It’d be close.
Deanne was bleeding out from the gunshot she’d taken to the chest. Chase did his best to add some pressure to the wound, but it was hard to do that without constricting her breathing. He didn’t want her to suffocate.
More shots came from the gunman.
The idiot was moving closer to them, no doubt coming in for the kill.
Deanne mumbled something, something that Chase didn’t catch, and without taking his attention off the area where the shooter was positioned, he leaned in closer, hoping to hear what Deanne was trying to say.
“Help,” Deanne whispered.
“Help is on the way,” he assured her. Chase wanted to say how sorry he was for what had happened to her. Deanne had a criminal past, but she didn’t deserve this.
Deanne shook her head. “No, help her.” Her gaze drifted in the direction where those two other shots had been fired.
Each word she spoke was a struggle, and by the time she was done, Deanne was gasping for air. Still, she managed to say one last thing.
Something that twisted his stomach into a tight, hard knot.
No more breaths from Deanne. Her chest just stopped moving, and Chase could only watch the life drain from her eyes. Watch and mentally repeat what Deanne had said to him with her dying breath.
April’s in trouble.
His gaze whipped in the direction of the second shooter. The person was still hidden behind a tree, but Chase had the sickening feeling that he knew who’d fired those two shots at the gunman.
Was April really out there?
Just the thought of it twisted and tightened that knot even more. There was plenty of bad blood between April and him. But a different kind of connection, too. One that would last a lifetime.
Because April was pregnant with Chase’s baby.
However, April shouldn’t be here. Couldn’t be here. She was in WITSEC, tucked away somewhere safe with a new name and a location that even Chase didn’t know. A necessary precaution so that no one could trace her by following him.
April was also nine months pregnant, ready to deliver any day now.
He waited until the original shooter fired another shot, and he used that to help him pinpoint the guy’s position. Chase fired. He also got moving right away, heading toward those trees where the second shooter had been. Maybe he wouldn’t find April there after all.
But if she was, then that meant something had gone wrong.
He tried to recall every word of the short phone conversation he’d had earlier with Deanne. She’d been frantic, said she was in her car, somewhere near the Appaloosa Creek Bridge, and that she was being tailed by a gunman wearing a ski mask.
Had Deanne said anything else?
No.
Definitely nothing about April being with her.
So, maybe he was wrong about April, and Deanne’s words were merely the mumblings of a dying woman. And maybe that was one of his brothers out there helping him with the shots.
Chase scrambled his way through the trees and the underbrush, cursing the wet spring weather that’d clogged this part of the woods with mud and briars. It slowed him down.
He ducked behind a tree, fired off another shot and then had to reload. It was his last magazine so he’d have to be careful with the shots now and make every one count.
Whoever was returning fire at Deanne’s killer didn’t seem to have the problem of not enough ammunition. The person continued to shoot, spacing out the shots several seconds apart.
“Jericho?” Chase whispered, hoping his brother, the sheriff, was the one returning fire behind the sprawling oak that was now just a few yards away.
No answer.
And if it’d been Jericho, or his other brothers, Levi or Jax, they would have responded somehow to let him know not to fire in their direction.
Chase kept moving, working his way through the muck, and he finally got in position to spot someone. It was late afternoon and some sunlight still hung in the sky, but the woods created deep shadows. There was nowhere near enough light for him to see the person’s face, but whoever it was wore all black.
He risked lifting his head just a little, to see how this shadowy figure would respond, but he or she didn’t even seem to acknowledge Chase.
“I’m coming closer,” Chase warned the person, hoping this didn’t turn out to be a big mistake, and he scurried toward the tree.
Thank God the person didn’t shoot him, but this definitely wasn’t one of his brothers.
Not April, either.
Because while he still couldn’t make out much of the person’s face, he could see the silhouette of the body. Whoever this was darn sure wasn’t nine months pregnant.
Chase scrambled the last few feet to the tree and landed on the ground right next to the person who was kneeling. His heart skipped a beat or two though when he saw the ski mask. Identical to the one worn by the other shooter.
Hell.
He brought up his gun. Took aim. Just as the person shoved up the ski mask to reveal her face.
April.
Yes, it was her, all right. There was no mistaking her now. The black hair, the wide blue eyes. But she didn’t have her attention fixed on him. It was on the other shooter.
“Is Deanne okay?” she asked on a rise of breath.
“No. She’s dead.”
April had no reaction to that. Well, none that he could pick out in the dusky light anyway. A surprise. Deanne and she weren’t friends. Far from it after everything that’d happened, but still April had to be shocked by a woman’s murder.
However, reactions and that ski mask weren’t his only concern about this situation. Chase couldn’t stop himself from looking in the direction of her stomach again. Definitely flat.
“The baby?” he managed to say.
His baby. The one April should have been giving birth to any day now. But she certainly didn’t have a newborn with her, and she didn’t look as if she’d just delivered, either.
“Play along,” she whispered, a split second before she hooked her left arm around his neck, dragged him in front of her and put her gun to his head.
“I have Marshal Crockett,” April called out to someone.
“What the devil’s going on here?” Chase snarled, and he shoved her away from him.
“You have to play along,” April repeated. Definitely not the tone of a terrified woman on the run. Nor was that a weak grip she put on him when she yanked him back against her.
Damn. Was April up to her old tricks again?
“Put down your gun,” she added in a whisper. “And whatever you do, don’t shoot him.”
Chase didn’t get a chance to ask her anything else because he heard the footsteps. Heavy, hurried ones. And he soon spotted the guy who’d been firing shots at him.
The very snake who’d killed Deanne.
Chase didn’t put down his gun as April had demanded, but she shoved his hand by his side. Maybe so that his weapon would be out of sight. Or perhaps because this was some kind of sick game she was playing.
The