Booted (Trails of Sin 3)

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Fletcher reaches for her. “You need to sit—”

She swats him away with her good arm while scowling at Jake. “Have you even tried to put yourself in Fletcher’s shoes? He risked everything for your family. His job. His freedom. Our lives. When he fixed things with the car accident, we were supposed to get a piece of the land. Do you know how much we’ve been compensated? Nothing. We haven’t seen a God dern inch of that property because you sniveling brats keep interfering.”

She knew the whole time. She fucking knew what John put his family through and expected to profit from it?

Lorne doesn’t blink, but his shock glows in the whites of his eyes.

Jake goes unnaturally still, his gun aimed at Fletcher as the force of his scowl targets Mary.

“Jake.” John’s fingers bite into my arm.

“You know what I think about that, Mary?” Jake swings the gun, trains it on her chest, and shoots.

The blast ricochets through my skull, and I jump. John flinches with me, but his gun doesn’t move from my ribs.

Mary slumps to the floor, her shirt blotched red with the blood pooling around the hole in her chest.

The room falls silent.

A breathless, stunned, half-second of silence.

Then Fletcher roars.

While the high-pitched sound of agony is still echoing off the walls, he grabs the gun on his hip and fires at Jake.

My heart stops as Jake stumbles backward, mouth hanging open and a hand over his chest. He aims his gun at Fletcher, but the sheriff is already firing again. One round after another, the bullets keep coming.

Jake jerks with each shot and crashes to the floor behind the couch.

I choke, and my entire body turns to ice.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, no! This isn’t real.

A scream tears from my throat. Paralysis locks my joints, and everything around me moves in a jarring fog.

Fletcher continues to fire in the direction of Jake’s fall, filling the room with deafening reverberation.

“Noooo!” John buckles over, taking me with him and grinding the gun against my ribs. “Please, God, no! Not my son!”

Lorne seems to be in shock, with his pistol frozen on John and head turned toward Jake’s body.

When Fletcher’s clip empties, I feel the shift in the air, the creeping arrival of anguish, and the scratch of lines being drawn through the room.

Fletcher killed Jake. The agony of that lands in my stomach with a weight I can’t carry.

He must die.

John straightens, and his arm falls from my back.

The gun digs into me, and my pulse tears through my veins, beating so viciously I feel like I’ve been thrust from my body. I’m overcome with shock and inconsolable loss, but there’s something else.

Something’s off.

Lorne’s too calm, too unaffected, his posture rigid and sharp like a blade.

He’s twenty feet away, separated by the couch and chairs. He doesn’t look down at Jake’s body. His eyes and pistol are fixed on John when they should be pointed at Fletcher.

“You son of a bitch.” John turns the gun away from me and levels it on Fletcher. “You killed my son.”

Fletcher pivots toward Mary’s lifeless body as John opens fire. The kill shot takes him down with a bullet through the heart.

“You fucking killed him.” John bellows and squeezes off another shot with his back to me.

I wrap the ends of the guitar strings around my shaking hands and wait for him to empty the magazine.

But he doesn’t.

He turns the gun on Lorne.

My heart explodes as I spring. The guitar strings loop over his head like a noose, and I yank the ends with all my strength, twisting, cinching, twisting, cinching. The wires are wrapped in copper and silk, but they still dig into my hands. It hurts, but not nearly as bad as it’s hurting the tender skin on John’s neck.

“Raina!” Lorne edges around the couch. “Hold on. Just hold tight.”

John’s hand goes to his throat, and he fires off a shot at Lorne. My breath stalls and restarts as the bullet veers off wildly, missing him.

My sweaty hands slip along the strings, but I’ve twisted and knotted the garrote enough to keep it in place. The wire noose is so tight it cuts into John’s skin and draws blood.

He crashes to his knees, shooting at Lorne to keep him back. Every time the gun fires, I die inside. Any of those bullets could hit their target, and Lorne can’t shoot back because John’s thrashing keeps knocking me in the way.

I don’t know how much longer I can hang on. I can’t see John’s face, but there’s no gasping, no voice. This has to be working.

How long does it take to strangle a man? How many bullets does John have left? How is he still moving and shooting and dragging me around when he can’t breathe?

An eternity of bucking and choking and gunfire passes before the gun clicks.