Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

“What was that?” She heard the words quite clearly. “You—you couldn’t just get your ass in the hole like I told you...”

“I’m not goin’ down there and I’m not goin’ down for you, neither,” the deep gruff voice came back.

A gunshot pierced the early morning air. And a split second later, another.

Pulse drumming through her, Kerry peeked around her ledge and saw Odin Rogers standing over his thug. And then, almost casually, the man turned and shot again, straight at her. She backed up, waited. Listened. Another shot rang out, from up above.

The cliff. Rafe.

He’d provided the second’s worth of distraction she needed. Rounding the corner in that second, gun pointed, she saw that Odin had approached, was nearly upon her. But had turned to look up at the cliff.

And that’s when she got him. Holding her gun to his neck, she grabbed one arm and twisted it back up behind him in a way that didn’t take superior strength, just a knowledge of how to twist an arm so that any movement brought excruciating pain.

He fought her. She took an elbow to the chin. Scraped her shoulder on the side of the mountain. And delivered a knee to the small of his back, never letting go of the arm, or her gun at his neck.

“Drop your gun,” she said through gritted teeth. And prayed that he did it. She didn’t want to kill a man that day. And she wasn’t going to lose this fight, either.

“You think you’re so smart.” Odin’s breath stank as he turned his head to the side, as though trying to see her. “You don’t know nothin’, lady.”

“I know you’ve got drugs and guns down in that mine. I know you killed Lavinia Alvin on my front porch this morning.”

“I didn’t kill that woman and whatever’s in that mine, assuming somethin’s there, ain’t mine. I can’t help it if Cane over there found ’em and told me about ’em. I ain’t even seen ’em. I was just convincing him to call the cops when he pulled a gun on me.”

She gave his arm another twist, for Tyler, ready to crunch the slimy man’s instep with the heel of her cowboy boot if he made any move at all.

“My brother said he wasn’t going down for you and you shot him.”

“You got no proof a that. And even if I did know about stuff down there, it ain’t mine. Goods move in and out. That’s how it works.”

“I’ve got you, Rogers. Do yourself a favor and give it up.”

“Don’t matter even if I did. You ain’t stoppin’ nothin’. If it ain’t one guy moving the goods, another will.”

She moved again. Driving the pain she was inflicting deeper. She wasn’t going to kill him, but if she broke his arm...

A car came barreling toward them. Chief Barco. Dane.

And as though on cue, Rafe came sliding down the hill, too. He had to have taken his shot and run, or had already been partially down before he shot.

“Drop the gun, Rogers,” the chief said while he and Dane approached, both pointing their nine millimeters right at the criminal’s head.

“You ain’t gonna shoot with her right there behind me,” he said. “But I might.”

Odin lifted his gun and pulled the trigger just as another shot rang out. Kerry felt the power of the blast of shrapnel hitting Odin’s gun, taking at least one of his fingers with it and exploding against the side of the mountain. A shot taken legally, in self-defense.

As Odin swore loudly, gruffly, Rafe stood there, looking at his rifle like he didn’t know what it had done. Or how it had done it.

Something else that had changed about him over the years. He’d improved his aim.

Dane and the chief moved in, Barco having to forcibly unbend Kerry’s fingers from around Rogers’s bent arm.

Odin Rogers stood there, his shot-up hand dripping blood while Dane slapped cuffs on him, and the chief wrapped a handkerchief around his wound.

“Good shot, Colton, but next time, leave the shooting to us. Got it?” Chief Barco said as he started to lead the greasy murderer away from her.

“Ha, I’ve still got the last laugh,” Rogers spit out, turning to look at her. “Cane might’ve done most of the dirty work, thinkin’ there at the end that he could squeeze me, but I’m the one who pushed your weak-assed weasel of a brother off that cliff. Him and the ranger, too.”

The idiot had just confessed. In front of three law enforcement officers and a mostly innocent bystander.