Lyle made a sound. A small one. Not a word. Just a sound.
And Lyle, of all people, must have heard the truth in what I’d said, because he twisted.
Hard.
Whipped his rifle up and out of Bob’s grip on his elbow and tried to bring it around on Bob.
“You stupid little prick.” Bob’s voice was almost calm. “You never could pick a side.”
Bob jammed the muzzle low against Lyle’s belly and pulled the trigger.
Lyle’s body jerked like a fish on a hook.
He hit the dirt, and the screaming started.
Real screaming. The kind that goes through stone.
Fucking hell. I flinched. Couldn’t help it.
It wasn’t that I gave a shit about Lyle Henderson. Lyle had been a pain in the ass for thirty years. But Christ. A gut shot in the dirt was a long, mean way to die.
Bob knew it, too.
Even after all these years, that bastard still found new lows to crawl to.
But he was unraveling.
Bob stepped over Lyle’s legs without looking down. He took two more fast steps into the cave and dropped behind the drum before I could swing the shotgun on him. Now, the rusted forty-gallon drum was between us. Kat’s drum. And Bob was tucked in behind it like the dead girl underneath was looking out for him.
I had a clean line on his elbow when he shifted his weight. Maybe a quarter of his shoulder. Not enough.
Lyle was screaming and clawing at his gut, and I couldn’t get to him, not that there was anything I could do for him anyway.
My good hand was slick on the shotgun. Cold sweat had soaked through Willy’s shirt and dripped off my chin onto the stock. The Panadol hadn’t done a damn thing for the fire in my kidneys. My legs were shaking under me, and my stitched-up hand was screaming so loudly I could barely think over it.
But I had the shotgun up.
And Bob was thirty feet away behind a rusted drum with his service pistol and a gut full of panic.
I could sense it. He was cracking down the middle. He hadn’t planned on killing Lyle, not yet anyway. He hadn’t planned on the cash being gone. He hadn’t planned on me getting the jump on him.
He’d come here, certain I’d be easy pickings. He wasn’t certain anymore.
“Just the two of us now, Bob.” I had to force my voice to carry across the cave. “The way it always should’ve been. Come and get me, you gutless bastard.”
Behind the drum, Bob didn’t answer.
Lyle kept screaming.
Chapter 19
Sapphire
* * *
Gravel shifted beneath our feet, making every step a test in balance as we slid down the steep embankment. We were halfway down when I paused to lean on the trunk of a ghost gum and raised my binoculars.
A gunshot crack rolled across the country.
