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Without the sounds of gunfire, Rachel could hear her own heartbeat galloping in her ears. Could feel her nerves zinging with adrenaline and fear.
Jericho, on the other hand, wasn’t zinging at all. His breathing was level, and because he was pressed against her, she could feel that his muscles were relaxed. This might not exactly be old hat for him, but it clearly wasn’t his first rodeo either.
They waited there, with the night closing in around them. Until everything went silent and still.
It didn’t last.
Another shot came tearing through the air, and it blasted into the concrete right where Jericho and she were. Little concrete slivers went flying, and she felt one skip across the side of her head. Now, there was pain, and the sharp sound she made must have immediately alerted Jericho.
He pushed her even lower until Rachel was literally face down on the ground. “Stay put,” he insisted. “I need this SOB alive if possible,” he said to the others. “Because he might not be acting alone.”
True. And if he or she was alive, Jericho and she stood a chance of getting answers.
“I’m going up into the tower,” Jericho added.
“No,” she couldn’t say fast enough. “You’ll be an easy target.”
“Not the way I’m doing it,” he assured her.
And then he was off in a commando crawl away from her and toward the observation tower that had been built about three years after Rachel had moved to the compound. In fact, Jericho’s father had been one of the builders, and it’d been meant to observe anyone who might be trespassing or poaching on the compound’s acreage. Kids, Jericho and she included, had often had to man it as part of their chores.
Staying down, Rachel turned so she could watch Jericho as he reached the tower. The stairs were on the side, which would obviously put him right out in the open once he climbed them. But he didn’t use the stairs. Instead, he crawled to the back support beam—a thick tree post—and he shimmied up it.
A gunshot blasted, hitting the post.
But not Jericho.
Somehow, Jericho managed to keep all but his hands and feet behind the post, and the shooter had missed him. Maybe that proved Jericho’s point that the guy wasn’t a good marksman. Then again, it could have been the killer’s shots were off because he was worried about being killed since Arnez and a couple of others immediately returned fire.
Rachel turned so that she was lying on her back and looking up at Jericho. The moment he was at the top, he slid into the small lookout that she knew was reinforced with steel inserts in the walls. That made it hotter than hell in the summer, but she hoped it also made it bulletproof now.
“Cover me,” Jericho called down to no one in particular.
That was obviously the instructions the others had been waiting for because everyone with a gun began to fire in the direction of the shooter. Jericho leaned out from the tower, not with a gun.
But with his slingshot.
And he sent a rock flying.
A split second later, there was a sharp groan of pain.
Rachel couldn’t hear the killer moving, but Jericho must have seen him because he dropped the slingshot. In the same motion, he brought up his gun and fired.
There was another sound of pain, this one louder and more intense.
“If you take aim at me, the next bullet goes in your head instead of your leg,” Jericho shouted. “Put down your weapon and come out. Hands up.”
Rachel held her breath, figuring there was no way the killer would just surrender. Jericho helped with that decision though. He fired again, and there was another loud yelp from the shooter.
“You can live with gunshots to your arm and leg,” Jericho called out. “But next time, I’ll hit something more vital, like your dick. Now, get out here.”
The seconds crawled by, and with each one, the tension climbed higher and higher. This could be the end of the danger. Maybe no one else would have to die so that someone could get revenge for Marla’s death.
“I’m coming out,” a man said.
Rachel didn’t recognize the voice, but then she wasn’t sure she would recognize Paulie. Especially not when the voice was clearly strained with pain.
It seemed to take several eternities, but a figure emerged from the woods. A man dressed in all black and wearing a balaclava and a Kevlar vest. He had his hands raised in the air. Thanks to some lights and flashlights now spewing from the compound, she could see that both his arm and leg were indeed bleeding. There was a tear in the balaclava that exposed a bloody forehead. No doubt where the slingshot had gotten him.
