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“Never.”
“Didn’t think so.” She pushed herself to a sitting position where she could see the damage. “Such a horrid waste,” she said as if to herself, then to Trent, “I could’ve taken care of myself, you know. You didn’t have to tackle me and pin me to the ground.”
“Maybe I wanted to. Couldn’t control myself.”
“Give me a break.”
“I think I just did!” He winked at her as sunlight began to stream over the mountains, the long-awaited dawn chasing away the night.
“Okay, okay, so you saved my life,” she mocked, somehow pulling herself together. “I suppose now I’m on the hook of owing you for the rest of my life.”
“You got that right.” Trent gave her a squeeze with his good arm, helping her to her feet. He spied Meeker, still training his gun on the group of TAs who had survived. “We okay?”
“Yeah. These are good kids,” he mocked. “They do what they’re told and right now, they’re cuffing each other. Just like I ordered.” Sure enough, he was standing close enough to the group so that they wouldn’t run and make a break for it, while watching them place handcuffs over their peers. He’d already collected their weapons and stood over the rifles and handguns.
Trent asked, “So why didn’t you stay put, safe at Stanton House, huh? What the hell were you thinking?”
“That maybe I could help. If you haven’t noticed I’m not all that great about just sitting around when there’s trouble.” She shook some of the snow from her hair. “Your turn. What the hell were you thinking, taking off and trying to take down Spurrier?” she said.
“Actually he was taking me down, I just got lucky. But what I was thinking was just one thing. That if we ever lived through this nightmare, I was going to make damned sure that I never lost you again.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“Seriously,” he said, sunlight catching in his eyes.
“Funny, I was thinking just the opposite,” she teased. “I told myself that if I had any brains at all and if I got through this and saw you again, I should run the other way as fast as my feet would carry me.”
He arched a skeptical brow. “I’d catch you, you know.”
“Oh, I know.” She buzzed his grizzled cheek with a quick kiss. “In fact, Cowboy, I was counting on it!”
“Save me,” Shay groaned as she approached, nearly stumbling over Eric Rolfe’s dead body. She glanced down at him and her expression turned dark. “Serves you right, bastard,” she said just as Flannagan, astride Omen, burst across the lawn.
The black horse plowed through the snow, sending up a spray of powder. Behind him, the entire herd ran wildly through the grounds, kicking up more snow, dark legs flashing, eyes bright.
“What the hell?” Trent said, but got it. In desperation, Bert Flannagan had come up with the harebrained idea that a stampede would stop the ensuing attack. Eyes bright, Flannagan held a gun in each hand and the reins in his teeth, like some damned Hollywood version of an anti-hero riding to save the day.
Like an avenger from hell, he headed straight for the weak group of TAs who were surveying the bloody scene, then climbed off his horse and scooped up all their weapons.
“Hey!” Meeker said. “Leave everything. We got it.”
Flannagan did as he was told and eyed the small cluster of remaining TAs. “Guess I missed the action,” he said.
Trent said, “A day late and a dollar short.”
“Always these days, it seems,” Flannagan said, stuffing his pistols into holsters and eyeing the carnage as if he were sorry not to have been a part of it.
Meeker looked at the vigilante. “You’re in time for clean up.”
“My luck,” Flannagan said unhappily.
“Who would have thought?” Jules whispered as she eyed the bloodied snow. Ortega, still alive, was whimpering.
“I’ve got him,” Flannagan said, no doubt a trained medic, though Jordan Ayres, the nurse, dressed in a snowsuit, had left her post in the clinic and, with a bag in hand, was hurrying toward the injured students.
Trent inspected the body of Eric Rolfe. The kid was dead, staring sightlessly upward, his face still showing signs of the hatred that had burned deep in his guts. Trent wondered what had happened to the boy to make him such easy fodder for a homicidal fanatic like Spurrier. Had Rolfe been hard-wired wrong from birth? He reached into the stiff, frozen pockets of Rolfe’s jacket and discovered a set of keys to the handcuffs.
“Here we go.” Trent planted a kiss on Jules’s forehead as she rubbed her wrists and took the key to Shaylee, who, now that she had no one to kick to hell and back, was breathing hard, staring at her sister in disbelief.
