He went with door number one and squeezed off two rounds in quick succession…
Boom! Boom!
Eve froze, the hair on the back of her neck twanging upright.
She knew that sound. Ever since she’d begun taking shooting lessons, she knew that sound, sometimes even heard it in her sleep.
“Billy…” she whispered his name like a prayer before reality kicked in and she raced for the door to the cabin. Wrenching it open, she managed to pull it from its top hinge, and it slammed back against the side of the cabin with a loud bang. She didn’t bother using the stairs as her heart grew wings and attempted to fly out of her mouth, she simply jumped down into the hold, stumbling when her foot caught on the last tread. Immediately righting herself, she reached for Billy’s duffel in the small booth.
“Please, please, please…” It was a chant she breathed over and over as she dug through his gear and then…“Yes!”…Her hand landed on the hard outline of a handgun. She wrenched it from the bag, relieved to find it was a Glock 17, a pistol she’d trained with. Pulling out the clip, she wasn’t surprised to find it full. Slamming it back into place with the edge of her palm, she turned to race up the stairs when something tucked into the mesh side compartment of Billy’s bag caught her attention. It was the little snub-nosed Smith & Wesson she’d used at Dale’s house. Quickly grabbing it, she shoved it into the waistband at the small of her back, before climbing the stairs, running across the deck, and taking a flying leap onto the dock.
Crack! The wood on the pier splintered beneath the force of her fall, and her right ankle and left wrist screamed out their objections. She ignored them both as she pushed up and ran. Ran like she’d never run before toward the end of the pier and up the small embankment that led to the parking lot. She topped the rise in time to see Billy dragging himself behind an old beat-up truck while someone with dark hair—it was too far away; she couldn’t quite make him out—stalked toward Billy’s position with his arms raised in such a way that there was no mistaking he held a gun.
With her heart and lungs pounding in time to the rapid slap of her sneakers against the parking lot, she lifted the Glock and squeezed the trigger. Again and again. And all the while she was screaming Billy’s name…
He was in a world of hurt…
Not metaphorically. Literally. He was pretty sure the slug that’d plowed into his thigh hit bone. But that was nothing compared to the one that’d torn through the center of his chest, making it almost impossible to breathe. And the pain…it was like nothing he’d ever known. And he’d known pain before. Plenty of times before.
Fuck. He was a dead man. He knew it like he knew his name was William Wesley Reichert.
“Billy!” Between the loud buzzing in his ears and sucking sound his chest made anytime he attempted to take a breath, he heard his name echo across the parking lot. A series of loud pops followed, and he rolled himself over on the pavement, one hand pressed to the hole in his chest as blood poured hot and heavy between his fingers. The movement resulted in agony. A searing torture that, for a moment, precluded his ability to think. Then he saw Eve running toward him, slim legs eating up the distance, black ponytail flying out behind her, right hand raised and firing his Glock in steady bursts, and suddenly his brain kicked it.
And it was weird…
Because his first thought wasn’t about the man who’d shot him, and why. Or even about the danger Eve was in, or the fact that his life was waning, leaking out of him and onto the craggy surface of the lot. No. His first thought, the first scintilla of cognition that darted though his head was that Eve Edens was beautiful when she ran. Absolutely, positively perfection in motion. All long legs and lean flanks, born and bred and built for speed. And then sanity and reality suddenly waylaid him, and he realized exactly what her speed was doing.
It was bringing her closer. To him. To the gunman who’d taken him out.
His heart, already laboring in his ruined chest, threatened to explode. No, Eve. No! He couldn’t allow her to risk her life for him. He couldn’t allow her to—
“Turn around! Run!” He meant to yell the words, but they came out as nothing more than a hoarse whisper. Coughing, he felt flecks of blood splatter his lips, and he raked in a shallow, sucking breath that burned like the fires of hell. “Turn around! Run!”
This time his words had some volume. Unfortunately, the volume cost him a series of deep, wracking coughs that filled his mouth with blood. Even so, he couldn’t take his eyes off Eve. He couldn’t take his eyes off the crazy, courageous—she was the goddamned bravest thing he’d ever seen—woman. He couldn’t take his eyes off her because he was dying, and he knew the last thing he wanted to see was her. Eve. The woman he loved.
The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He loved her. He’d never stopped loving her. And he’d been an idiot to hold something against her that she’d done over a dozen years ago, when she’d basically been nothing more than a scared, confused adolescent. And why the hell it took him shaking hands with the Reaper to finally admit as much he didn’t know. Perhaps when faced with the great beyond, all other fears and reservations just disappeared. He loved her. And either she hadn’t heard his warning shout, or she’d just chosen to ignore it, because her steps didn’t falter. Not even once. And the insane, foolish, lionhearted woman was going to get herself killed trying to save a man who, for all intents and purposes, was already dead.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
As if to prove his point, the gunman returned a volley of rounds, and a bullet grazed Eve’s shoulder, spinning her like a top and dropping her to the ground.
No!
He choked on his own blood, releasing the wound on his chest so he could use both hands to drag himself toward her. But it was futile. Because a split second later, she was up and running toward him again, returning fire like a battle-hardened soldier.
No! Turn around! Run! Save yourself!
Unfortunately, the words were only in his head. He could barely draw enough strength to mutter them, much less raise his voice to a level she could possibly hear. See, the mathematics for blood loss was real simple. The more you lost, the weaker you became. And that kind of arithmetic meant he had to act fast. While he still could. He had to draw the gunman’s fire.
Pushing to his good knee, he reached up with a slick, blood-soaked hand to grab the truck’s rusting side view mirror. His body was a giant, burning ball of agony. His heart skittered and missed beats. His punctured, bleeding lung struggled valiantly to rake in oxygen, all while his brain, deprived of said oxygen, grew dull and fuzzy.
But he couldn’t give in yet. He couldn’t give in until—
With a choking cry, he hauled himself to his feet. The world around him dimmed and flickered, then condensed down to nothing but that dark SUV and the gunman hiding behind the open door, peeking around to once again return fire.
“Over h—” cough, cough, cough. Hot blood poured down his chin and tasted like rusting iron on his tongue. He could smell it. Its metallic aroma tunneled into his nose, and he briefly flashed back to that time in Afghanistan when he arrived on the scene of a brutal roadside bombing to see bloody, shredded bodies littering the street. Death had been imminent then. Death was imminent now. But first…“Over here!” he finally managed to garble.