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Her heart in her throat, she threw herself on the ground, scraping her arm against the gravel as Mason howled in fury.
Torn between moving forward to push her into the gulley and whirling around to face off against the threat at his back, he kicked at Tess, then spun around.
He raised his gun—but he was too late.
Lucas was already pulling the trigger.
Three shots in rapid succession dead in the chest had Mason falling backward on the gravel. Blood sprayed all over Tessa, the warmth of it hitting her arm, her cheek, her clothes, and she swallowed her scream, turning it into a moan of terror when his hand managed to grab onto her ankle despite the bullets in him.
Lucas didn’t hesitate.
With an emotionless expression on his handsome features but murder blazing out of his icy eyes, Lucas dropped down low, ripping Mason’s hand away from Tess’s skin. That done, he reared back his foot and booted Mason in the side. He did it again and again until the top half of his body disappeared over the edge of the gulley. A split second later, gravity took over and Mason Walsh was no more.
Lucas turned toward her, gaze softening as he found her still laying there, frozen and whimpering, on the ground.
“Tessa,” he whispered, dropping the hand holding the gun while throwing open his arm on the other side, inviting her closer.
He’d just shot a man. Without checking if he was dead, he mercilessly kicked him into a dark, deep ravine that swallowed entire vehicles up whole.
And, yet, when he met her gaze, Tess found herself incapable of doing anything but crawling toward him. Once she was clear of the edge of the gulley, she pulled herself up to her knees. Lucas swooped down, tucking his free hand under her armpit, helping her to her feet before wrapping her up with one arm, then the next.
“I’m okay, Luc,” she whispered back, voice ragged as she forced back the sobs that threatened to burst free. Burying her face against his chest, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back, she told him again, “I’m okay. You saved me.”
“Always,mia cuore.”
As she clung to him, Lucas’s whole body stiffened up. It took Tess a moment to realize it, and when she did, she noticed that his chin wasn’t resting on the top of her head any longer, tucking her beneath him.
Instead, he was peering wordlessly at something behind Tess.
Pulling back just enough to look, Tess swiveled her head.
A HSD cruiser was parked behind them, both headlights and siren off. Both doors were open.
Kade had one hand gripped on the passenger side door. Rick was standing next to the driver’s side.
From the way they were staring at them, it was a safe bet that they’d arrived just in time to watch Lucas murder Mason Walsh.
Her husband didn’t release her. Still holding her tight, he simply called out, “Walsh was working for Mathers, just like Boone. His price was my wife, and when he realized he couldn’t have it, he was going to either make her choose him or the gulley. I did what I had to do.”
Neither of the two Hamlet deputies said anything in response to Lucas’s confession. Instead, at a signal from Rick, the two men moved so that they were both standing behind the cruiser. One of them popped the trunk, and before Lucas realized what they were doing, they’d manhandled a large, blacksomethingout of it.
What the—
Oh.
Oh.
* * *
This wasn’twhat Lucas expected to happen when he saw the shiny black car—the same car that had been abandoned behind Franklin’s Garage—in the distance on his way out of Hamlet.
Driving slower than he wanted to, careful to keep his lights off the same way that the deputies did with their cruiser, he was able to sneak up on Walsh and Tessa the, well, same way that the deputies did him just now.
If he’d known they were watching, would he have killed Walsh as boldly as he did? If Lucas was being honest with himself, the answer was a resoundingyes. His wife was in danger, he saw his own life flashing before his eyes before he took Walsh’s, and nothing would have stopped him from firing the gun Rick himself let Lucas borrow, just in case the confrontation with Boone got uglier than it did.
Speaking of…
As though Tessa and Lucas weren’t standing there, the two deputies continued with what they came to the gulleyside of Hamlet to do. With a grunt from each of them, Kade grabbed one end of the oversized object in the trunk, Rick taking the other.
