regardless of their genetic connection, the man was not in his right mind. Not to be trusted.
“Dad,” she whispered. “We need help.”
Dad sighed heavily, but then he did something that had her jaw dropping. He pulled a phone out of his pocket. A slim device just like the one Cam had that had been left in his pack. Dad had a phone. A phone.
It struck her as deeply unfair and symbolic of everything that had been stolen from her, and she didn’t even have time to be upset over it because Cam had been shot.
He spoke into the phone. “We have a man who’s been shot, and the shooter waylaid. We’re at an isolated cabin and—”
“Tell them to meet me at mile marker 32 on Highway A,” Zach instructed.
Hilly looked up at him. He was grim and pale. She glanced back to Ethan, who was now secured to the chair, his lip split and bleeding, fury and pure hate in his gaze.
Hilly looked back at Zach. Both of them her brothers, and yet she couldn’t dwell on that. “How are you going to get him there?”
“I can fit him in the back of my four-wheeler and drive him down to that spot, but I can only fit him and one other person to make sure he’s not bouncing around too much back there. Still, better to be quick about it. I can get down there faster than I can instruct an ambulance up here.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Zach shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry. I can’t trust James with my brother. James will need to go with the police.”
“Police? Who cares about James and police? Get Cam to a hospital!” How could these
men stand around acting like their vendettas were the most important thing when Cam, who had no connection to any of this, was in pain and his life was in danger? What was wrong with them?
“I will. I am, but I have to take James in, too.”
“What about him?” she demanded, jabbing a hand at Ethan.
Zach sighed. “He’ll face the law, as well. I’ll send an officer back to take care of him, and get you.”
Hilly didn’t realize she was shaking her head no until Zach crouched next to her. Gently and carefully he placed a hand on her shoulder. “I know this is a mess. I’m sorry for that. But I need you to stay here with him. I can’t trust James with my—our brother.”
“He shot Cam.”
“I know. I know. He’ll be arrested. I promise you that. I won’t stand in the way of the law after the lengths he’s gone to to thwart it, but that doesn’t make him not my brother. It doesn’t make me not love him.”
Hilly swallowed at the lump in her throat. These men were all working with competing interests, so self-absorbed in their own crap. Well, she wouldn’t let Cam pay the price for that.
She kept pressing on the wound, but fixed Zach with the best intimidating look she could muster. “Go get the vehicle,” she ordered. “Bring it as close to the door as you can. Dad, you go get a blanket off the bed. Something we can make a kind of stretcher out of and—”
“I can get up,” Cam said on a gasp of pain.
“Don’t you dare try,” Hilly snapped. “Once we’ve got that, find any pillows or soft things we can put down in the back to make him comfortable.”
Both her father and Zach looked at her with furrowed brows. “Now!” she yelled, and they hopped to it.
“Drill Sergeant Hilly,” Cam murmured. His eyes were fluttering closed and his breathing was too shallow for her to have any kind of comfort.
She pushed harder on the wound and his eyes flew open on a yelp of pain.
“You stay conscious, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, the corners of his mouth somehow curving upward. “Might have just fallen in love with you right here. But it might also be the blood loss talking.”
Hilly thought her heart might have stopped, but she wasn’t about to let him know. “Well, you better make it through this so you can decide if it’s real or the blood loss.”
His hand brushed her arm. “Real enough, I’d think.”
“Then you really better survive,” she said, fighting back the tears. “So far you’ve only managed to give me my first kiss. Going to need a first date out of you, too.”
“Correction. Not drill sergeant. General Hilly.”
“I’ll take it,” she replied.
Dad returned with the blankets and some pillows, and when Zach came back, they all worked to get Cam loaded up. She wanted to cry. She wanted to tell him she loved him, but she was afraid it would feel too much like a goodbye.
Once Cam was settled, she wrapped her arms around him. She brushed her mouth against his. “Fight, Cam. I know you can.”
He managed a weak, lethargic salute.
Zach handed her his rifle, and Cam’s handgun. “Make sure Ethan stays tied up.” Zach took a deep breath in, and then let it out on a sigh. “I’m trusting you, Hillary.”
She didn’t correct her name. Instead she held his gaze and nodded at Cam. “Same goes.”
Zach nodded. He gave her arm a squeeze before climbing into the driver’s seat. Dad sat stiffly next to Cam, and yet Hilly knew he’d keep him stable. For her.
Hilly couldn’t watch them drive away because every bump made her wince in sympathy pain for what Cam must be going through.
She turned to the cabin and stepped back inside. Ethan was sitting in the chair. The bonds looked uncomfortable. She hoped they hurt for what he’d done to Cam. She walked over to the bedroom door, then opened it.
Free leaped out, whimpering and jumping at her. She soothed the dog with words, and once she’d set down the handgun, with pats.
“I hope he dies,” Ethan said coldly.
Hilly murmured the stay command into Free’s ear, giving her a kiss on her soft fur. Slowly, she stood. Slowly, she took stock of this man who was supposed to be her brother.
“So you can be a murderer?” She kept the acid out of her tone, the fury. She looked at him and held his vicious gaze.
Might have just fallen in love with you right here. Cam had said those words to her. Maybe losing consciousness and in incredible pain, but he’d said that to her. Cam wouldn’t say that frivolously. He’d mean it.
Was that what she felt? Did she even know what she felt? A sheltered girl in the midst of some kind of messed-up situation she couldn’t even begin to explain.
Then there was this man, spouting his anger and his hate, and any sympathy she might have had for him had died when he shot Cam.
“A murderer,” Ethan said, his voice sounding so pleasant it sent a shudder through her. “Just like the man you seem to think is your father. He’s the murderer. He’s the evil. I’m balancing the scales. Making everything right. I should have killed him. I would have. Any man who tries to save him deserves to die, too.”
The idea that Cam deserved to die made her so furious, she crossed to the man who was supposedly her brother. She slapped him as hard as she could, her palm stinging enough to bring tears to her eyes. “You’re just as bad as them. The Protectors and their revenge.”
He jerked in his chair, trying to pull his limbs free, but Zach had done a fine job of tying him down. “You were raised by one of them. What does that make you?”
“I’ve never tried to kill anyone. Never let revenge cloud reason. Look what you’ve done. Hurt everyone around you, and for what?”
“He killed our father.”
“He didn’t mean to.” She knew it was a weak excuse, and if she’d known her biological father instead of James as her father maybe she’d feel like Ethan did. “I know that doesn’t solve anything. I know it doesn’t heal anything for you. He was doing something wrong, and our father paid a price no one should have to pay, but you can’t bring him back, Ethan.”
“But I can cause the man who killed him irreparable pain and suffering.”
“At the sake of losing out on everything? We’re awfully different, Ethan.” He winced when she said his name, so she kept using it. “I don’t know who I would have been if things had been different. But I have been sheltered and hidden away for twenty years, and even when you don’t realize it, it’s a kind of prison. It stifles you. Trust me, Ethan, you don’t want that for the rest of your life. There are things you’re going to want to experience outside of revenge.”
Things like love. Regardless of whether she should or not. Whether it made sense or not. It was very clear to her after this whole unraveling of who she truly was that life very, very rarely made sense.
“Revenge is all I want,” Ethan said vehemently.
“Then I just feel sad for you, Ethan.” It was true. The anger melted away until she had only pity for this warped man who didn’t even want the good things out of life.
She did. All of them she could get. Regardless of who she was or who she loved. She wanted to experience it all.
* * *
HILLY WASN’T SURE how long it was before two police officers showed up. She’d hoped Laurel would be one of them so she could feel somewhat at ease, but then again Laurel was probably with Cam. Her brother. Her wounded brother.
The men arrested Ethan in short order. She was asked a plethora of questions before she was led to a police cruiser. Hilly was ushered into the passenger seat in the front. She insisted Free sit on her lap, and was indulged after a short argument.
The second officer and Ethan sat in the back. The ride to town was long and quiet except for the occasional burst of police radio activity.
They wouldn’t give
her any information on Cam’s prognosis, but they had agreed to drop her off at the hospital. The ride felt interminable, but eventually the cruiser pulled up in front of a gray building that made Hilly’s stomach cramp with fear.
She didn’t know how to navigate hospitals or the outside world or any of this, but still the door was being opened for her and she was being asked to step out.
There was an odd pang at leaving Ethan handcuffed and alone with these quiet, serious-faced police officers. He was her brother, and maybe what he really needed was love and hope.
But when she got out of the cruiser, Zach was there. He held up his hand to her, asking her to wait, while he spoke in low tones with the driver of the police vehicle. At one point he even flashed a badge.
He came back to her side of the car and failed in his clear attempt at a smile.
“Are you with the police?” she asked, wondering about the badge, his role with the Protectors, trying to work it all out.
“FBI,” Zach said sheepishly. “Well, I went a little rogue, so it’s possible I’m no longer FBI once I turn myself in, but I was undercover with the Protectors to build a case against them.”
“Did I ruin it?”
He reached out, hesitated and then touched her shoulder gently. “You didn’t ruin anything, Hilly. Not by a long shot.”
“Can I... Could we...”
He blinked, but then he seemed to understand, and slowly, carefully and awkwardly on both their parts, they shared a quick hug.
“I’m going to go with Ethan. Um, listen, I called my...our mother. I told her to stay put, but she’s not much on taking orders from me. It’s possible she shows up here. She’s going to...” He swallowed. “This will be an awful big deal for her. She doesn’t live too far away. So, I might not be able to get back in time to...facilitate.”
“Go with Ethan. He needs someone. I can handle...” Her mother. Mother.
It hadn’t even occurred to her, that there would be more. She had a mother. Her skin felt too tight at the very idea of one.