Bart Masters did not intend to give her those moments. He was already moving, slowly and cautiously, very much aware of the way Melanie followed him with the shotgun as he moved.
"Now, listen, little girl, you don't want to do anything hasty with that thing," he said, still trying to sound calm in spite of the sudden mixture of fear and excitement he felt welling up in his throat. "You could hurt somebody if you're not careful."
Jed and Tom had heard their boss's words, and their eyes were also now fastened upon the naked female shotgunner there on the couch. Unlike Masters however, they were either too frightened or still too groggy with sex to join in the defensive maneuvers.
Melanie did not answer Masters' comments, but kept the deadly weapon centered on his chest, watching the other two men with darting little movements of her eyes. She could see Penny sitting up now, staring at her in seeming disbelief, but she could not afford to focus on her sister long enough to tell if she seemed to be wide awake and thinking clearly. Bart Masters was moving more swiftly now, and it required all of the young girl's concentration to keep the shotgun aligned on him.
"Come on, now, girlie," Masters was saying, slowly advancing toward her across the floor, one hand outstretched in seeming friendship. "Give Bart that mean old gun and we'll all get friendly again. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Something in his words seemed to strike a conflicting chord within Melanie's brain, now snapping something there with an almost physical twinge of pain. She was angry, and already squeezing the trigger of the shotgun before Bart Masters rushed her, racing across the floor to grab for the weapon. The shotgun went off in her hands, incredibly loud in the confines of the small living room. And Bart Masters was simply no longer there, his strong, muscular form replaced by a spinning lifeless rag doll that trailed streamers of blood as it bounced and slithered across the hardwood floor.
The roar of the shotgun galvanized Jed Wilson and Tom Watson into action, each of them suddenly rushing toward Melanie from different directions, knowing that only one shell remained in the double-barreled weapon. Melanie desperately swung the gun back and forth, then, with a split-second left, chose her target and squeezed the trigger again.
Jed Wilson took that last remaining charge full in the face, and his head left his body with a wet, smacking sound, leaving his decapitated corpse faltering in mid-stride before it collapsed in gruesome convulsions on the floor.
Tom Watson was upon Melanie all of a sudden, batting the empty shotgun aside with one massive paw then closing his powerful fingers about her throat, relentlessly squeezing the life out of her with powerful hands. Melanie grimaced at him and saw the world begin to go dark, her ears ringing with what seemed to be thunderous explosions as she teetered on the edge of unconsciousness.
Suddenly Watson was gone, and Melanie's head was clearing, her vision returning. She glanced about, and found Watson slumped on the floor beside the couch, blood pumping from a neat cluster of holes between his shoulder blades. Another glance showed her Penny, tall and splendid in her nakedness, still holding at arm's length the revolver which she had taken from Bart Masters' crumpled pile of clothing.
The two sisters rushed together, wrapping each other up in a nude embrace of sheer familial love. Their sobs mingled and eventually turned to near-hysterical laughter, a wild laughter which communicated their mutual relief at being delivered from the clutches of almost certain death.
Penny Tucker's mind was already clearing now, and she was planning all the things that would have to be done. She would have to call the sheriff, of course, and wait until he could arrive with his deputies and the coroner to take the bodies away. There would be questions, and answers, perhaps even a trial, but the young woman was no longer worried. She and her sister had survived the most trying ordeal of their young lives, and she knew that in the future they would be able to survive anything which came their way.
They had each other, and in the final analysis, that was all that mattered. It might even be said that they had learned some valuable lessons from their ordeal with Masters and his gang, and Penny for one knew that in the future she would look with more tolerant eyes upon Luke Hollowell and his advances. Perhaps, just perhaps, she would say yes to him next time, and maybe even marry him, if he still wanted her.
And if he didn't want her? No problem, she decided. She and her sister were proven survivors, and they would continue to survive, no matter what came their way.
The young-old face of Penny Tucker wore a tired and knowing, albeit happy smile as she turned away from that scene of bloody carnage in the living room and led her sister slowly, gently toward the waiting telephone. Beyond that phone lay tomorrow, and thousands of tomorrows.
She was anxious to see what they might bring.