“Dammit, Nash. I can’t leave you here,” Lina said, her voice breaking.
“Angel, this is my fight. I’m the one who has to end it and I’m counting on you to get my brother and my friend out of here in one piece. Trust me to do my job like I’m trusting you to do yours.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face and swore quietly. “Fine. But don’t you dare get shot,” Lina said finally.
“I won’t,” I promised.
Knox took her by the arm and started to pull her away.
Her brown eyes locked on mine and held. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Now get the hell out of here so I can go be a hero.”
“I’m moving here,” Lina told Knox as they ducked down.
“Great. What happened to your arm?” Knox asked.
“The guy you hit in the face with the shovel shot me.”
“You fuckin’ kidding me?” I heard my brother snarl.
I waited until Lina had uncovered the Porsche and Knox loaded a white-faced Nolan into the passenger seat.
My brother threw me a salute then turned and ran low toward the barn door at the end of the arena.
Nolan flashed me a weak middle finger as Lina slid behind the wheel of the Porsche. I returned it grimly. “See you after,” she mouthed.
I blew her a kiss then took aim as the Porsche’s engine roared to life.
Dilton popped up from behind his cover aiming in Lina’s direction. I fired a split second before he pulled the trigger. He disappeared back behind the totes, clutching his arm.
He was a decent shot. But I was better and I knew his weakness.
“Nikos? Where the fuck are you?” Dilton bellowed as Lina hit the accelerator and the Porsche leapt forward. My girl’s triumphant “woohoo” carried to me on a cloud of dust left in the car’s wake. I grinned and used it as cover.
Staying low, I left the safety of the tractor and moved toward Dilton’s location. I needed to get eyes on him.
I ducked behind a smaller tractor with a post hole digger and peered under its belly.
Dilton was sweating and chewing his gum like his jaw was a piston. He was on his knees bellied up against a short stack of hay bales. His arms—one bleeding—were stretched out on top of the hay. In his hands, he clutched his prized Smith & Wesson six-shooter.
I fucking had him.
I took aim and fired, sending up a puff of rotting hay inches from him.
He fired an answering shot in the direction of the tractor.
“Dilton.”
He scrambled around on his knees in the sawdust as I stood up.
I stared into the eyes of the man who’d tried once to take my life, and looking into them, I knew he wouldn’t get a second chance.
“You know I gotta kill you now,” he said, gnawing nervously on his gum.
“I know you tried once.”
“Guess you really did get your memory back, didn’t you?” he said, gaining his feet.
“What I don’t get is why.”
“Why?” he scoffed. “You stole that job from a real man and pussified the entire fuckin’ department. I shoulda been chief. I did more for this goddamn town than you ever did.”
“Then why wait all these years before taking your shot?” I took another step closer.
He was sweating like my great-aunt Marleen at a Fourth of July cookout.
“I don’t fuckin’ know. Stay the hell where you are,” he said, holding his gun with both hands. The long, shiny barrel revealed the tremor in his grip.
“Maybe you didn’t think about doing anything until Duncan Hugo came along and put a bug in your ear.”
“What makes you think I didn’t put the bug in his ear?”
“Because you’ve never had an original thought in that pea-sized brain of yours. I know none of this originated with you.”
Dilton’s lip curled, lifting his mustache. “You really have no fucking clue.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
He was aiming low, the weight of the gun pulling the barrel down. “Shit. You expect me to confess to everything right before I put you in the ground.”
“Why not? Tell me how smart you are before you pull that trigger again.”
“I’ll tell you as you’re bleedin’ out since I can stick around this time.”
I was ready for it. I read the twitch and watched his finger pull the trigger in slow motion. There was a click and the stupid stunned look as Dilton realized he’d already fired his last bullet.
The son of a bitch never could keep track of his rounds.
A split second later, three patches of red bloomed on Dilton’s torso. The echo of the three rapid gunshots rang out in the cavernous room and inside my head.
Dilton’s sweaty face went slack as he looked at me, then down at the holes in his chest. His lips moved but no sound came out. The red was still spreading when he dropped to his knees and then fell forward on his face.
Behind him stood an ashen-faced Wylie Ogden. His hands shook as he kept the gun trained on him.
“H-he was gonna kill you,” Wylie said in little more than a whisper.
“He was out of bullets,” I said. I don’t know if he heard me, because he was staring down at Dilton like he was afraid the man was going to get back up.
I remembered then, in Wylie’s two-decade career, the man had never had to discharge his weapon in the line of duty.
“Put the gun down, Wylie. We’re all friends here,” I said, moving toward him slowly.
“He was gonna do it,” he said again.
I heard the sirens then, the long, urgent whine drawing closer and closer.
“It’s over now,” I told him.
“It’s over,” he whispered. He let me take the gun out of his hands and then sank to his knees in the blood-soaked dust next to Tate Dilton’s body.
Dawn was just beginning to break over the trees by the time I stepped out of the barn. The long, dark night was over. A new day had begun.
The entire property was crawling with cops, feds, and other first responders.
I was surprised to see my brother push away from the side of the barn and head my way. He had a bandage over the cut on his forehead and more on his knuckles.
We stood shoulder to shoulder in the open door, taking it all in.
“You did good in there,” he said finally.
“What?”
“You heard me. You seem pretty okay at your job. When you don’t have the rule book shoved up your ass.”
It was the nicest compliment my brother had paid me since he came to my senior homecoming football game and told me I hadn’t “sucked too bad” on the field.
“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for having my back.”
He flashed me a Knox Morgan smirk. “When are these assholes gonna learn, you don’t mess with the Morgan brothers?”
“Hey, happy wedding day.”
“Gonna be the best day of my life.”
As if on cue, the reason for that appeared.
“Knox!” Naomi and Waylay broke through a ring of state cops and started running.
“Don’t be fuckin’ late,” Knox said to me with a parting thump on the back. And then he was loping across the gravel to them. I watched my brother sweep the two most important women in his life into his arms and swing them around.