And she heard the crunching sound again.
Lucas must have heard it as well, because he barreled back down the hall and into the guest room. While he kept a firm grip on his Glock, he pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and his boots.
The sound came again.
Lucas and she went stock-still. And Kylie tried to figure out what was going on. Not footsteps, exactly. Well, maybe that’s what it was. As if the person or persons were dragging something. Worse, the last sound had been closer than the others. As if the sound makers were right outside the house.
Sweet merciful heaven.
If the kidnappers tried to get in, the alarms wouldn’t be much of a deterrent. They could still bash through a door and start shooting. If that happened, Lucas and she would be forced to return fire. It could turn into a free-for-all with bullets flying.
And the baby could be hurt.
Or worse.
Her heart was pounding so hard that it surprised her that her ribs didn’t crack, and the baby was doing flips or something, which didn’t help with the pressure building inside her.
“Go ahead. Hum if it helps,” Lucas suggested.
So, she did. Kylie tried out a few verses of “Silent Night,” but then she stopped. Listened again. And realized what she wasn’t hearing.
“Why didn’t the dogs bark?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Lucas answered quickly enough and without any surprise, making her realize he’d already considered that. And it was troubling him.
Because the Dobermans barked at strangers. Heck, they barked at friends. They just plain barked.
At everyone except Finn.
“Finn wouldn’t do this,” she whispered. And Kylie prayed that was true. Kidnapping, attempted murder and homicide were bad enough even when those heinous crimes hadn’t been committed by a friend.
“He has no motive,” Lucas added.
But did he?
Had something happened when he made those calls for Cordelia? Had Finn gotten involved with something he shouldn’t have?
Kylie shook her head. It just didn’t mesh with the Finn she knew. As a teenager, he’d been a little wild. A lot weird. Somehow as much of a misfit as she’d been. But he wasn’t a criminal.
“If someone gets in,” Lucas instructed, “I don’t want you to try to do anything heroic. I want you to hide.”
“While you’re getting shot at? Yeah. As if I could really do that. It’s one thing to have you out doing a reconnaissance of the area, but it’s totally different to stand by and watch someone shoot at you.”
“I’m not giving you a choice, Kylie.” He slid his left hand onto her stomach.
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s dirty pool.”
“I know. But it’ll work. Because I know you care just as much about this baby as I do.”
It was a powerful comment. One that she didn’t want to admit was true. But it was. God help her, it was. Even though she’d tried to keep her feelings in check, she couldn’t. She loved his baby with all her heart.
And then Lucas did something even more powerful. Even more amazing. He leaned over and brushed a kiss on her shocked, half-open mouth.
“Why do you do that?” she asked. Not as an accusation. Her tone was too dreamy.
But Lucas didn’t get a chance to answer. There was another noise. Something soft. It was merely the calm before the storm.
Seconds later, a bullet ripped through the window.
Chapter Fourteen
Lucas pushed Kylie down onto the floor. It wasn’t a moment too soon. Broken glass burst across the room.
The bullet tore some of the wood from the window frame. The glass and the splinters created deadly fragments, one of which sliced across his arm.
His heart sprang to his throat. His muscles tightened. His body braced itself for a fight. A fight that some SOB had brought right to his home.
Lucas couldn’t pinpoint the exact location of impact of the bullet, but it was somewhere in the general vicinity of the door—where he’d been standing just minutes earlier. For that matter, Kylie had been near there, as well. If they hadn’t taken precautions, they could have been killed. And Lucas realized this wasn’t over. The person firing those shots likely wouldn’t stop until they were dead, so maybe all the precautions in the world wouldn’t help them.
Adjusting his weapon, Lucas moved Kylie away from the wall, in case the shooter was using armor-piercing artillery that would go through layers of wood, insulation and dry wall.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered.
Lucas glanced at the cut on his left forearm, specifically at the splatters of blood around it and dismissed it. “It’s nothing.”
He pushed her into the closet and crawled toward to the window so he could try to return fire.
The shooter beat him to it.
There was another shot. It slammed through what was left of the glass and created a deafening blast that filled the room. This time, he saw the point of impact. The bullet smashed into the wall near the door and sent bits of chalky material flying through the air.
Lucas felt the sting of the debris on his face. He felt the fear. It clawed its way through him, setting off a dozen nightmarish memories. Of his wife’s shooting. A woman he hadn’t been able to save.
Hell.
This had to stop. He couldn’t risk a bullet ricocheting off something and hitting Kylie. Or himself. Because if anything happened to him, then that would likely leave Kylie and the baby at the mercy of people who probably hadn’t come here to show much mercy.
Lucas made it to the window, took a quick look. Saw the barn. The yard.
But no shooter.
If it was only one shooter. There could be two or more. And there were a lot of places for gunmen to hide. Assessing those places one at a time, he glanced out the window for fractions of seconds before pulling back. Each time he was able to exclude a particular hiding place.
Until he got to the storage shed positioned only about ten yards or so from the guest room window.
The moonlight helped with the open areas, but it also cast shadows around that storage shed. If he were planning on an ambush, that would be his choice for a hiding place. Plenty of cover. Proximity to the house. Easy access into the pasture and the woods in case an escape route was needed.
“Lucas, stay down!” Kylie ordered.
“I think I know where the shooter is.”
“That won’t help if you get your head blown off. Let’s wait him out.”
Lucas considered that and thought of his deputy, who was probably still miles out. In one way, not good, because he could certainly use the backup, but it also meant Mark Jensen wouldn’t be driving straight into the line of fire.
“Call Mark,” he instructed Kylie, tossing her the phone. “Tell him what’s going on. He’s not to approach the house. It’s too dangerous.”
Lucas stayed near the window, still crouching and peering out, and he stayed in a position to fire. Which he would certainly do once he verified the location of the shooter. No use wasting ammunition or giving away his own position to whoever was out there.
Behind him, he heard Kylie make the call. Listened to her voice as she briefed Mark. She sounded calm. Lucas knew she wasn’t. She was terrified, not just for herself but for the baby. Somehow, some way, he had to get her out of this.
Why hadn’t the dogs barked?
That question kept repeating in his head, but Lucas figured he wouldn’t have an answer until he could get outside and take a look around. That wasn’t going to happen with a shooter out there. He couldn’t risk leaving Kylie alone, and Mark wouldn’t proceed onto the property until he’d gotten some kind of okay from Kylie or him.
The silence returned. Lucas hated it. Because the gunman could still be moving closer to the house to get off a more accurate shot.
Lucas levered himself slightly and aimed. Rather than risk having the gunman getting an even better position, Lucas squeezed the trigger of h
is Glock. There was the lightning-fast recoil. A familiar feeling that he had no trouble controlling. His bullet slammed into the metal storage shed.
And then all hell broke loose.
Bullets came at the house.
Lots of them.
Not a single shot, but a barrage of deadly gunfire all pointed right at the window. However, those latest shots gave him his answer—there were two gunmen. At least. Because he could distinguish the sounds of at least two different weapons. So now he had to wonder—were they outnumbered? Outgunned? And if so, by how much?
Lucas quickly checked on Kylie. She was still on the floor of the closet, her arms covering her head, her gun gripped in her hands. She wasn’t out of danger, not by a long shot, but at least she wasn’t trying to help him return fire.
The hot metal from the bullets ripped through the fabric of the curtain, and the winter wind caught the shreds, snapping them like bullwhips. The temperature in the room plunged so quickly that he could suddenly see the foggy cloud left by his breath.
Each new round of gunfire gave him a punch of adrenaline. His heart rate was off the scale. Still, he didn’t let his physical reactions cause him to lose focus. He listened. Observed.
Processed.
The next shot came close. Too close. It smashed into the window frame just to the left of Lucas’s head. However, the close call allowed him to pinpoint one of the gunmen’s locations. He or she was on the left side of the storage shed.
Finally, there was a lull in the attack. For whatever reason, the gunmen stopped. Maybe to reload. Maybe to listen. Maybe to move closer. Lucas didn’t care. This was the opening he’d been waiting for.
Lucas fixed an image of the gunman’s position in his mind. He came up and returned fire. He focused his shot directly at the left corner of the shed. To fire the second shot he moved just slightly to the right so it’d tear through the structure.
It did.
There were a few sparks, the sound of metal ripping through metal, which Lucas ignored. However, he didn’t ignore the shadowy movement that he saw. He squeezed off another shot and kept on shooting. Aiming right for that sputter of movement.
Until he ran out of ammo.
“Here!” Kylie said. She scrambled out of the closet and slid her .357 toward him.
Lucas didn’t waste any time. He tossed his Glock onto the bed, retrieved the .357 Magnum from the floor and came up ready to fire.
But there was nothing to fire at.
The shadow was gone.
Lucas held his position. Waited. And he listened. But the only sound he heard was the wind and Kylie humming.
“This isn’t over,” he mumbled. And then he cursed. Because he knew what this meant.
The moment his deputy arrived to stay with Kylie, nothing would stop him. Lucas was going after the person who’d just tried to kill them, and one way or another, there would be hell to pay.
“LUCAS HAS BEEN OUT THERE too long,” Kylie complained to Deputy Mark Jensen. “And he’s injured. He wouldn’t even let me look at that cut on his arm. A scratch, he said. ‘Nothing to be concerned about.’”
Mark made a sound. Not an agreement, by any means. Just a male grunt to indicate he’d heard her but that he intended to take no action.
Not that there was any action to take.
Before Lucas left to check the grounds, he’d ordered Mark not to let her out of his sight. For the past hour and a half, the young deputy had obeyed his boss’s order to a tee. So, here Mark and she sat in the living room. No lights on. Only using minimal comments and annoying grunts to communicate with each other.
But the deputy kept his weapon ready and aimed.
Kylie understood the ready and aimed part. She, too, had her own gun gripped in her hands. And she was mentally ready if the kidnappers returned, made their way past Lucas and somehow got inside. It wasn’t as if that didn’t concern her. It did. But it concerned her more that Lucas was out there and they hadn’t heard so much as a peep from him.
She shouldn’t have let him go out there alone. After all, there were no guarantees that the shooters had left. They could be hiding, waiting….
And she was taking another trip down paranoia lane.
Of course, it was easy to do that, what with the fact that someone obviously wanted them dead.
Tiffany had been right. They’ll do whatever it takes to stop Kylie Monroe and Sheriff Creed. In their case, whatever it takes had been a potentially fatal attack right in Lucas’s own home. Kylie wondered how long it would be before either of them would feel safe again. Certainly not until the gunmen and their boss were caught.
She heard the key turn in the lock, and she jumped to her feet. So did Mark, and he caught her to stop her from running into the foyer. A moment later, they realized his vigilance wasn’t necessary.
Lucas walked through the door.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Though it was a dumb question because he appeared to be fine. Other than signs of fatigue and ruddy cheeks from the cold weather, Lucas looked the same as when he’d walked out the door nearly an hour earlier.
“I’m okay,” Lucas assured her.
He reset the alarm, holstered his Glock and walked into the living room. Kylie couldn’t help herself. She went to him and pulled him into her arms. It was a brassy move because Mark was there and he probably would eventually let it slip that Lucas and she had been in too friendly an embrace. Lucas obviously didn’t care about the potential gossip because he returned the hug.
“The dogs are questionable,” Lucas told her, saying it loud enough so that his deputy could hear. “It appears someone drugged them. I called Finn. He’s on his way over to pick them up so he can take them to the vet.”
“Drugged?” Kylie repeated. She pulled back so she could face him and examine his eyes to see what he was thinking. “So the gunmen had come prepared.” It also meant that Finn wasn’t behind any of this. He couldn’t have risked drugging his beloved pets.
Well, he wouldn’t have risked it unless he knew there was no chance that they’d actually be harmed. But she already had enough to concern her without dwelling on such an outside possibility.
“I’ll make sure all the doors and windows are locked,” Mark volunteered.
Kylie waited until the deputy was out of earshot before she continued. She also took off Lucas’s buckskin jacket so she could check that cut on his arm.
“Finn was at his house when you called him?” she whispered.
The muscles in Lucas’s jaw tightened. “He said he was.”
“Any doubts?”
“His calls are automatically forwarded to his cell phone.”
Her stomach sank to her knees. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.”
So their old friend wasn’t totally in the clear after all. Too bad. It would help if she could be sure that someone other than fellow law enforcement officers were on their side.
Kylie draped his coat over the back of the chair and rolled up his shirt sleeve. “Could someone like Cordelia have gotten close enough to drug the dogs?”
“Maybe. I found them in the pasture. Both had been shot with tranquilizer darts.”
In other words, the perpetrator wouldn’t have had to get that close to the dogs. That meant almost anyone could have done it. Well, anyone with a grudge against them, and that obviously included Cordelia.
Kylie frowned when she made her way to Lucas’s injured forearm. Not a precise cut but an angry gash nearly two inches long. “Come with me to the bathroom so I can clean that.”
He looked at her. “You know how to treat wounds?”
“No. Actually, I don’t, but I figure I can find some antiseptic or something to stop it from getting infected. I don’t suppose you’d consider seeing a doctor?”
“Nope.”
But he did go with her down the hall after he slipped his arm around her waist. Not a totally intimate, cozy gesture on his part. She suspected that he was eager to get her away from any of t
he windows.
“I talked to Sergeant O’Malley at SAPD,” Lucas explained. “She might be able to arrange for us to stay at a safe house.”
“How safe is safe?” Kylie questioned. She located a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and bandages and got to work.
“Safer than here,” he qualified. “In the meantime, Sheriff Knight is sending over one of his deputies to do horseback patrol. The county CSI guys are on the way, as well. They’ll be combing the grounds for anything forensic they can use to identify the gunmen.”
She dabbed on some of the hydrogen peroxide and blew on it so it wouldn’t sting. “You’ve been busy.”
“Yes. After the fact.”
Mercy, he sounded bone-tired and weary. “Lucas, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t do anything right, either.”
That brought her nursing duties to a halt so she could stare at him. “Excuse me? We’re alive. So is the baby. That’s a lot of right as far as I’m concerned.”
He didn’t get a chance to dispute that because Mark Jensen appeared in the doorway of the bathroom.
“Anything else you want me to do?” Mark asked.
“No.” Lucas took the bandage from her, slapped it on his arm and shoved his shirtsleeve back in place. “I have to board up that window the gunmen shot out.”
“I’ll do it,” Mark volunteered.
“Thanks. There’s some plywood and a toolbox in the barn.”
Mark stepped away, but then he turned back toward them. “Any chance the dogs will wake up anytime soon? Those Dobermans don’t like me much.”
“They’re snoozing like babies. And Finn should be here any minute to get them.” Lucas snared her gaze after Mark left. “Finn won’t be coming in. I told him you were shaken up, that you needed to get some rest.”
She nodded. Kylie didn’t mind being used as an excuse, mainly because she really didn’t want to face their old friend, who might not have such friendly intentions toward them.
“So we’re staying here tonight?” she asked.
“The safe house won’t be ready for at least twenty-four hours, but don’t worry. Knight’s deputy will be outside on the grounds. So will the crime scene guys. And as a precaution, I want you to stay in my room.”
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