Sam was pale, but still breathing.
Ellen leaned back, sweating, her head aching. It was the best she could do under the circumstances.
“He’s unconscious,” Rena whispered, leaning over him, eyes red and wild. “Is he still…? Is he…?” She looked up at Ellen, imploring her for an answer.
“Yes, he’s alive for now. If he has internal bleeding, I can’t fix that here.”
Tears streamed down Rena’s face. “It’s my fault. All of it. I just wanted to help him… I didn’t mean for your daughter to get hurt. I was scared. I—”
“Save it.”
Ellen got up and went to the kitchen. The man followed her, stood in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room where he could see everyone. She pulled off the gloves and tossed them in the trash, rinsed the blood from her arms and scrubbed with soap and hot water.
“You want to help your brother?” she snapped. “Get him to a hospital the minute the rain stops. If you wait, you’ll lose him.”
She glanced at the man. He still held the gun, but it was lowered to his side. “Is he gonna make it?”
“I don’t know,” Ellen replied honestly. She showed him the bowl of bloodied pellets. “These were in his gut. There’s still a bullet in his leg, but I didn’t touch that. Too risky, and it doesn’t look infected.”
His jaw tightened and he nodded once. “Thank you.”
“What’s really going on?” Ellen asked him. “You promised to tell me.”
“Mitchell Robinson hired me,” he said quietly. “No one was supposed to be home. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I sincerely hope Baldwin makes it.”
It took Ellen a moment to realize what this man had said.
“Mitchell Robinson hired you to steal from Greg Baldwin?”
“And others,” he said.
“What could they possibly have that he wanted?”
“Contracts. They were all signed last week but there was an error in it. He needed the contracts back.”
“That makes no sense. If the contracts are signed, they’re signed. He’s what, stealing them back and then…?”
The large man shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me everything, other than where to go and when the house would be empty. Take the contract, break the computer, steal a couple other things so no one knew what we were really after.”
“But most contracts are electronic. There’s going to be a record.”
“He had someone with the skills to hack into the signing program and delete the clause, and I guess the forged docs were the ones filed in the recorder’s office. He just didn’t want anyone to come up with a different version.”
“Three houses…” Then Ellen realized why he was at her house earlier today. “How did you know I had a copy of the Coulters’ contract?”
He laughed humorlessly. “Robinson has cameras everywhere. He saw you leave the Coulters this morning, and when I found just a copy of the contract, he assumed that you had the original.”
“And you took it.”
He nodded.
She had only skimmed the contract and didn’t remember the details. Only that George was confident that Verdacorp couldn’t exercise any of the mineral rights. She saw a clause related to that, but she couldn’t remember it verbatim. But if one of those clauses was removed, it could make all the difference.
“He really wants that plot of land,” the man said. “Those acres between his property and the Coulters’ property, where he has the right-of-way. Like, desperate.”
“And you don’t know why he’s so desperate?”
“No. I’d tell you if I knew. You saved Sam, I owe you.”
