Dave sighed, calculating the best moment to catch Wayne off guard. He’d heard once that when a person was talking, their reflexes were slowed. And he needed every fraction-of-a-second advantage he could get.
“Here’s the thing, man,” Dave began in as friendly of a tone as he could muster. “Your hoses and belts look pretty worn. I can patch the hoses with some duct tape and that will hold you for a while, but eventually they’ll give.”
“And?”
“The carburetor’s bad. It sounds like it needs replacing, and we don’t have any parts to do that kind of repair.”
Wayne frowned. “I only need it to get me outta town. Then I’ll dump it and steal someth—”
Dave slammed his elbow into Wayne’s solar plexus, followed immediately with a backward thrust of his fist into the guy’s broken nose. Predictably, Wayne curled forward in defense of his injured gut and face. But he also swung the Glock toward Dave.
Ready for the move, Dave used his other hand to knock the muzzle up and grab for Wayne’s wrist, driving his thumb into the tendons on the underside of his captor’s wrist.
“Dave!” Lilly cried.
“You sonofabitch!” Wayne growled. “I warned you what—”
Tightening his grip on Wayne’s wrist, Dave slammed his opponent’s arm onto the car frame. Wayne howled in outrage and pain as the two grappled for possession of the gun. Wayne tried to turn the muzzle up, and when he had a slight angle, he fired.
The ear-shattering blast reverberated off the hood of the car, mingling with Lilly’s scream.
One, Dave counted mentally, knowing he needed the Glock to be fired at least six times.
She rushed forward, grabbing at Wayne. “Stop! No!”
“Get back!” Dave yelled at her, while again slamming Wayne’s wrist on the car. “Take cover!”
“I...will...kill...you...for this!” Wayne snarled as they continued wrestling for dominance and the Glock.
Finally, Dave wrenched the weapon away and used it to backhand Wayne in the nose. The robber moaned and cradled his nose as blood streamed from it.
Two, Dave counted as he fired into the dirt toward the back of the yard.
Wayne tackled him from behind, his captor’s arms circling him and pinning his own arms at his sides as Wayne took him down. Dave clung to the Glock, firing over his head before Wayne grabbed at the gun. Three.
Again the two battled for the revolver. Dave knew if he lost possession of the weapon, one of the remaining rounds would be fired into his brain. And Lilly? Would Wayne’s wrath extend to her as well?
Dave held the Glock with both hands, using his forehead to bash Wayne in his already injured nose. Dave bit his opponent’s arm when it came within reach, and he tried to wrap his legs around Wayne’s to subdue them as the two men struggled, rolling on the ground in a winner-take-all fight for their lives.
Wayne suddenly abandoned his battle for the gun and seized Dave by the front of his shirt. Lifted him a few inches from the ground and slammed him back on the hard earth. Once, twice...three times. Dave’s head smacked against the gravel drive, and pain streaked through his skull like lightning. His breath whooshed from his lungs. He gasped like a landed fish. His vision blurred, and his ears rang. He fought to stay conscious...
Lilly...
Had to protect...
Wayne released his shirt. Grabbed for the gun.
Dave fought to maintain control of the revolver, but when his opponent slammed his wrist into the driveway, his grip on the Glock slipped.
Blinking, Dave tried to clear his vision. Tried to prepare for what came next.
Wayne pushed unsteadily to his knees, swiping at his swollen, bloody nose with his arm. “I told you not to do anything stupid.”
Dave dragged in a rasping breath and swiped a hand toward the Glock. “Don’t.”
Wobbling as he rose to his feet, Wayne pointed the gun at Dave’s chest. Center mass.
From his left, Lilly lunged at Wayne, shouting, “No-o-o-o!”
A blast of gunfire. Then...
For the briefest moment, silence. A slow-motion moment where it seemed the world held its breath. Or maybe it only seemed that way to Dave. His head felt heavy, his thoughts were sluggish. Was he shot? Dying? What?
He waited for the pain, but adrenaline numbed him.
Seeking proof of life, he focused on the thrum of his accelerated heartbeat thrashing his ribs.
And then the moment passed, and reality crashed down on him. A scalding pain ripped through the calf of his bad leg. A keening wail assaulted his ears, followed by the sound of a scuffle.
He craned his head in the direction of the noises. Lilly. Wayne. A tussle.
And then more gunfire.
Chapter 14
When Lilly saw Wayne aim the gun at Dave, a chill swept down her spine, and her heart stopped for a moment. In the next instant, something feral and protective swelled inside her. Without stopping to overthink it, she simply reacted, followed her gut. She’d plowed her shoulder in Wayne’s side and swung her arms up to knock the gun away. She knew she’d made contact with something, because her hands stung and her shoulder ached.
But her ears rang, as well. Wayne had fired the gun.
Her heart in her throat, she spun to face Dave. He was lying motionless on the ground, his eyes wide and unblinking.
“Dave!” she screamed, fearing the worst. Beside her, Wayne was fumbling in the dirt near her feet. She dropped her gaze, stumbling back, when her foot hit something hard that nearly made her lose her balance. The gun. A jolt of awareness slammed through her. Wayne was reaching for the weapon.
He can’t kill us if he’s out of rounds. Reacting more than planning, she kicked the Glock. The gun spun across the packed dirt toward the gravel driveway. Wayne angled a dark glare at her and scrambled awkwardly toward it. Lilly hadn’t played keep-away with her sister in more than twenty years, but the principle and strategies she’d learned remained.
Darting forward, she kicked the gun again, just before Wayne could grab it. Then she tackled him, shoving him face-first into the driveway before springing off him and diving for the weapon herself. Her move earned her scraped elbows and an oxygen-stealing thump to her lungs. But breath or not, she snatched up the Glock and gripped it between her hands.
She’d read enough spy thrillers to know there’d be recoil. Just the same, when she pointed the gun toward the edge of the yard and squeezed the trigger, the muzzle kicked up, and she rocked back on her bottom.
Wayne had clambered to his knees, and he crept toward her. “Give that to me, Lilly!” he grated through clenched teeth.
She needed to hold him off, empty the gun of ammunition...
Loosing a wild screech of adrenaline, fear and determination, she swung the muzzle near Wayne—she didn’t want to kill him, just scare him away—and she fired again. Dirt and rocks near his feet flew up and pelted his legs.
Wayne danced back a step, his expression startled. Her breath had returned and she panted in shallow, nervous gasps. Fire again, Dave’s voice in her head said. Keep firing.
Her hands shook so hard she could barely hold the revolver straight.
“Lilly!” Wayne growled in warning, then he dove for the ground and crawled on his belly, military-style, toward her.
She aimed toward him, then, fearing she would, in fact, hit him, she pivoted to the side and fired near the rear of the old jalopy.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Wayne scramble to his feet. He snarled an ugly epithet at her as he stumbled toward her. She tensed, bracing for his attack, but he hit her with enough force that she lost her grip on the gun. Her heart sank as the weapon jarred from her sweaty hands.
Wayne snatched it up. Stiff-armed, he aimed it at her temple, fury twisting his face into an ugly mask.
A whimper escaped her throat as
she stared down the muzzle. Drawing a tremulous breath, she shook her head and let tears fill her eyes. “Wayne, d-don’t. I just wanted to—”
“Shut up!” he screamed at her. “I trusted you. I would have let you live, if you’d cooperated. But you betrayed me.” He gritted his teeth.
As if someone had wrapped a comforting blanket around her shoulders, an odd peace filled Lilly as the certainty of her impending death settled in her core. Instead of spending her final moments begging for her life, a quiet acceptance flowed through her. Warmth chased the chill of dread and fear from her bones. She exhaled. Raised her eyes to Wayne’s and whispered, “I forgive you.”
Her statement clearly caught Wayne off guard. The muzzle wavered. He blinked, hesitated and swallowed hard before training the gun on her temple again. “No tricks, Lilly. I swear I’ll—”
“No tricks,” she said quietly and closed her eyes.
And she heard him pull the trigger.
Click.
* * *
He’d been shot.
Through the muzziness clouding his brain, Dave tried to orient himself. Head pounding, he managed to drag himself to a seated position. Assessed the damage. The stinging wound in his calf and blood spreading around the new rip in his jeans left no question where Wayne’s shot had landed. Better his leg than his heart, but, damn, it hurt.
The sound of voices and gunfire jolted through him. Where was Lilly?
He pinched the bridge of his nose, needing to clear the fog. Despite the throbbing of his skull and calf, he clambered to his knees and struggled to his feet.
Across the yard, he spotted Lilly. Somehow she’d taken the gun from Wayne and was firing it at the ground. The way he’d told her to. His chest swelled with pride for an instant. He leaned heavily on the rusty sedan, knowing he needed to get to her. Protect her.
As Dave took his first stumbling steps toward Lilly, Wayne lunged at her. Snatched the gun.
A chill washed through Dave. How many rounds were left in the gun? He’d lost track when he blacked out, but even one was one too many. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he hobbled across the yard. Thanks to his injury, neither a swift nor silent approach was in the cards, but he made the most of a blind approach from behind Wayne.
With Wayne’s focus on Lilly, Dave managed to get close, but—
His blood chilled as Wayne aimed the weapon at Lilly’s head. Lilly went still, pale. She said something to Wayne that Dave couldn’t hear over the buzz of adrenaline in his ears. He limped forward as fast as his injured leg allowed. But not fast enough.
Wayne pulled the trigger and—
Nothing.
A click.
Relief stole Dave’s breath and weakened his legs. But he knew he couldn’t waste the split-second opportunity presented to him. He seized Wayne from behind, throwing his full weight against their captor.
When they tumbled to the ground, Wayne gave a growl that was part fury, part agony. The robber twisted his body, rolling to his back, to face Dave’s attack.
Dave wasted no time in grabbing the front of Wayne’s shirt and treating his opponent to the same sort of head-jarring slams to the ground that had rattled Dave’s senses earlier. He had to dodge Wayne’s grasping, flailing hands, but each time he lifted and thrust Wayne against the hard dirt, the other man’s efforts slackened. From his right, Lilly appeared to snatch the ammo-spent gun from Wayne’s hand, and she cracked the butt of the gun against Wayne’s temple.
The man’s eyes rolled back, and he went limp under Dave’s grip.
Lilly caught her breath, a look of horror crossing her face. “Did I kill him?”
Dave hesitated, watching for a trick, then slowly released their captor’s shirt. “I don’t think so.”
She nudged him aside and placed a trembling hand on Wayne’s throat, feeling for a pulse.
“He’s alive.”
She closed her eyes and expelled a relieved sigh.
Dave gulped a few deep breaths of his own, then recognized the situation for the opportunity it was. He took the gun from her and stashed it in his jeans at the small of his back. Grabbing Lilly’s hand, he tugged her arm. “Let’s go!”
Lilly stared at him blankly, obviously still overwhelmed by the shock of the last few minutes’ events. “What?”
“We’re free, and he’s out. We have to go before he wakes up!” Dave shoved to his feet, grimacing and cursing when pain shot up his leg from his bleeding calf.
Worry dented Lilly’s brow, and her gaze dipped to his bloody jeans. “Oh, my God! You were shot!”
“Flesh wound, I’m thinking...thanks to you knocking his aim off.”
“I—I have to c-clean it.” She blinked, stuttered, clearly still in shock. “W-we...should wrap it—”
“Later.” He squeezed her hand. “Right now, we move. Hurry!”
She cast another concerned glance at Wayne, who was eerily still. “But if he’s hurt—”
Trying to swallow his impatience, he tugged her arm again. “Then I’m sure the sheriff will get him medical help. But only if we get out of here before he wakes up and kills us!”
She opened her mouth as if to protest, then snapped it close, her teeth clicking. “You’re right, of course. I just—”
He helped her to her feet, and they headed down the driveway toward the narrow road that traversed the mountain. As his adrenaline waned, the lightning pain from his calf grew with every step. The warm trickle of blood that slid down inside his boot told him that, at the least, he needed to tie something around his calf to staunch the bleeding.
He stopped to lean against the side of the house and braced a hand on his good knee as he clenched his teeth in agony. Glancing back at Wayne’s prone and motionless form, assuring himself the man hadn’t revived, he growled, “Damn it, we’re gonna have to wrap my leg. But quick.”
Lilly nodded. “I have antibiotic spray inside.”
He grabbed her forearm as she took a step toward the door. “Screw that.”
“But it could get infected!”
Dave snatched his shirt off over his head and started ripping it into strips. “There’ll be time for fighting infection later—” he handed her the strips “—once we are safely away from the maniac bank robber.”
She sent another look over her shoulder toward Wayne, the battle between medical obligations and her own safety playing out on her face.
“Right,” she said with clear reluctance. He knew everything about their current situation flew in the face of her nurse’s training and instincts to render aid.
“When we get somewhere safe,” he said, folding a T-shirt strip into a pad, “you can disinfect and stitch me to your heart’s content.”
He eased up one leg of his jeans, and Lilly made a sympathetic noise in her throat when the extent of the gash came into view. Perhaps a bit more than a flesh wound then.
Dave swallowed the bile that rose at the back of his throat. Breathe.
He remembered the instruction from when he’d broken this same leg a few months back. Erin McCall, his ex-boss’s wife, had coached him through yoga breathing to keep him from passing out from the pain. Good advice. He inhaled purposefully through his nose and blew it out again slowly.
While he held the pad in place, she looped the strips of T-shirt around his calf, cinched it at his shin and stood again. “That’ll have to do for now.”
He jerked a nod, cast another glance to Wayne—still unmoving—and limped with a sort of hop-jog-hop-jog lope toward the road.
Lilly was at his side, matching his pace for several steps before she stopped and spun away.
Dave clenched his fists at his sides in frustration. “Lilly, come on! What are you doing?” She motioned to his crumpled truck, and Dave grumbled under his breath. Having reliable transportation had been one of the few things he had going for hi
m as he looked for stopgap employment until his leg was well enough to start ranching again. Thanks to Wayne—that SOB—he no longer had even that much. Plus he now had another several weeks of hobbling around before he could even try to get his old job back.
She pulled her hand free of his and gasped, “Your phone!”
Dave’s heart kicked at the fresh hope, only to sink again the next second, when the reality of the situation settled over him. After almost two days, his already low battery would doubtlessly be dead.
Lilly trotted to the truck, yanked open the driver’s door and ducked her head inside the cab. When she didn’t immediately emerge with the device, Dave got restless. The more pressing need was to get the hell away from the house before Wayne revived. They could have minutes...or mere seconds.
“Lil, come on! It’s probably dead, anyway.”
What seemed like eons passed before she backed out of the cab with his phone in hand and a frown twisting her lips. “Yep. Dead. Crud!”
She jogged to him, and they once again headed down the drive at a hasty clip. But some nagging sense of wrong plagued Dave. He tried to riddle out what was bothering him while hurrying away from the house and ignoring the shooting ache in his leg as best he could.
“Which way?” Lilly asked as they neared the road. “Are we headed toward town or a neighbor or—?”
And the nebulous sense crystalized. “Not the road.” He took a step back. “We’ll be too easy to track on the road if Wayne follows us. Besides, the road follows the shape of the mountain. The shortest path to the nearest neighbor is that way.” He turned ninety degrees and pointed through the woods. “As the crow flies, I’m guessing it’s about a mile, mile and a half.” He gave her a hard look. “Can you handle a cross-country trek?”
She gave his leg a meaningful look. “Can you?”
None of this would be easy, his wound throbbing the way it was and his skull feeling like a bull had kicked him. But getting Lilly to safety was paramount. He pressed his lips in a grim line of determination. “I’ll manage.”
Putting a hand at her back, he steered her into the trees and tall weeds that surrounded Helen’s house. The terrain was steep, dotted with boulders, deadfall and dense, tangled vegetation. Dave made slow progress, using saplings and low branches along the way for support. They batted limbs and vines out of the way and trudged uphill as fast as they could. Soon they were both huffing and panting for oxygen, but Dave didn’t dare slow the pace.
Rancher's Hostage Rescue Page 15