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Was it Vance? Josie wondered. In his workshop? They’d find out soon enough as the entry team cleared each building.
Josie stomped her feet to get some warmth back into them. Her eyes scanned the perimeter but saw nothing amiss. The radio chirped again but this time, the message was obliterated by the booming sound of a gunshot. Then another.
“Shit,” she muttered, heart skittering.
“Side D, Side D,” came Mettner’s urgent voice over the radio. “Gunshots from the direction of the first garage. I’m moving in.”
Josie answered, “I’m heading that way.”
She unholstered her pistol and sprinted around the cowsheds and then the milking station. The back of the house came into view. There was a long stretch of grass between the rear of the house and the other farm structures where no light reached. She fumbled for her flashlight and held it beneath her pistol, panning back and forth. She saw Mettner and hurried toward him.
“What did you see?” she asked when she caught up.
“Muzzle flash,” he said. “Then I think the garage bay door opened and closed. I saw light, almost like a fire, and then it was gone. I was too far away to see much more than that.”
“Vance has a wood-burning stove in there,” Josie said. “That’s probably what you saw when the door opened.”
“If it was Vance,” Mettner said. “The question is, who was he shooting at?”
Her heart galloped in her chest as they kept moving. Her anxiety was in overdrive, every cell in her body painfully alert. Their feet finally hit the gravel path and Vance’s workshop came into view.
“Nine o’clock,” said Mettner.
Josie looked in the direction he had indicated. Just feet away from the workshop, someone was sprawled face down on the ground, arms and legs thrown wide. Into his radio, Mettner said, “We’ve got one civilian down. We need a medic and a backup unit.”
As Josie and Mettner neared, Josie saw the thin white hair at the back of Dermot Hadlee’s head marred by blood.
“Shit,” said Mettner.
From their radios came Cyrus’s voice. “Finlay and I are headed your way. Medic is en route.”
While Mettner knelt to check Dermot for a pulse, Josie looked around them, searching for threats, ready to respond. Her eyes were drawn to the garage, only steps away. It had no side entry door, only a bay door, which was closed. Unlike the first time they’d been here, there was no padlock on it.
Mettner said, “No pulse.”
Muffled screams sounded from behind the door. Josie’s chest tightened. Lark.
Josie opened her mouth to speak but before she could, bullets punched through the metal of the bay door, their booms echoing all around. Josie was sure that Mettner yelled something, but she couldn’t hear him over the shots.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She felt the split in the air and the heat, smelled the cordite where a bullet whizzed past her face. Something punched into her vest, low on her left side, spinning her and knocking her onto her back. The air left her lungs. In the back of her mind, she remembered Mettner listing the firearms he’d found on the premises. Dermot Hadlee owned two handguns. A Colt 1911 and a Glock G21. Both took 45 ACP rounds, which was enough firepower to punch through the garage door and still hit them.
Bang. Bang.
Her mind tried to remember how many rounds each one held, but she couldn’t think past the pain blooming along the left side of her torso and the panic at the realization that she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
Josie’s ears were ringing. Mettner’s hand was on her shoulder. What was he saying? Her addled mind tried to process it. It sounded like “Fall back! Fall back!” She willed her legs to move, relieved when she saw her feet scrabble, trying to back away from the garage door, out of range of the bullets.
Bang, bang.
Mettner pulled, dragging her. They’d only gone a couple of feet when, to Josie’s horror, the bay door lifted.
She tried to say Mettner’s name.
It was a belated realization that her pistol was still in her hand. Fighting the intense pain in her side, she aimed it at Vance. He stood in the center of the bay, shirtless, jeans unbuttoned, boots unlaced. A sheen of sweat covered his skin. His hair was wet and slick. She had been right. He’d started a fire in the wood stove. Its orange glow pulsed around him. It was as if he were emerging from the bowels of hell. The Glock was in his right hand and the Colt in his left.
He yelled something but over the gunfire still echoing in her ears and the rush of her own blood, Josie couldn’t hear it. She felt Mettner let go of her. The impact of her upper body on the gravel sent a hot spike of pain through her rib cage. It was breathtaking in its intensity. The arm holding her pistol flopped at her side.
