Always You (Adair Family 3)

I’d just locked the kitchen door when my kitchen window blasted out behind me. I stifled a fearful shriek as it lodged in my throat and huddled against a kitchen cupboard, hiding.

Then I heard a click and an exasperated curse. Another click. Another curse.

Was the shooter’s gun empty of bullets?

In retrospect, it was sheer stupidity, but all I could think about was Mac bleeding in my hallway. Rage filled me as I stood to look out the window, and I saw someone in a black ski mask staring furiously at the house, gun dropped at their side.

At her side.

That was definitely a female figure in the tight black clothes.

What the hell?

I raced for the patio doors and unlocked them. And as I stepped outside, our attacker looked over at me in shock … but then raised her gun.

“I know you’re empty!” I snarled like an animal and flew at her.

It was almost comical the way she reared back in fright. Not so tough now without her gun.

But me? The fury inside me was equal to a loaded weapon.

The shooter ran around the corner of the house and I gave chase, shrieking my wrath like a woman gone mad. She was fast, but I was bloody faster. Once she hit my front garden, I launched myself at her back, my teeth crashing against my top lip, the taste of blood on my tongue, as I hit her with my full weight. Her garbled shout died as I slammed on top of her. She tried to wriggle free, but I pressed my knee into her back. “Stay down!” I yelled. The gun had scattered out of reach.

“Arro!”

I looked up to see one of my neighbors racing across the street toward me. A quick glance told me a few had come out of their houses at the noise.

Paul Wiley, a teacher at our small high school, lowered beside me and helped hold the shooter down. “What the hell?” he asked, eyes behind his glasses round with shock.

Suddenly, the whole situation hit me, and my tears welled. “She shot Mackennon. I need to check on him.”

Paul turned green but nodded before shouting over his shoulder. “Ronnie! Here! We need you!”

Ronnie, another neighbor, was a recently retired computer engineer. Older, but a big man, and he loped quickly across the street to help, holding down the screeching bitch beneath us as Paul took my place without losing his hold on her.

“Have you got her?” I double-checked, already walking backward toward the house.

“Yes, go get Mac.”

“What on earth?” I heard Ronnie ask as I fled around the side of the house and inside.

“Mackennon!” I called out as I grabbed towels and hurried back to him.

He’d moved away from the door. Blood smeared my hallway walls.

Hysterical tears threatened, but I forced them down as I raced over to him.

The dark navy of his T-shirt was soaked from a shot to the shoulder. But there had been two shots fired. “Where else are you hit?” I demanded, shaking as I pressed a towel to his shoulder. So much blood. It coated my hands.

“The shooter?” he asked, the words too faint in my ears.

“We’ve got her. My neighbors have her pinned in the garden. Her gun ran out of bullets or jammed or something.”

“Her?”

“I don’t know who it is yet—ski mask. Mackennon, other wound?” I caressed his face, trying to get him to focus on me.

His eyes met mine, but they weren’t right. They were glazed over, the light in them dimmed. Tears fell before I could stop them. “Back,” he told me.