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Hadn’t she seen him? Somewhere out here in the forest?
“Shoot her!” Tyson yelled at her, gasping. “That bitch . . . that . . . fuckin’ bitch . . . she tried to cut off my balls!”
“I-I already . . . There was someone . . .”
“For God’s sake, Ash! Just fuckin’ blow her away!”
Blam!
Tyson yowled again.
“What the fuck?” Ashley screamed. “Who’s that? Who the . . . ?”
Another blast. Tyson yowled again. “Run!” he yelled, not at Nikki, but she took off anyway, running headlong to the river.
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!
Nikki tripped over an exposed root and went down hard, her chin bouncing on the ground, hard. Jarring her.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
“Who the fuck is shooting?” Ashley screamed just as Nikki reached the river and the sagging pier. At the last moment, she thought of her phone. If she lost it or it became waterlogged it would prove useless. At the last second, she crammed it into the open hull of a canoe.
Something sharp sliced into her palm and she gasped.
God, what?
Too late she realized she’d sliced her hand on a gaff, a long pole that curved into a huge hook and was used to haul big fish into a boat. Obviously it had been forgotten and left to rust in the rotting canoe. Blood bloomed between her fingers. Pain burned in her palm.
Could she use it?
As a weapon?
If she needed to?
Shoot her!
Tyson would stop at nothing to kill her.
She grabbed hold of the hook, swinging it from the boat and deciding if she needed to, she could drop it at any second. But just in case . . .
Why the hell not? She plunged into the cool water, splashing loudly, finding deeper water, then diving.
The gaff wasn’t much of a weapon, she thought, slipping into the current.
But it was something.
And all she had.
CHAPTER 34
A drenaline burned through Delacroix.
Her finger was tight over the trigger as she took aim and fired off several quick shots.
From her hiding place behind a split trunk of a maple, she had watched the horrific tableau unfold, with that prick Tyson Beaumont with his night goggles, taser and gun. He’d come after Nikki Gillette and as Delacroix got her first shot off, he’d attacked. Somehow Gillette had gotten the upper hand, if just temporarily. The reporter had cut him with something, then vaulted over the rail to leave him bellowing like a stuck pig while firing wildly, bleeding and calling for his girlfriend to help him run Gillette to the ground.
But Ashley had hesitated, stopping on the front porch, turning and pointing to shoot at someone or something in the shadows. A man . . . Oh, God . . . it looked like Reed. Of course. His wife had contacted him.
