And by the time my brain got there, my body was starting to catch up. I exploded from off the ground, my hand reaching for my holster and finding that my gun was missing. I sank into a defensive position, my hands going up in front of me in the stance that would give me the best protection if it came to a fight.
Because there was no reason for me to be in the forest, on my back. There had been no reason for anyone to step out of that alley and knock me out. No reason except that they were enemies. Which meant I had just woken up to a fight.
But when I finally got my eyes to focus on my surroundings again, I saw… Marlon.
Marlon?
“What the hell are you doing here? Where are we? Why are we here? What happened? Who was shooting?” I asked in an explosion of questions.
“I’m saving your life, from the sounds of it. We’re in the forest about a mile from town. We’re here because we decided it would be safer than trying to hold town. Randall and his men attacked, and we were able to hold them off for long enough to get the people to safety. And as to who was shooting…” He shrugged. “Everyone.”
I took a deep breath, trying to get my head around this quick transference of information, and finally came up with the one I hadn’t asked yet.
“Who the hell hit me?” Because I had several words for that person.
Now Marlon cracked a bit of a smile. “One of my scouts,” he answered casually. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you more about it on the way to camp.”
He turned and started walking, leaving me little choice in the matter, and I paused for only long enough to throw a confused glance at Henry, who had come to stand right next to me, looking equally dazed. Then I strode after Marlon, Henry at my back.
“Why did your scout hit me?” I asked, telling myself that it wasn’t going to do me any good to get upset about it until I actually knew the reasoning for it.
“One, you were sprinting right into the heart of a battle. With a handgun and no armor,” Marlon said bluntly. “You were going to get yourself killed. You would have given us a good distraction, perhaps, but you would never have come out of it alive. And I need you alive. More than you know. Two, we needed to get you out of town to meet with the rest of our group, and that was never going to happen if you were involved in a shoot-out in the town square. Or dead.”
I gritted my teeth. He was right. That didn’t mean I liked it.
“So you sent someone out specifically to hit me in the head with a bat?” I asked.
I finally took the time to look around, and realized that I knew where we were. We were in a clearing now, which led to the old Forrester estate. The Forresters were long gone, but their structures were still here. Mostly.
And, I realized, they would make for terrific cover for a large group of people turned suddenly out into the forest.
“I didn’t send them to hit you with a bat,” Marlon clarified. “I sent runners out to watch for you. I didn’t know where you’d gone or what shape you were in. I didn’t even know if you were still alive. But if you were, I knew you’d be coming to town at a run—and that you’d be gunning for Randall. I knew what our plan was, and that it would mean a lot of shooting was going on. And I knew that if you got into the middle of that, you’d be in trouble. I sent men out to… waylay you.” He said the last words with a touch of sarcasm. “I sent them out to make sure you didn’t go running right into trouble. Alan said you were moving so fast that he didn’t know how to stop you, other than to lay you right out.”
“Got me, too,” Henry said suddenly.
I breathed out slowly through my nose, my steps beginning to return to a normal pace as my temper ebbed. No, I didn’t like being knocked unconscious and effectively kidnapped.
But it had been the right move. I had been on my way right into the middle of that gunfight. And it would absolutely—well, probably—have gotten me killed.
“Smart,” I finally admitted. “But I’m getting awfully tired of waking up in strange places and finding out you’re behind it, Marlon.”
He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. “And I’m getting awfully tired of having to move you around when you’re passed out,” he replied. “It takes away from your usefulness. I vote we make that the last time we have to go through it.”
“Seconded,” I agreed.
Around us, the trees were closing in again, and I racked my brain, trying to remember the exact layout of this property. The main house wasn’t in the trees. It was back in the clearing.
“You don’t have the people in the house?” I asked, looking over my shoulder and searching for it, trying to remember if it was even still standing.
“Not big enough for this many people,” Marlon noted. “We could maybe have fit some of them in there, but not all of them. We didn’t want to separate the group. And the house felt a whole lot like the obvious option. Like the first place Randall would search, when he got here. If he decided to follow us.”
Right, there was a lot to unpack there, but I put it to the side for the moment.
“So where’d you put them?” I asked.
We came through the small bit of forest into another clearing, and I saw before me the ramshackle, half-fallen-down remains of what had been the Forresters’ hay barn.
“The barn,” Marlon said quietly.
“It’ll never do for anything long-term,” I noted as we walked through the front door of the barn and came to a stop.
In front of me, I could see that the place was already completely full. There were a little over two hundred people in town, and though this barn was a large one—once large enough to house the hay for an entire ranching organization—it was packed with the tents and supplies of the townspeople. There was barely enough room to move in here, and it would never work for more than one night. People would start to kill each other, packed this closely.
And that didn’t even start to address the bigger problem, which was that half the roof had fallen in, making the place less-than weatherproof. There were gaps between some of the boards in the walls, and I could feel the draft from the weather blowing against me.
“This place isn’t going to keep us warm enough for the night, even,” I continued. “Those tents don’t come with insulation, Marlon.”
“Don’t I know it,” he replied grimly. “But it was the best we could come up with on such short notice.”
“Randall moved a whole lot faster than we had expected,” I said.
“You’re telling me,” Marlon replied wryly. “Damn glad I’d come up with a plan with Bob before I went off to give you cover, or we wouldn’t have gotten out of there alive.”
I looked at him, remembering now the other things he’d said. “What exactly did you guys do?”
He gave me a modest shrug. “Gathered the women and children and got some of the older men to get them out into the forest while the younger guys—along with myself, of course—laid down fire at the front of the building to keep Randall and his men busy.”
Right, well in the future, I definitely wasn’t going to question Marlon’s ability to coordinate missions. Or escapes. That was another damn good plan.
“Lose anyone in the fight?” I asked, already afraid of the answer.
“Not a one,” Marlon replied. I could hear the pride in his voice, and I understood that. It was one thing to come out of a fight, yourself. It was a whole other thing to bring your men with you.
Whatever his history was—and I was absolutely planning to ask about that soon—he’d had very good training when it came to taking care of his people.
Then, as I was gazing out across the room, I saw the flash of red that could only belong to one person, and before I knew it, my feet were flying over the debris of the barn’s floor and taking me toward one of the few people in the entire world that I truly wanted to see. I caught her up in my arms the moment I got to her, handling her as gently as I could, and held her to me, almost sobbing with relief.