Joe fell back into the woodstove from the tackle and the back of his thighs were singed on contact with the woodstove and the pain was startling. He fell forward to his knees with both hands still around his gun, fully cognizant he had a single bullet left for the Grim Brothers and, God help him, for Terri Wade if she came at him again. He could smell the acrid odor of burnt hair from the back of his legs, but he was pretty sure the burns were superficial.
He raised his weapon and peered down the length of it toward Wade’s forehead. She was crying, and tears streamed down her cheeks and pooled under her chin. Her mouth sagged open as she cried and he thought it was horrible, that he’d rarely seen a human in so much pain before, and he thought he’d be damned if he felt it necessary to hurt her to save himself. And he lowered the gun and wondered what Marybeth would counsel.
Camish shouted: “Terri, get down!”
She dropped to her knees with her eyes locked in sympathy with Joe, then stretched out on the floor and covered her head with her hands.
Joe looked up.
The thick cabin door rocked with the force of a shotgun blast. A softball-sized hole at eye level was suddenly there, as was gun smoke inside the cabin and half-inch splinters of wood on every flat surface. Joe flung himself backward, away from Terri Wade, away from the stove. He remembered the small curtained window over her bed in the back of the cabin. He wondered if the window was wide enough for his shoulders to fit through since there was no back door. With Caleb on the roof and Camish in front of the cabin, it was his only escape route. Unless, of course, there was someone else with them.
Another blast punched a second hole through the front door. Wade screamed, begging them to stop, telling them they could come in and get the government man. The pellet load dislodged the shelf in the back of the cabin and the picture frames were scattered across the floor. One of them settled between Joe’s hands and he caught a glimpse of it. The photo was of a family—not including Terri Wade—enjoying themselves on a beach. It was obviously staged and generic-looking. The price of the frame—$9.99—was printed within the photo. He didn’t have time to figure out why she’d never put her own choice of picture in the frame, but left it as-is from the store where she’d purchased it.
And Joe thought, once again, Government man? He didn’t like to be thought of that way. He wasn’t a government man—he was a wildlife man.
The front door blew open. Caleb had come off the roof and broken it in with his shoulder. The hinges burst before the knob and deadbolt, which made Wade say, “Oh!”
And Caleb stood in the threshold for a moment, eyes wide and mean, a blood-sodden bandage around the lower part of his face, and Joe realized he’d clipped the end of Caleb’s chin off the day before and he thought, Good for me!
Except he hadn’t finished the job, which put him in a much worse situation now.
Joe raised his Glock, centered the front and back sight on Caleb’s chest, and fired.
Caleb winced and took a step back, but didn’t drop. He held the .308 at parade rest and seemed momentarily incapable of raising it and aiming at Joe. Joe thought, Why didn’t he go down?
Camish blew through the front door, and when Terri Wade rose and threw herself at him, he greeted her with a stiff-arm that quickly got her out of the line of fire without flinging her to the floor.
Joe reared back and pitched his weapon through the glass of the back window and followed it.
Camish yelled, “Hey, stop!” and raised his shotgun.
Joe glanced over his shoulder as he stepped on the bed and saw the O of the muzzle and steeled himself for the force of a shotgun blast in his back. A double-ought shell contained nine lead pellets over a third of an inch in diameter. At this range, it would be over quickly: a full load of it could practically cut him in half. But again, Terri Wade rammed Camish the way she’d thrown herself at him. The shotgun exploded, but the load smashed into the wall near Joe’s left shoulder.
“Damn you, Terri,” Camish yelled as he shoved her aside again. He could have clubbed her with the butt of the shotgun and Joe expected it, but he didn’t.
Joe covered his face with his arms and dived toward the broken window. The remaining glass gave way and he was outside, his arms and neck wrapped in the curtain, rolling in pine needles. He tossed the curtain aside, and as he did he thought he saw the shadow of a figure near the corner of the cabin. The figure was tall and slight, and he instinctively dropped to a shooter’s stance and rose to a knee. Although he didn’t have his pistol, he acted as if he did and thrust both hands forward, his left cupping his right, yelled, “Freeze! ” and the figure ducked silently around the corner out of view to avoid being harmed. He scrambled to his feet and his right boot tip accidentally thudded against something heavy on the ground—his empty gun. He recovered it and staggered downhill toward the creek he’d followed earlier. Behind him, he heard Camish rack the pump again and yell for Joe to stop. There was a high-pierced wail from Caleb in the background, as if he’d just realized he’d been shot again.
Joe figured Camish must be at the cabin window because he could hear glass breaking, and that he was probably using the barrel to knock down the remaining shards of glass so he could aim unimpeded. Joe stepped behind a tall pine tree as the blast stripped the bark off the other side of the trunk. The tree shook from the impact and sent a cascade of pine needles to the forest floor.
Before Camish could rack in another shell, Joe flung himself away, trying to keep the tree between the cabin and himself, trying to get his legs to respond. Electric bolts of pain shot up into his groin from the wounds. Each tree and bush he passed provided more cover and protection, and he hoped he could vanish into the darkness before Camish could aim well and fire again. His shotgun with the double-ought buckshot was an extremely lethal short-range weapon, but it lost its punch with every step Joe made into the woods. The pattern of shot would widen as the velocity of the pellets dispersed.
There was another shot, and double-ought pellets smacked trees and ripped through brush on both sides of him. He felt two sudden hot spots—one in his right shoulder and another that burned under the scalp near his right ear. He tripped and pitched forward, falling hard.
On the ground, he distinctly heard Camish say, “Got him.” And a female voice say, “Are you sure?”
Joe didn’t pause to assess the new wounds, and he didn’t stand up in case Camish could still see him. Instead, he crawled through the dirt on his hands and knees, putting as much distance as possible between himself and his attacker, plunging himself deeper into darkness. After ten minutes of crawling, he used a fallen tree to steady himself and rise to his feet. As he ran, he swiped at the burn in his scalp and felt hot blood on his fingertips. His shoulder was numb except for what he imagined as a single burning ember buried deep into the muscle.
He was splashing through the creek before he realized it was there. The icy water shocked him but felt good at the same time. There was shouting back at the cabin, and another inhuman wail.
Joe paused and tried to catch his breath. He listened for the sound of footfalls but didn’t hear them. Yet. Squatting on his haunches, he cupped his hands and filled them with icy water, which he drank and used to douse his neck wound.
Terri Wade had saved his life twice, yet he’d left her back there with them. He rose and turned in the creek, looking back in the direction of the cabin. What would they do to her? Could he possibly stop it?
He hoped they’d spare her. After all, it was him they were after and Camish seemed to have chosen not to hurt her when he easily could have. But Camish was distracted at the time and Caleb was injured. Now that Joe was gone and they had her to themselves?