AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Seeing Sean there gave her hope.
But he couldn't shoot the bad guy. Not now. Not with Devaney trapped right there.
Dylan needed to come up with a plan.
63
This was a poorly writtenhostage scene. Ben knew that. Whoever wrote this kind of scene didn't really know what they were doing—either from a writer's perspective or from someone who had worked law enforcement like he had.
The man had nowhere to go.
And the gun he carried at max held six bullets. He could kill people, yes. But even if he fired six times more—and he'd already fired once, so Ben revised that count tofive—he could only kill five people in the room. That was five more than Ben was going to let happen.
But how to resolve this without that happening, still hadn't come to him yet.
He shifted again, until he was blocking the woman he loved from the line of fire. He checked where he had last seen his sister. She was under the table now, chairs blocking as much of her as humanly possible. Hunter was quietly putting more chairs in front of her, too. Building a wall as much as he could.
She was next to a column, as well. It gave her as much cover as anyone was going to get.Her husband was on his feet, inching closer to Ben's side.
Well, Hunter was a good one to have at a man’s back in a crisis like this. He was just as dangerous as Ben was himself.
If they could get that gun away from that bastard, it would be easy to take him down. Ben, Hunter, and that boogerhead Jack Masterson over there on Ben’s other side were all damned good at hand-to-hand fighting.
But hand-to-gun, that was another matter.
A gun would seriously even the playing field. Especially with that younger version of Daisy right there with a gun to her head.
The older woman who had to be Dusty's mother took two steps to her left. Putting herself right in front of Dusty. Ben admired the effort, but if she was the one the man had a serious problem with, well, he didn't want Dusty behind her. At all.
Ben shifted to block that woman with his own body. He was a hell of a lot bigger, after all.
“Ben.”
“Destiny Marie, babe. I want you to go over there, behind the wall, okay? While we figure this out.” Ben kept his hands up in front of him, where the man could see them. “No one wants anyone to get hurt here, do they, man? I think you just want totalk.”
“You're a damned fucking Tyler, right? Man, you assholes sure are distinctive, aren't you?”
“Funny, I have heard that before. I think it's the red hair honestly. What else could it be? Not like we all look that much alike or anything. The name is Ben Tyler. I believe you know my uncle Bruce. Do you know where he is? I'd really like to say a few things to him when I see him. You know, with my fists and stuff.”
“I just bet you do. Bastard nearly knocked my eye out once. Did you know that? I'm not exactly too fond of him.” The guy was seven or eight years older than Ben, three inches shorter, and flabby. Clammy.
Hell, he even still had acne. If this was Morris Preston’s son, talk about unimpressive. And Ben had thought Desmond was a puny wimp. This guy? Pitiful. No wonder good old Morry hadn’t claimed him.
“Well, I'm not too fond of him, either. See. We have something in common, right? Now...can you tell me about that girl right there? What has she ever done to you? Her. Specifically. I mean, I understand eye for an eye and all of that, but…she’s kind of young to have done something really bad, right?”
The girl with Dusty’s eyes gave a smile that nearly stabbed Ben right in the heart. She had Dusty’s smile, too. “Well, I did bite him once. I guess that makes for a lifelong grudge, and all. But that was only twenty minutes ago and his hands were groping places they didn’t havepermissionto grope, so...how deep of a grudge could he really have, Mr. Ben Tyler, sir?”
Okay, so she wasn’t the type of girl to panic. That was good.
Now Ben had to figure out what to do next.
The other man, the one with Gerald Talley’s face, took a bold step farther. He’d almost marched in through the kitchen. Ben suspected Daisy and Meyra had run outside after that first shot. They’d probably already called for help. Reinforcements would be there as soon as they could.
But that bastard had five bullets left.
“We’re all going to be cool here, aren’t we?” Ben asked. “No one wants things to get crazy in here, or anything.”
“What are you, a cop or something?” the bad guy, Ben thought his name was Jason, demanded.
