Page 28 of Vanishing Point (Bent County Protectors #1)

The flames were jumping from the car’s hood. Dark smoke billowed upward. There was absolutely no movement from the house.

Thomas waited, hidden behind a pole that had maybe once been some kind of security light for the property. It undoubtedly no longer worked, but it was big and bulky enough to hide him from view of the house.

Unfortunately, as time ticked by, he was coming to the conclusion that the distraction hadn’t worked.

He should wait, he knew. He was by far the closest to the house—everyone else having to spread out farther to remain hidden. He should reconvene. Replan.

But damn it, the sun was starting to set and he was done with this.

He wasn’t waiting any longer. He was moving in. It was an impulsive decision, but not a bad one. Not fully, anyway. And he wasn’t so reckless as to not take a minute to text Laurel what he was doing and instruct her to redistribute everyone to support him.

He didn’t wait for her response. He knew she wouldn’t like it. He just started to move forward. Gun drawn, trying to stay low. He kept the burning car between him and the house as long as he could.

Once he’d reached that point, he sucked in a breath and crept into the open. Anyone inside the house could see him now if they were looking out the windows, but the windows were covered in curtains.

Thomas watched them as he approached, looking for any sign of movement or life—a warning that he’d need to get down or run.

But the house seemed perfectly, utterly, deathly still.

He carefully moved up the front steps, trying to avoid rotting wood and places that would creak. It wasn’t as quiet as he had hoped, but no one stormed out, and nothing seemed to be going on inside.

His heart sank for a moment. What if no one was inside? What if they’d gotten another car and gone to a second location? What if—

He didn’t let his mind finish that what-if. He reached out for the front door and turned the handle. It gave, surprisingly, but when he tried to ease the door open, the door didn’t budge. Something was blocking it.

He swore inwardly, then moved back off the porch. But he didn’t go back to his hiding place like Laurel would have no doubt preferred. Instead, he began creeping around the side of the house.

There were no windows here, so he wasn’t quite as worried about being caught. He paused as he reached the back of the house, being careful to come around the corner without stepping into an ambush.

But the backyard—overgrown and full of trash—seemed to be empty. Wind rustled in the towering grasses. Thomas could make out a back porch and a back door. The porch was covered in wild vines, but the door itself looked cleared, like it had been used recently.

Thomas took a breath, shoved every emotion out of his mind, and focused on what needed to be done. Finding out who or what was inside that house.

Using as much cover as possible, he moved around the porch to a place that looked like he could enter.

He studied the back door again—it had a small window, but it was covered by a curtain, so Thomas couldn’t see inside.

As silently as possible, he moved up the warped, splintered stairs of the porch to the door.

He was about to reach out, test the knob, when something flashed in the sunlight right at his foot.

A dime.

It seemed like the world around him went completely silent. And he did what he’d done all those years ago when he’d narrowly avoided a head shot.

Slower, this time, with more awareness, he bent down to pick it up—and almost immediately the glass of the door exploded. A bullet slammed into the post of the porch.

Just behind where his head had once been.

Thomas looked at the door. He couldn’t shoot back. He didn’t know what was going on inside. Where Vi might be if she was in there. And he could hardly stay where he was, because if the shooter had shot out through the glass, they were only going to keep shooting.

As if to prove his point, another shot went off echoing in the yard around them.

“Come any closer and she’s dead,” a man’s voice called out. “You shoot, she’s dead.”

“Drop your weapon,” Thomas called out, ignoring the ice that centered in his gut. He could hear everyone else coming closer. “You’re surrounded. Drop your weapon and—”

The man’s gun went off again, and this time Thomas knew he hadn’t been quite so lucky. Pain sliced into his left arm and knocked him back a step or two, but he didn’t let it knock him down.

He gritted his teeth, and against everyone yelling at him not to, charged forward.

A FTER THE SECOND SHOT , Vi figured it was now or never. Eric had to be shooting at something , and maybe it was dangerous to jump into a situation without being able to see what was going on, but Vi couldn’t take it anymore.

She flung the pantry door open, hoping it would cause enough of a surprise that she could do something .

And since Eric was essentially right there , the barrel of his gun poised in the broken glass of the back door’s window, she could in fact, do something.

She bashed the heavy can of food as hard as she could against his head—it would have been the back of his head, but he’d turned at the sound of the pantry door opening and it hit him right in the temple.

He crumpled, the gun clattering on top of him and then the can too, when she dropped it. For a second, she just stood there frozen while Eric groaned. It was when he began to move that she scrambled into action.

Gun first , was all she could think. She grabbed it, but so did Eric. He had a hand on the grip, and she had a hand on the barrel, which was terrible positioning. So she jerked it as hard as she could, and nearly toppled backward when it came as easily as it did.

She scurried to turn the gun around, to get her fingers on the trigger, to point it at him . She was shaking, damn it, she was shaking so hard. But she would shoot him if she had to. She would .

“You wouldn’t ,” Eric seethed. He’d gotten onto all fours. Blood poured out of a gash on his head. But he was alert. He was moving. She hadn’t won yet.

She checked the gun to make sure if she pulled the trigger it would shoot. She didn’t know much about shotguns, but she thought she had it right.

The back door splintered open at the same time the front door did. For a moment, Vi was almost distracted enough to look away, but Eric sort of lunged.

She pulled the trigger without any thought to aim or anything other than stopping that lunge. The gun exploded as his body barreled into her legs and she fell backward, narrowly missing hitting her head on the floor.

She kicked away, holding on to the gun for dear life, scrambling back and away, and it took until she was free of his weight to realize Eric wasn’t fighting. He was utterly still. Blood oozed not just out of his head, but out of his shoulder now as well.

Everything went to chaos then. Both front and back doors crashed fully open, and Thomas charged through the back, his gun drawn. He was kneeling next to her in a flash, helping her to her feet.

“Vi. Are you—”

“You’re bleeding. Thomas. Oh my God.” There were rivulets of blood going down his left arm. She reached out as if to do something about it, but she didn’t know what.

But Thomas was looking beyond her. At the body a uniformed sheriff’s deputy was crouched over.

“He killed her,” Vi managed to whisper. “Choked her. I thought maybe she was still breathing at one point, but…”

Thomas’s gaze moved back to her. “It’s all right,” he soothed. She held on to that gaze, the blue, steady gaze of the man she loved.

Because she’d survived.

“Ambulances are on their way. You’re all going to need one,” Laurel announced grimly.

“Is he…still alive?” Vi managed to ask, though her gaze never left Thomas.

“For now. Let’s focus on getting you out of here. Both of you.” Laurel looked at the front door, then the back. Both with lifeless bodies. She grimaced but nodded for the front. “This way.”

It wasn’t lost on Vi that even while his arm bled and bled and bled , he was trying to shield her from seeing Dianne’s body again. But she saw it.

Dead. No doubt dead.

But she wasn’t. Somehow, Vi had survived this. This awful thing. She let Thomas lead her outside, surprised to find it almost pitch-black, with only spotlights from police cars in different areas that allowed her to see what was going on.

She could hear sirens in the distance. Ambulances. Thomas needed one. Hell, she probably needed one, but…

She turned to Thomas, and she wanted to crumple, but she didn’t let herself. She did let herself lean though. She leaned her forehead into his chest. “You found me.”

He held on to her with his not-shot arm. “I may never let you out of my sight again. Vi, I am so so—”

She pulled back. Fast enough it hurt him and her, and she’d be sorry about it later. But for right now? “No sorrys. There was no way of guessing Dianne was mixed up with Eric.” But she saw the expression on his face. She had a feeling it would take a while to convince him of it.

But she would . She would . Because this was over.

Somehow, she’d survived. Because she’d believed she would, because she’d found her strength and fought, because she’d believed in him.

And now it was over. Really over. The kind of over that meant they got to live their lives without fear. Without envelopes showing up or having to worry.

If Eric lived, he’d go to jail for Dianne’s murder. She’d testify a million times over to make sure of it.

And if he didn’t…

Well, then she’d live in peace knowing she’d finally fought for herself.