Lyle was still moaning. Or maybe that was me. I couldn’t tell.
Somewhere outside, the wedge-tail eagle was probably still working his slow circle in the blue.
The patient bastard had won.
“Hey, Lyle.” I couldn’t decide if my voice came out. I strained to listen to his reply but got nothing but the bats, scratching and shuffling nonstop. Plus, there was the whistling wind through the scrub outside.
That’s when I heard footsteps on gravel approaching the entrance.
Bob.
He’d come back. Maybe he thought he owed me some mercy after all.
He was coming back to finish me.
A bullet. The end.
No more pain.
Relief moved through me.
I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against the cool sandstone.
Come on then, you bastard. Finish what you started.
Chapter 21
Kayden
* * *
My arm was on fire, and I was bleeding through the fresh dressing Sapphire had wrapped, but I shoved that shit out of my head. Those gunshots and the screams we’d heard meant something else had gone down in that cave. And it wasn’t good.
Sapphire stopped at the base of a massive outcropping and studied the terrain ahead, her hand gripping her Glock and every muscle in her body wired tight.
Christ, she was something to watch. The young woman I’d loved all those years ago was still in there somewhere, but the woman pointing that Glock at the cave was someone else entirely.
The gunfire had been quiet for a while now. Ten minutes. Maybe more. Whatever had happened in there was over.
“We’ve heard nothing for too long,” Sapphire said. “Could mean Frank’s down or everyone in there.”
“Or Bob’s in there waiting on us,” I said.
“Yeah. I need to get in that cave.” She glanced at Mitch. “Mitch, I want you manning the entrance. If anyone but us comes out, you call it. There could be another way out of that cave, and I don’t want that bastard coming around and trapping us inside.”
“Roger that,” Mitch said.
“Cassidy, you stay with Mitch.”
“Hell, no. I’m not staying out here,” Cassidy said.
“Cass.” Sapphire fixed her with a look. “I need you and Mitch covering our backs.”
Cassidy’s jaw worked, but she nodded.
“Kayden, you’re with me.”
I raised a brow. “Thought you were gonna make me wait out here, too.”
