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Her breathing was calm, her heart rate steady, her training kicked in as she watched and listened. A man was coming down the hallway outside her room.
Correction: there were two of them upstairs.
Regan couldn’t safely shoot at what she couldn’t see. She entertained the hope that they might see her bed empty and believe she wasn’t at home...or that she was sleeping in another room. She stood silently.
The intruder stepped forward. Because she was standing in front of the wardrobe cabinet, she couldn’t fully hide behind the door.
He turned toward her, saw her, his posture tensing as he raised his gun.
Regan got off two shots in rapid succession, the bullets hitting him dead center in the chest. He went down.
A second man stood in the threshold, but he immediately turned and ran back down the hallway. She aimed and fired. Hit him in the upper shoulder, but he only grunted and continued to run. He shouted, “Go, go, go!”
She checked the pulse of the man at her feet: faint. She kicked his gun away and ran out of the room. As she stood at the top of the stairs, the man she’d shot was joined at the bottom by someone coming out of Tommy’s office, and they ran out the front door.
She almost pursued them. She had the right, they had broken into the house, had come up to her room, and aimed a gun at her...but shooting a man in the back, even armed, outside of the house would cause more complications than she needed.
She bolted down the stairs to the front door just in time to see them barreling down the driveway to a car that was blocking the circular drive. The man she shot would need medical attention. A fourth man was behind the wheel.
The vehicle drove off almost before the two men jumped in.
Four men were sent to her house to kill her, she realized.
She had definitely kicked the hornet’s nest. She only wished she knew who was the queen bee.
SATURDAY
Forty
The intruder died before the cops or the paramedics arrived. Regan figured he died within minutes of being shot; by the time Regan got back upstairs to restrain him, she couldn’t find his pulse.
She waited on the front stoop for the police. Her adrenaline was still high when they arrived. She gave her statement—clear, concise—and when she was finished, the paramedics declared the intruder DOA. Charlie arrived moments later and sat with her while the crime scene investigators processed the scene and removed the body.
Based on not only the location of the body in Regan’s bedroom, but Regan’s 911 call and her clearly defensive shooting, she was all but cleared. Still, jumping through the hoops of a lawful shooting as a civilian was just as much a pain in the ass as when she had been a marshal. They took her gun—her favorite .45. Standard procedure, and she’d get it back in a few days, but it irritated her.
She would have to borrow one of Tommy’s guns.
Finally, she and Charlie were alone. It was after two in the morning. They sat in Tommy’s fancy kitchen, drinking coffee.
Charlie said bluntly, “They planned to kill you.”
“I know.”
“They broke into the house and tried to kill you.”
He was angry and worried; she didn’t blame him.
“Didn’t even get a shot off,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.
“They killed a marshal, probably killed that lawyer, and tried to kill you. All for what? What the fuck is going on here, Regan?”
Charlie was angry—he rarely swore.
“It’s spiraling out of control. They’re panicked and reckless. They want everyone who might know something dead.”
“We don’t even know whotheyare. WethinkBrock Marsh, but what if we’re wrong?”
“Go after them. Raid them. Do anything necessary to light a fire under their asses.”
