Without conscious thought, I raised my Glock and shot both men. They dropped to the ground, their slumped figures mercifully still. I turned my stunned eyes to the gun clutched in my hand. Christ. It was me. I’d shot them. And it wasn’t the first time I killed a man. Memory broadsided me, knocking loose an image from the worst night of my life. Miles. I swayed.
Levi doubled over, puking.
This was not the time to fall apart. I drew in a shuddering breath and fought to get a grip on myself before turning to Levi. I tugged on his arm. “Come on. We have to get to the house.”
FORTY-FOUR
Ripper
I jogged toward the house, slowing when the porch came into view. Why hadn’t the gunfire drawn Boyd and Tuck outside? Frowning, I climbed the stairs and stalked into the empty front room, pausing until I heard a woman’s cry erupt from one of the back bedrooms.
I ran down the hall and threw open the door. Five pair of eyes turned toward me. Boyd sat on the edge of his wife’s bed, his hand on her shoulder. Libby hunched over, sweating and panting. Well, fuck. Saw at a glance how our simple plan went south inside the house, too. Libby had gone into labor, and Tuck discovered Sahdev was missing. Our cover was blown. Jerrilyn held a gun on Sahdev and Nyx, while Boyd shot me a murderous look.
“Traitor,” he snarled.
I ignored him, my blood chilling.
Where were Tuck and Mac? On a hunch, I launched myself toward our bedroom. The knob turned in my hand, but something was jammed against the door, blocking my entrance.
In the distance, an explosion ripped the air, a blast that barely pierced my consciousness.
Mac. I gotta get to Mac.
I stepped back, then kicked the weak spot above the knob. The door shuddered in the frame, but held. I kicked again and again, the tread of my boot hammering the wood. The wood splintered and finally yielded. Kicking aside the chair that had blocked my way, I hurtled into the room.
Tuck knelt on the bed, straddling Mac. If she was conscious, my woman would be fighting back, but her arms lay flat and limp against the tangled sheets. Tuck grinned at me over his shoulder, his expression exultant. He had to know that he was no match for me, that I was going to kill him. His eyes told me that as far as he was concerned, he’d won the battle.
Roaring, I threw myself at him, dragging him off Mac’s body. I drove my fist into his face. His nose crunched and spurted blood. He dropped. I followed him down onto the floor, blind with rage, battering his face into pulp, driving shards of bone into his brain. Might have been smart to let The Ripper take over—to cede control to that calm, detached killer persona—but I couldn’t slip into his familiar skin. Not when fury rode me hard. Not with the man who hurt my Mac.
Behind my head, I heard a click, the sound of somebody thumbing the hammer back on a revolver.
“You son of a bitch,” Boyd growled.
I dove sideways just as I heard a loud bang. Thought Boyd had fired. Thought I was done. Instead, Boyd toppled over, landing on Tuck’s body, the back of his head a bloody mess.
Rolling over, I glanced at the doorway. Sahdev sagged against the doorframe, a pistol in his hand, his features blank as the healer studied his lethal handiwork. He must have wrested the gun away from Jerrilyn after Boyd came after me.
I jumped to my feet and lurched to the bed where Mac lay, still and silent. Wincing at the sight of the purple skin, I gently touched her neck. I held my breath. Please God, let her heart still beat.
FORTY-FIVE
Bear
Mama always said that I had a positive genius for getting myself hurt. I kicked a hornet’s nest when I was five. The buggers swarmed me, and I got stung so bad that both my eyes swelled shut. I broke my leg falling out of the hayloft when I was nine. My little brother Finn dared me to do a handstand right on the edge of the loft, and I slipped. Didn’t tell on him, of course. You don’t tell on your brother. Besides, Mama would’ve tanned both our hides if she knew about the dare. Rolled my ATV when I was twelve and broke the other leg. At thirteen, I turned my back on a pair of cantankerous pigs. They knocked me ass over tea kettle and trampled over my back. Bruised my kidneys something fierce. I cracked two ribs at sixteen when I got clobbered by an ornery new horse. At eighteen, I was helping birth a calf when the cow nailed me in the hand with her hoof. Popped my middle and ring fingers right out of the socket. Don’t get me going on the injuries I got once I started rodeoing.
Dumb luck, dumb decisions, whatever. Mama was right; I had a gift for getting hurt.
But I never been shot before. Well...technically I’d been grazed by a bullet rather than shot clean through, but it was close enough for shock and blood loss to make me woozy. If I hadn’t been sitting down, the explosion would’ve knocked me on my keister.
Dwight and Darryl stumbled from the shed, bodies on fire. They were smokers; they carried cigarette lighters in their pockets. Fools must’ve ignited gasoline vapors when they tried to see in the dark shed. Kyle put them down, an act of pure mercy as far as I’m concerned.
Kyle and the teenage boy jogged over to me. “You all right?” he asked. He swallowed, twice, like something was rising up in his gullet.
“I’m fine. You?”
“We’re good.” Kyle cocked a thumb at the boy. “This is Levi.”
Levi and I exchanged nods.
“We have to get to the house and see if Ripper needs help,” Kyle continued. “You want to stay behind or come?”
Stay behind while other men risked their lives to take Valhalla back from the men who killed my family? Hell, no. I held out my good arm, and Kyle hauled me to my feet. I was still weak, but no way I’d lag behind and slow them down. I hung onto Kyle’s shoulder while we ran to the house. We climbed the steps and burst through the front door only to be met with a spooky silence.
A woman screamed at the back of the house, and we took off toward the sound, stopping outside the open door to my parents’ bedroom. Three people were in the room. The pregnant woman leaned against the headboard, knees drawn up to her chest, clutching her belly and moaning. Sweat streamed down her face. Her panicked gaze darted back and forth, from Kyle and me to the Nazi biddy, who was face down across the foot of the bed. Blood trickled from a wound on the old woman’s temple.
A young, red-haired woman knelt on the woman’s back, securing her wrists together with two of my dad’s neckties. With her wild burgundy hair and tattoo-covered arms, she didn’t look like any cowgirl of my acquaintance, but she tied the knots with an ease and self-assurance that would do any calf roper proud. Grandma’s flow blue pitcher—a giant chip missing from the spout—lay beside them on the quilt. Looked like the young woman clocked the Nazi in the noggin with a family heirloom. Somehow, under the circumstances, I don’t think my mama would object to the busted pitcher.
“Looks like you might know something about ropes,” I said.
The young woman gave a final yank on the necktie, then glanced over her shoulder at me. Her red lips turned up in a smile, and the bluest eyes I ever seen sparkled at me.
“You might just be surprised by what a city girl like me knows about ropes, cowboy.”
My jaw dropped, and I stared at her like a dummy.