Ten minutes before the scheduled meet, Wesley and a second man arrived, went into the store. Ben couldn’t connect all the names with the faces, but Mike could. That didn’t do him any good, since Mike was on the other side of the building. They had walkies, but they were for emergency only; in such close proximity, no sense in taking a chance that someone would hear.
A few minutes later two others arrived, and one of them had a pronounced limp. That had to be Patrick, the man Olivia—or Sela—had wounded during the attack on her store.
The time to meet came and went, and no Lawrence. There was one other man other than Lawrence who hadn’t arrived, but Ben didn’t know which one that might be. By process of elimination, he guessed it was Lawrence’s brother, Jeremy, who was also absent.
He didn’t like it. He began to get an uneasy feeling, because the man who had called the meeting wasn’t there. This wasn’t good.
Ted pulled into the gravel lot, parked crookedly, and sat in his car for a moment before he opened the door and got out. The man would make a lousy spy. He was pale, and even from here Ben could tell he was jittery.
Ted’s job was to get the group outside, all together, either by calling an end to the meeting or taking it to the front porch. In the open, Ben and the members of the community patrol who surrounded the building would surround and capture the group. There was some debate about what to do with them afterward. To kill them would be murder, under the existing—if currently unavailable—law. If they arrested the men, where would they be housed? Not only did Wears Valley not have a jail, but detaining them would make the community responsible for feeding them and keeping them warm for however long was necessary, likely at least a year and probably longer, until they could be turned over to whatever kind of law enforcement resumed activities first.
As far as Ben was concerned, there were two options: execution, or banishment. These men were a menace, but so far they hadn’t done anything that warranted a death sentence. The best solution he could come up with was to split the group and drive them in several different directions, drop them off with no weapons and a day’s worth of food, and be done with them. They’d end up being trouble for someone else, but he couldn’t worry about that. He had to concentrate on keeping his own little corner of the world safe.
They’d shot at Sela and Olivia. They had to go, one way or another.
A few more minutes ticked past, and still no Lawrence or Jeremy. Had they smelled something wrong? Or were they just delayed, for one reason or another? For that matter, they were meth addicts; God only knows what could have sidetracked them.
The waiting was eating at him. He’d sat for days in ambush with more patience than he had as he waited to get his hands on Lawrence Dietrich.
Gunfire reverberated inside the building, shattering the quiet. Ben leaped to his feet and charged toward the building, the four of them converging on it, two toward the front door, two at the back.
Ben went in first, with Mike right behind him. From the rear of the building came the sound of splintering wood as Cam and Trey began breaking through the locked back door.
Four of the men, all gathered in the main room near what had once been a checkout counter, were caught by surprise. All four were armed, one with a rifle, the other three with handguns. Ted was on his back, on the floor, writhing and screaming, “Wait! No!” He was bleeding heavily from a wound high on his chest, and Ben knew immediately his situation wasn’t good. Patrick had his rifle aimed at Ted’s head, about to finish the job.
Patrick swung his rifle toward Ben and Mike, and Ben fired the shotgun. The heavy slug would drop a deer, and it knocked Patrick back several feet before he crashed into an empty display rack, then collapsed to the floor. The other three men scattered like cockroaches, not knowing where to go with men coming in both the front and back doors. But they didn’t go down easy, they were shooting as they scattered. Ben was faster than any of them, his reactions pure instinct honed by years of training. Wesley fired and missed, then Ben shot him between the eyes. He sprawled backward, dead before he hit the floor. Mike’s aim wasn’t as good as Ben’s, but he got one man in the arm. The guy screamed and spun to the side, dropped down, raised his pistol again.
Cam shot but his aim was high and wide. Trey went down on one knee and coolly took down the wounded man armed with the pistol, but not before the man got off a shot at Mike. Mike stumbled and went down. Cam kicked the wounded man’s arm, sent the pistol flying.
Ears ringing, nose and eyes stinging from the smoke, Ben swiftly knelt beside Mike and checked how bad he was wounded. The wound was in the fleshy part of the chest just under his arm, likely not life-threatening as long as there wasn’t infection, but painful as hell.
“How you doing?” he asked casually, pulling his knife from his pocket and slicing off the bottom of Mike’s shirt to make a cloth pad. Taking a pack of blood-clotting powder from the cargo pocket in his pants, he sprinkled some over the wound then covered it with the cloth pad and pressed hard.
“Pretty shitty,” Mike answered, his voice raspy.
“Look out!” Ted half shouted, half groaned. Ben spun on his knee; Patrick had struggled to a partial sitting position, despite the massive wound to his chest, and was struggling to steady his rifle. Ben rolled into the clear, and fired again. Patrick shuddered and lay still, the rifle falling from his limp hand. This time the fucker was dead, but Ben cursed at himself for not checking to make sure the first time. This time, he went over and picked up the rifle, though he was damn sure Patrick was dead now.
Three men dead, and three injured.
Swiftly Ben checked Ted, who had gone still. He was unconscious now, which was probably for the best. Ben tore open his shirt, and cussed under his breath. Ted’s wound was much worse than Mike’s; in different times, with a hospital nearby, he’d have about a 50/50 chance. With only rudimentary medical care available, Ben didn’t think he’d make it. Nevertheless he swiftly did what he could with the same rough first aid he’d used on Mike. Frothy air bubbles in the wound told him Ted’s lung had been hit.
“How is he?” Mike asked, panting as he tried to struggle to his feet.
Ben silently shook his head and took Mike’s arm on his uninjured side, heaved him upright.
Urgency was still gnawing at him. He went over to where Trey was holding a weapon on the other wounded man, and dropped to his haunches beside him. “Where’s Lawrence?”
The man just laughed. That short laugh was followed by a raspy cough, a groan. He didn’t look good, and Ben wasn’t going to waste any clotting powder or sympathy on him.
Mike edged closer, hunched over against the pain. “Come on, Kyle. No point in being loyal to Dietrich, he’d throw you to the wolves without thinking twice. What the hell are you doing here anyway?”
Kyle grimaced. “I always liked you, Mike, but this mess . . . I don’t want to die. I don’t want to starve to death, and I sure as fuck don’t want to sit back and let folks who don’t give a shit about me and mine tell me what to do. Lawrence’s plan seemed like a good one. No point in letting someone else have it all.”
Mike shook his head. “You didn’t want to have to do without your drugs, and you saw this as a way to make sure you didn’t have to. I knew your mama. She’d be ashamed.”