Single round. Pistol, not a rifle.
We all froze, except Mitch. He went down on one knee in the dirt and yanked Cassidy down with him.
Kayden’s good hand closed around my elbow, gripping me hard.
“That must be Bob’s gun,” Mitch said. “Frank would have his shotgun.”
“How can you tell?” Cassidy asked.
“Different sound. Pistols snap. Shotguns boom,” I said.
“Yeah. You’ll know the difference when Frank’s goes off,” Kayden added.
Below us was a field of flat ground covered in giant red rocks. We hadn’t seen Bob or Lyle since they’d slipped around the two massive boulders that concealed the cave.
Another single crack rolled out of the cave mouth.
Then two more shots sounded in quick succession. Snap snap. Same flat pistol.
The country swallowed the echoes and went back to its slow, steady hum of cicadas and wind.
Another crack split the air, but it sounded different. Closer, maybe. Or muffled by something.
And then someone screamed.
High-pitched. Brutal. Terrifying.
“Jesus.” Cassidy’s eyes flew wide.
My hands went cold. I’d heard gunshot victims’ screams before in training tapes and during a domestic dispute in my second year on the job, but this was different. I was going to remember this scream for a very long time.
“That must be Lyle,” Kayden said, shaking his head. “No way would Frank scream like that.”
“Nor Bob,” I added.
Using the binoculars, I scanned the boulder field. From here on, we would lose the elevation that had let us see the men. All I could pick out now were the rocks themselves, scattered like spilled marbles down the lower slope and the patches of scrub between them. No movement. No flash of color. No Lyle. No Bob.
“How far to that entrance?” I asked Kayden.
“A klick,” he said. “Maybe a touch over.”
A kilometer of country between us and that cave. Country that looked flat from up here but probably wasn’t. We’d already hiked five miles, and we were all suffering in this heat.
Kayden hadn’t complained once, but he had gone gray under his tan, and fresh blood was coming through his shirt sleeve.
“Kayden, let me take a look at your wound.”
He waved me off. “I’m good. Keep going.”
“Just sit. Two minutes. Mitch. You got a first aid kit in that pack?”
“Always.” Mitch swung the pack off his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” Kayden said.
“Kayden Branson, sit down on that goddamned rock, or I’ll leave you here.”
He swore under his breath and sat. But he kept his rifle across his knees and his eyes on the rise ahead.
