Page 122 of I’ll Be Watching You

A blinding beam of light stabbed through the dark.

“Down!” Cal shouted.

Chaos erupted. Tim screamed—a sharp, raw sound—and gunfire cracked through the air. Boom! Boom! The brutal blasts of a shotgun.

Cal was firing back, crouched behind the couch, as I hit the floor, holding tight to my gun. But the shooter was a blur in the harsh light. I didn’t want to draw the shooter’s attention in our direction when Cal had him pinned at the door.

Tim’s scream cut through the noise again, this time in pain. Dammit, he’d been hit. We needed him alive. The evidence we had was good, but his testimony was essential.

Cal fired two more rounds. I heard the telltale click of an empty magazine. The metallic rattle as he dropped it and loaded another.

The grunting breath of the attacker echoed from the doorway. The flashlight tumbled into the room, its beam cutting the room in half.

Then, silence. The shooter was gone.

“Check Tim!” Cal barked as he ran toward the door.

“Be careful!” My heart hammered in my chest.

I grabbed the fallen flashlight and hurried to Tim, who lay half in the living room, half toward the bedroom hall.

“Where?” I demanded, shining the beam over his body. “Where were you shot?”

“My ass!” Tim’s voice cracked between pain and hysteria. “He shot my ass!”

At least he was talking. That was something. He would survive.

And Cal shouldn’t be out there alone.

“Stay put,” I said, opening the door in front of him to provide a bit of cover.

I ran back to the front of the cabin, peered cautiously out, angling the flashlight low and sideways so I wouldn’t be a target.

Blood stained the snow outside, stark and bright.

“Cal?” That had better not be his blood.

“Over here,” Cal called back, farther from the house than I expected.

He stepped into the faint glow. “Think I hit him more than once, but he got away. Dark, late-model BMW. I couldn’t catch the plates.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” Cal glanced inside, frowning at the sound of Tim moaning.

“He’s hit, but it’s not fatal,” I said.

Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder as they neared.

Cal touched my cheek, half smiling. “Well, girlfriend, you sure know how to show a guy a good time.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Joe Carter

Carter was dying.

He’d left the woods unsure if Miller was dead, but he knew the bullet in his own gut was bad. Fatal.