Page 112 of Fatal Vision

Connor. Zeb. Jax.

Beatrice.

This was what family did. They had your back, chastised you when you deserved it, and kept your head above water when you couldn’t.

Sweat poured down the back of his neck. He hadn’t had any pain meds in hours. That and the fact his wife was about to be shot made him want to crawl out of his skin.

“Give up, Theo,” Shelby said. “We have your prints.”

Ingram sounded slightly surprised. “On what?”

A wrapper found at the abandoned house. Not exactly conclusive evidence of anything.

Shelby seemed to realize the same thing. “Even if you kill me, Colton will prove you murdered those men and shot me. You won’t get away with this.”

“Oh, Shelby, when are you going to wake up and understand that Colton Bells isn’t in my league? He’s nothing but an annoying gnat buzzing around my ear. No one will believe him over me. Besides, after I’m done here, I’ll be paying your ex a visit in the hospital. What a sad tragedy that he’ll die the same night you did, and Daniel will take the fall.”

“Like that’s going to happen,” Daniel said. “The gig is up, Ingram. Put down your weapon.”

The road to the house was coming up. Colton pointed. “There. We’re running out of time!”

Zeb took this corner on two wheels. The house came into view.

Seconds, that’s all they had.

The headlights registered inside the house. Colton heard Shelby say, “Right on time.”

He was out and running before Zeb stopped the car.

But he was too late.

The sound of shots erupted inside the house and Colton’s heart stuttered.

“Shelby!”

The screech of tires, footsteps pounding behind him. Colton’s body, his heart, shredded into a million pieces as he jumped over the pile of debris that had been part of his truck and lunged through the hole in the dining room wall, gun drawn.

The headlights illuminated the scene. Colton pulled up short.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Shelby asked without taking her eyes off Theo.

Colton swallowed hard. Shelby and Theo were only feet apart, both of them pointing guns at the other.

A Mexican standoff.

He couldn’t stop the retort. “Saving your ass from the looks of it.”

The side of her mouth twitched with a suppressed smile.

God Almighty, he loved this woman. She might have been wrapped in a far prettier package, but she was as fearless as he was.

Colton moved slowly, one step at a time. He saw Jon’s feet in the hallway, a shadowy lump—Daniel—farther down in the dark. A colorful cane lay at Shelby’s feet.

“Stay where you are,” Ingram said as he stared at Shelby over his gun. “This is one kill you’re not cheating me out of, Bells.”

The bastard planned to kill her either way.

Colton had been in a similar situation once before. The mission had gone south in the minutes afterward and he’d drawn a shooter to him, using himself as a shield to protect a mother and son. It had ended with him in the hospital clinging to life.