Rayanne clamped her hand over Blue’s arm in case he intended to fall for that. Clearly these fools didn’t have talking in mind. But Blue didn’t move. He only glanced down at where she had hold of him. His long-sleeve black shirt was between her hand and his skin, but she could have sworn she felt every inch of him.
Every inch.
And she cursed her body’s reaction again, along with jerking back her hand. Definitely not the time for those memories to rear their ugly, hot little heads.
“Time’s up, McCurdy,” the man added. “Come out now or you die.”
The last word of that threat had barely left his mouth when the shots started again. This time it was Blue who did the clamping. He took her by the shoulder and pushed her to the ground. Her mouth landed right in the dirt and blades of grass that hadn’t already been stomped down.
Rayanne didn’t stay down, though. She wasn’t sure why Blue was suddenly playing cowboy-in-shining-armor, but she wasn’t having any part of it.
“Please tell me these bad guys are really bad,” she said, levering herself up just enough to get off a shot. “Bad as in worse than you and that this isn’t some botched attempt to arrest you.”
His gaze cut to her, and those gunmetal-blue eyes narrowed. “No one’s as bad as I am.”
He paused as if waiting for her to agree or disagree. She didn’t do either, but a comment like that definitely fell into the agreement category. Of course, she’d known Blue was a bad boy before she landed in bed with him, so it shouldn’t have surprised her that he’d continued his bad-boy ways.
“If you’re asking if they’re the law,” he added, “they aren’t.”
Rayanne almost pressed him for more about why they were after him, but it’d have to wait. The directions of the shots changed, and it wasn’t a good change, either. The two gunmen appeared to be moving away from each other and closing in on Blue and her.
Blue glanced at her again. “You take the one on the right. I’ll get the one on the left.”
Just on principle, she hated taking orders from Blue, but it was a decent plan considering their position. Rayanne waited, listened, and when she thought she had a good pinpoint on the shooter, she leaned out and fired. Beside her, Blue did the same.
Rayanne heard the two sounds almost simultaneously. The thud of the bullet and a groan of pain. But it wasn’t her shot that’d caused those sounds.
It was Blue’s.
He’d hit his target, but judging from the way the bullets kept coming, she’d missed hers.
The man who’d done all the shouting started to curse, and she tried to follow the sound of his ripe profanity. It was hard to tell where he was as he darted through the woods toward his partner, who was either injured or dead. Rayanne was hoping it was the latter because she didn’t want to battle a riled, injured would-be killer.
She leaned out from the rocks again, aiming her gun at the sound of the movement and the footsteps. But another shot came their way.
Mercy.
Not from one of the two gunmen but from another direction. To their far left.
Rayanne pivoted toward the newcomer and fired. This time she didn’t miss, but again she couldn’t tell if the man was just injured or dead, because the shots from the other gunmen drowned out any telltale sounds.
But there was no mistaking one sound.
Even over the blasts and her own heartbeat crashing in her ears, she heard—and felt—one of those bullets. It didn’t slam into her.
It hit Blue.
And it didn’t just hit him. It tore off a chunk of rock that smacked against his left temple. She knew the exact second of impact from both the bullet and the rock. Blue groaned in pain.
And Rayanne could only watch as he collapsed against her.
She didn’t look at him. Was too afraid of what she might see. Besides, she had to deal with the person who’d fired that shot.
The anger slammed into her, along with the fear she had for the baby. She tried to shut out all thoughts when she took aim. However, she didn’t get a chance to fire. That was because the moron stopped shooting and started running.
Escaping.
Rayanne nearly bolted after him, but then she looked down at Blue. Unconscious. He was breathing, sucking in shallow breaths, and there wasn’t a drop of color in Blue’s face.
But there was color everywhere else. Lots of it.
From his blood spilling onto her.
Blue heard the voices and opened his eyes.
Big mistake. The light stabbed through his head like razors, and a very unmanly sounding groan clawed its way through his parched throat.
That stopped the voices.
He heard movement. People shuffling around, and despite the pain, he reached for his gun.
Not there.
Even though it was hard to think, he figured this couldn’t be good. Unarmed and in god-awful pain. He hoped he didn’t have to fight his way out of there, because judging from the way he felt, he’d already had his butt kicked bad.
Blue had another go at opening his eyes. This time he took things slower and cracked just one eyelid so he could have a look. There was an elderly man with salt-and-pepper hair looming over him. No gun, either, but he was sporting a very concerned expression.
“I’m Dr. Wilbert Howland,” the man said. “I did your surgery.”
It took Blue a moment to process that. Surgery likely meant a hospital, so he glanced around.
Yep.
He was in bed, flat on his back, surrounded by sterile white walls and an antiseptic smell.
“Surgery?” Blue repeated. He tried to pick through the images and sounds that spun like an F5 tornado through his head.
“You were shot,” the doctor provided. “And you have a concussion.”
With the help of the ache in his left shoulder nudging him, Blue remembered getting shot and being smacked in the head with a piece of flying rock. Hard to forget the blistering pain from those two things. He also remembered the gunmen.
Three of them.
That gave him a jolt of concern. “Where are the guys who shot me?”
“Two are dead. The other one’s missing.”
Blue groaned again. “The missing one will come for me.” At least Blue thought he would.
“You’re safe here. And you’re going to be fine,” the doc assured him. “The bullet didn’t hit anything vital, but you did lose a lot of blood because it took a while to get an ambulance out there to you.”
No memory of an ambulance. Zero. No memory of how much time had passed, either. Definitely something he should be able to recall.
“Where are my clothes?” he asked, glancing down at the hospital gown.
“Bagged. I’ll have someone bring them to you if the sheriff doesn’t need them for processing.”
Right. Because the clothes might be needed for an investigation. “I want the Stetson and the vest. They’re my good-luck charms,” he added.
The doc gave him a funny look. No doubt because he was in the