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She lifted the shotgun to her shoulder, but she had no clear shot at the crouching Boone, knife held low. His arm snaked out and Quint jumped back to avoid the arcing slice of the blade point, drawing an ugly laugh from Boone. Again and again the knife slashed through the air in front of Quint.
Dallas wanted to tell him to get out of the way, but she was more afraid of distracting him at the wrong moment. Boone made a sudden stabbing thrust with the knife. Quint sidestepped, but the blade’s back-slice caught his arm, cutting through sleeve and flesh, causing an instant spurt of blood onto the material.
Before Dallas could move or cry out, Boone lunged at Quint again. This time Quint grabbed the arm with the knife and tried to wrest it away from him. The two struggled over it, locked together in an ever-changing shift of bodies to counter weight or leverage.
Dallas was never sure what happened next—if it was a deliberate or an accidental tangle of legs that took both men to the floor. She only knew she lost sight of the knife when they fell. Suddenly both men went still.
With her heart in her throat, Dallas waited, the fear of what this could mean stopping her from lowering the shotgun. Then Boone moved, rolling off Quint. She gasped back a little sob and slipped her finger across the trigger. Then she saw the knife buried in Boone’s chest and the blood that smeared the front of his shirt.
And there was Quint, grabbing onto the counter and pulling himself upright, the arm with the blood-soaked sleeve hanging limp at his side, his chest heaving in exhaustion as he looked down at Boone.
Relief turned her legs to jelly. Hurriedly Dallas lowered the shotgun, but she was too well schooled in firearm safety to simply lay the weapon aside without first breaking it open and removing the shells.
Only when it was safely unloaded did Dallas thrust it aside and hurry to Quint. He was propped against the counter, a gray dullness to his eyes.
“I’m fine.” He made a wan attempt at a reassuring smile.
“No, you’re not. You’re bleeding to death.” Dallas grabbed a dish towel out of the drawer and tied it around his upper arm, pulling it tight across the deep gash.
“Did you call the police?” His voice had the flatness of sapped strength.
“Yes.” Until that moment, Dallas had all but forgotten that.
“That must be them coming now,” he mumbled.
Belatedly Dallas identified the wail of the sirens in the background, separating their sound from the Hank Jr. classic being played on the radio.
As their scream grew louder, she darted a glance at Boone’s motionless form, not really sure if he was alive or dead. Truthfully she didn’t care.
“I thought he was going to kill you,” Dallas murmured, her voice thick with the freshness of that memory.
“It was close.” Quint’s glance lifted, touching the red marks on her face and neck. “Are you—”
But he never had a chance to finish the sentence as the door burst open and two uniformed officers charged into the room, one after the other, hands on their holstered weapons. Their lightning scan of the kitchen noted the overturned table and scattered chairs.
“Sweet Jesus, it’s Boone Rutledge,” the older officer said when he saw the man on the floor. “Get the paramedics in here. Quick!”
While the second officer turned back to the door, the first hurried across the room to Boone’s side, sparing only a glance at Quint while obviously deciding he presented no threat. When the paramedics rushed into the house, he straightened up from the body.
“I think I felt a faint pulse,” he told them.
Leaving the paramedics to their task, the officer shifted his attention to Quint and Dallas, immediately separating them. And the questions began.
Within minutes the paramedics had Boone loaded onto a stretcher for transport. Dallas watched as they wheeled him out of the house. By then more officers had arrived on the scene. She saw one of them escorting Quint outside.
“Where are they taking him?” she demanded of the two officers interrogating her.
“To the hospital to get that cut stitched.”
“You’re aren’t going to arrest him, are you? I told you it was self-defense. Boone came at him with the knife,” Dallas insisted forcefully.
“That’s what you said.” The older man nodded, but with a touch of skepticism. “Now, can you tell us why Boone was here?”
And the questioning started all over again.
Empty arrived back at the ranch in the middle of it all, his return necessitating another retelling of the events. To Dallas’s relief, he didn’t demand to know every single detail.
Quint sat atop the bed in the hospital’s examination room, a large gauze bandage covering the wound to his arm and a smaller one on the cut above his eye. The nurse went over the doctor’s instructions with him, then gave him a copy of them along with a prescription for an antibiotic.
