Page 31 of Killer on the Homestead (Bent County Protectors #2)

Duncan was no expert tracker, but he managed to follow boot prints and drops of blood when there was no grass and only dirt. Away from the road, toward the trees.

Why would she do that? He made it into the grouping of trees. Pine needles littered the muddy ground below. Boot prints squelched into the mud. Was he ruining them? He tried to walk around them in case more help came.

He made it to one side, noted a tree that looked like it had been walked around quite a bit.

He crouched, wondering if he studied the markings in the muddy ground, he’d be able to have an idea of what happened.

But next to a tree, on an upturned curved leaf, was a tiny puddle of something dark, and a few more leaves around the area had the same.

Blood. It had to be blood. Way too much of it. His heart twisted into a pained pretzel. What was she doing? Heading away from help like this?

He shook his head. Answers didn’t matter. He had to find her. So he searched the area for where the footprints came out on the other side. The terrain was pretty open here, and it was hard to note where any footprints were back in the tall grasses.

But in the distance, he saw another cluster of trees. If she had run away from the road and toward the cover of the first group of trees, then left this area, wouldn’t she likely run for more cover?

He heard sirens in the distance. Maybe he should go back. The cops would know how to track. They’d have a better way of dealing with this, probably.

But he was already out here. She might be close, and if that was her blood, how could he possibly turn away? He surveyed the world around him again. The trees were the only place to go. Since there was no way of determining tracks, he decided to follow his intuition.

He began to walk straight for it, cutting through tall grass and focusing on not tripping over a random boulder, hole, or God forbid, a snake.

He gripped the gun in his hand, ready to use it if he had to.

He knew how to shoot it, probably, though it had been years since he’d even attempted to use a gun and his shooting hand was somewhat compromised.

He wouldn’t need it. It was just a precaution. Everything would be fine once he found her. Everything his dad had taught him as a kid would come back to him, like muscle memory.

If he even needed it. Which he wouldn’t, he told himself, over and over again.

Every once in a while, he paused. Looked around. Listened. It wouldn’t be smart to get lost, but…

He heard it in one of those moments. A kind of snick sound, far away, but followed by something like a grunt. It all sounded very…human.

He rushed forward toward it. Then forced himself to think, to slow down. He couldn’t rush into potential danger without thinking things through, even if he hoped with all he was this was just a strange misunderstanding, not danger.

He thought he maybe saw shadows moving around in the trees. But he couldn’t be sure. So he tried to keep a low profile, crouching down as he walked so he was hopefully hidden by grass if anything…bad was out there.

Or should he just rush forward? Guns blazing? She’d been hurt. Bleeding. Why was he being patient?

But something inside of him seemed to insist upon it. A cautiousness. Because this was all wrong, so it required…tact.

He couldn’t really see through the grasses, but once he was close to the trees where he thought he’d heard things, he straightened a little so he could see.

Across the way, Rosalie was sitting down. He nearly rushed forward, called out, did everything wrong in the moment. But her head was kind of bowed, and he realized she was tied to that tree. She lifted her head a little, and he could see even from a distance that her face was a bloody mess.

Duncan’s whole body went ice-cold. Then, worse, another body moved into his vision. And even though the man’s back was to him, Duncan knew who it was.

Terry. A man Duncan had trusted . The fury, the disgust, roiled through him along with the utter terror that he had Rosalie tied up and a gun in his hand.

But Duncan couldn’t think about betrayal right now. He couldn’t think about his worry for Rosalie. He had to think about how he was going to get her out of this.

He had a gun, but so did Terry. Duncan could see it there glinting in the man’s hand. He thought Terry was speaking, the faint grumble of words on the breeze, but Duncan couldn’t make them out.

Should he get closer? He had to get closer. He could hardly just crouch here hoping something magically worked out right. He had to get in there and somehow…

Hell, he was no cop, no white knight. The idea he should be the one to save her seemed ludicrous, but there was no one else to do it.

He gave the cluster of trees a wide berth, trying to move closer slowly , with the grasses providing cover and the breeze distorting any noises he might be making. He found himself with a profile view of both Terry and Rosalie, and he could actually make out the words Terry was saying.

“We can wait him out. We can wait him out.” It was the kind of repetitive thing someone said to themselves to convince themselves of something that was becoming less and less true.

“Seems to me there’s sirens in the distance, Ter,” Rosalie said. She sounded…tired, but she’d managed to infuse the sentence with some of her usual sarcasm. Even as awful as her face looked, bloody and bruised.

He swallowed down everything. This wasn’t all that different than taking the mound in a World Series game. Sure, it was life or death, but if he shoved that away, it was the same process. Block out the noise. Settle into your body. Focus.

He carefully lifted the gun, using his right arm to support the dominant left one. His shoulder ached and throbbed and burned , which couldn’t be good, but he knew how to play through pain.

He tried to remember all the advice his dad had given him, but that gun had been different. Hell, Duncan had been different—a kid, essentially, when his dad had taught him how to do this. Still, it had to be done, so…

He curled his finger around the trigger, aimed at Terry, and pulled. Swore at the jolt of sheer agony that went from shoulder to fingertip.

Duncan cursed his bad arm as the bullet hit a tree about two inches to Terry’s right, and Terry whirled toward him, lifting his own gun.

He didn’t shoot right away though. He aimed, Duncan aiming right back. He could hit his target this time. He would.

“You wouldn’t shoot me, Duncan. You don’t have it in you. And even if you did try again, you missed the first time.”

“I won’t this time,” Duncan said, pulling the trigger after the word won’t .

And he didn’t miss—Terry jerked back, even as Terry’s bullet whizzed past Duncan, far too close…but not close enough.

Rosalie figured she’d screamed , and she didn’t think she’d been hallucinating sirens, but who knew? Who knew?

Her teeth were chattering, and she could only barely make out what had happened with the second shot. Terry lay writhing on the ground. Duncan ran over to her.

He was saying things, but she couldn’t quite make sense of them. She thought maybe he was trying to untie her.

“Well, I didn’t have getting saved by a baseball player on my life bingo card.” But he had. She really hadn’t had a way out of this one. Tears threatened—not just emotion, but pain and relief and a million other things as her arms fell to her sides.

She couldn’t really feel anything. A creeping numb feeling was overtaking her, but he’d untied her. And then she felt him lifting her to her feet. It took his grip on her arm and her leaning against the tree to manage to stay upright, but she was free and standing.

“I’m carrying you,” he said.

She managed a huff of a laugh. “Hate to break it to you, but that bad arm’s going to let you down there.”

“Well, I’ll just get another surgery. Come on.”

She couldn’t even seem to move her head to look at him, but she could see Terry. In front of her. Still moving. In fact…

She pawed at Duncan’s arm. “Duncan, he’s getting up.”

Duncan shoved her behind him, and she wanted to shove him right back, but it was taking everything in her to stand on her own two feet.

Terry got to his knees. He was gripping his shoulder where blood was pouring out of the gunshot wound. He was white as a sheet, but he was getting up, and he still had a gun gripped in his hand. Luckily, the wound in his arm should keep him from getting a decent shot off, but still.

“Give me the gun,” Rosalie ordered Duncan.

“Rosalie.”

“I’ve got it, Ace. Give me the gun and hold me up. I’m a damn better shot.”

“I should hope so. I haven’t held a gun for over fifteen years,” he muttered. “But you’re covered in blood.”

She didn’t mention her vision wasn’t all there, no more than her strength. “What are you going to do then?”

Duncan stood in front of her—a human shield she didn’t want. Terry clearly was trying to raise the gun in his hand, but he couldn’t because of the gunshot wound in his shoulder. Meanwhile, Duncan held his— her —gun pointed at Terry.

“Drop the gun, Terry. Just drop it.”

“You couldn’t shoot the broadside of a barn,” Terry growled, but it was clear he couldn’t aim his gun either.

“I don’t know what happened, but you’re not walking away from this. You’re not hurting any more people. It’s over.”

“It’s not over. It’ll never be over.” Terry’s voice hitched. Despair and panic and something else Rosalie couldn’t quite name. Maybe a mental break.

“I’m the victim here,” he shouted, stumbling forward a little. He was sweating now, either from the pain, or the attempt to lift his arm.

“Victim? You’re a murderer. You betrayed…everything my father did for you.”

“Did for me? He stole everything from me.” Terry stepped forward, eyes wild, shirt getting darker and darker as blood seeped out of his wound.

“Norman Kirk always got everything. His parents bought my parents’ ranch and I was left with nothing but a measly ranch-hand job.

He married Natalie. Natalie was mine . I saw her first. She was always supposed to be mine. ”

“Holy hell,” Rosalie muttered. This was deeper and more twisted than she could have imagined.

“I waited. I planned. I’ll get mine now. I put in the work. I put in the damn work. It’s all mine now. No matter what I have to do to get it.”

“The police know Terry. About the land in Idaho. The stockpile. And I have a sneaking suspicion once they get the search warrant they’re after, they’ll find my father’s missing cows.”

Terry’s entire face arrested in a kind of shocked horror that chilled Rosalie to the bone. She tried to reach out to take the gun from Duncan. If he wouldn’t take Terry down, she would. Impaired vision and all.

“That’ll be enough,” a commanding voice interrupted.

All eyes turned to Copeland stepping through the trees, gun drawn.

There were a few other cops stepping into the shaded area as well, around Terry to make a circle.

Detective Delaney-Carson. Sunrise’s sheriff, Jack Hudson, and another Sunrise deputy.

“Drop it,” Copeland instructed Terry. “Now.”

Rosalie didn’t know if she was the only one who saw it—the wild desperation. The choice in Terry’s eyes. Give up or go down swinging. She didn’t wait to see if anyone else would recognize it. She just kicked out, so both she and Duncan fell in a heap on the ground.

Just as Terry swung his bad arm up, aimed and shot.

Aside from the pain in her head, she seemed to be okay, and Duncan had only grunted a little as he’d landed on his bad shoulder, she figured in an attempt to keep his full weight from falling on her.

Duncan looked up, so Rosalie did too. She saw the point where the wood had splintered from the bullet—where they likely both would have been hit dead-on if she hadn’t pulled him down. Then he looked down at her.

“Well, I guess we’re even, Red,” he said, and he didn’t shake, but his voice was raspy.

“I guess we are,” she replied, though things were going a little grayer as Duncan detangled himself from her and helped her into a sitting position.

The cops were wrestling cuffs onto Terry, talking into their radios.

“She needs an ambulance,” Duncan shouted at them.

She did. She knew she did. But still, she could hear the worry in his voice, feel it in the way he gripped her. “I’m okay.” She squeezed his forearm until he looked away from the cops and at her.

“You don’t look it,” he grumbled.

“No. Probably need a few stitches. But I’m going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.” She had never been any good at comforting people. Tended to shy away from it, but she pulled him into a hug anyway. Held on. “We’re all going to be okay.”

She felt him sigh against her. His grip on her was gentle, probably worried he was going to hurt her. But he held her all the same.

Because she wasn’t lying. Everything was going to be okay . She’d make sure of it.