She nodded, her jaw set. “I understand. You’re a good cop, Sapphire.”
Her comment struck me in a way I wasn’t ready for. Three weeks ago, Bob Ackerman had been the bar I was reaching for. Now that bastard was the man I needed to put in cuffs. Or if he gave me no choice, in the ground.
The country flattened out into a long stretch of scattered boulders and stunted mulga. The cave was somewhere ahead of us in that mess of stones. From down here at ground level, with the boulders blocking sight lines in every direction, I had no idea where the cave entrance was. We had to rely on Cassidy now.
She moved up to lead, and I stayed close on her left shoulder with the Glock up.
Kayden was on her right. Mitch covered our six.
The moaning had gone so quiet that I had to strain to hear it now. Lyle was getting weaker, or we were coming in from the wrong angle, and the rocks were eating the sound, or both.
Another shot split the air. We all dropped to our stomachs in the dirt. Mitch got his rifle up before he hit the ground, making me so glad he was with us.
The shot had been fired inside the cave, and I waited for the boom of Frank’s shotgun to come back. The sound that would tell us he was still alive.
It didn’t happen.
My stomach turned over.
“Cassidy. How close are we to the entrance?”
“Three hundred meters. Maybe less. The cave is just past the big gum tree with the split trunk. The entrance is between the two huge boulders.”
“Is there a way to come at it from above?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
A gunshot boomed. Once. Big and low and rolling, a different sound from the pistol’s snap.
One round. He’d fired one round. Either he was conserving shells, or he’d hit his target.
I put my hand flat on the dirt.
We need to move.
But moving meant walking three civilians into the open.
I looked at Kayden. He was watching me, waiting for the call.
God help me, if I got this wrong, we could all die.
Chapter 20
Frank
* * *
Lyle’s screaming had dropped down to a steady moan.
He was sprawled on his back near the cave mouth, both hands clamped over the hole in his belly. The blood was pooling around him in a slow, black spread across the dirt floor. Gut shots bled differently from any other kind. Slow. Patient. Like the body knew it had time to bleed out, and there was no rush about it.
I could see him from where I was crouched behind the sandstone shelf. Couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t help him. Didn’t want to anyway.
You chose the wrong side, ya dumb shit.
He hadn’t, really. There hadn’t been a right side for Lyle Henderson the moment Bob had dragged him into this, using his grief and anger to point him at this cave. Lyle was always gonna die on this mission. He just hadn’t figured that part out.
He had now.
