AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sly. Buddy. You’re my brother, but if you think I’m going to stand here and let you suggest that Mathers assaulted my wife and he’s Su’s father… that little girl is mine, no matter what. And I’m not letting anyone take her or her mother away from me.”
Turning to Lucas, he said, “You can’t ask me to sacrifice my wife.”
“No one is asking that, Hart. If you just take a deep breath, calm down, and listen to what we should do… if you’re willing to get your hands dirty, I see a way where we can save Maria and Grace.”
“Dirty?” echoed Sly. “Dirty how?”
Lucas met his stare. “I told you. Don’t shoot to incapacitate. Shoot to kill.”
“Sly… you were a sniper scout. You could take him out without risking your woman or mine.”
Lucas shook his head. “No good. The sheriff is Boone’s contact. He’ll expect him to be onsite, right?”
“That’s right,” agreed Sly. I’m allowed to go, and because he’s not worried, he said I could bring one other. Even suggested it be Rick so he could say goodbye to Grace. And as good a shot as I know we both are with our standard carry, I wouldn’t want to risk aiming at him if he can use one of the girls for cover.”
“What about Kade?”
Lucas and Sly look at Rick.
He nodded. “We can put him up in a tree, have him waiting for a couple of hours so that Boone doesn’t know he’s there. Maybe even Nat and Ethan, too. You still have your sniper rifle, don’t you, Sly?”
“Well, yeah—”
“Kade has experience with all kinds of firearms. He could do it.”
Sly thought about it for a moment. “You’re right.”
“And if he gets the shot…” Rick shrugged. “Gulley’s deep.”
“Gulley’s deep,” agreed the sheriff.
Lucas bit back the smile that threatened to tug on his lips. Sometimes, he thought, it was just too easy.
That understood, Rick ran his fingers through his hair, huffing out a breath as though eager to change the topic of their discussion away from murder.
“There’s just something I don’t get. How did he get a communicator? He’s not a local, and Maria didn’t have hers with her when she got taken. Sly, you found it on her coffee table with the doc’s card.”
All of that was true. Despite the fact he’d already spent more time skulking around Hamlet than many other outsiders, Boone was not a local.
“Someone planted both of those there,” the sheriff reminded Rick.
“But that’s my point. If Boone got his hands on Maria to get to Grace, he could’ve taken her communicator. He obviously didn’t, though he has one… and how the hell did it get inside Ophelia? The whole damn village was at my wedding in February. Someone would’ve seen him and told us if he was hanging around Hamlet.”
Lucas tightened his jaw. He’d thought it was obvious by now.
“Not unless they were working with him.”
Rick’s broad shoulders went tense. Without even realizing it, Sly’s hand dropped to his holstered weapon.
And Lucas waited for them to realize that, if this all went well, there might just be two bodies being fed to the dark hole that guarded their small town.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
“Thirsty, sug?”
At Willie’s sweet drawl, Tessa’s head jerked up. Without realizing it, she’d been lost in a daze, watching Su sleep peacefully in the portable cot designed and built by one of the Hamlet locals she hadn’t met yet.
Though she was still at Grace and Rick’s place, Willie Parker had decided she would play the role of hostess while the rest of the HSD was gathered near the mountainside of Hamlet, laying in wait for Boone.
