Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

Trent jerked his pistol from the back of his pants.

Behind him Deputy Meeker, standing near a skeletal oak, turned the muzzle of his deadly weapon from Eric’s dead body to aim at

Roberto Ortega.

Nell screeched in pure terror. Stumbling, she ran through the snow heading toward the clinic, her hands bound behind her, her hair streaming in the clear night.

With no hostage in front of him, Ortega was an easy target.

“No, oh, God, no!” Missy was out of her mind with panic.

Jules dived into the snow, falling on Eric’s rifle, picking it up behind her, trying with frozen, awkward fingers, to aim the gun at Missy.

Roberto Ortega saw her and lifting his rifle to his shoulder, pointed its deadly barrel directly at Jules.

“Watch out!” Trent yelled, running forward, pistol in hand. Aiming at Ortega, he sailed through the air, landing on Jules and covering her body with his own.

Ortega squeezed the trigger.

Trent fired.

Blam!!!

A shot whizzed past Trent’s head, missing him by a hair’s breadth.

Squealing in pain, Ortega went down.

Out of the corner of his eye, Trent spied Shay, spinning, leg in the air, catching Missy’s chin and sending the blond girl’s weapon twirling, end over end, into the air.

Only wounded, Ortega lifted his head, and with his elbows buried in the snow, aimed his weapon at Trent. “Die, bastard!” he snarled, squeezing the trigger.

Trent rolled, pulling Jules with him into the drifts.

The bullet went sizzling through the snow, missing them by inches. In a second, still covering Jules’s body with his own, Trent lifted his good arm and took aim with his pistol.

Roberto, struggling to stand, pulled the trigger again.

Blam!

Ortega went down in a heap, his shot going wild, his blood oozing dark against the snow.

Meeker was running forward, the sight of his weapon now trained on Missy Albright as she struggled to climb to her feet in the slick snow. Shay, breathing fire, dancing on her toes, hands still uselessly cuffed behind her back, was ready to kick the living hell out of her.

“Don’t even think about it, bitch!” Shay snarled, her eyes bright with hatred.

“No …” Missy started to argue but took one look around, to Roberto gasping for breath and Eric obviously dead. “Oh, God,” she whispered, defeated. Tears slid down her face as she crumpled, disheartened, to the snow. Curling into a fetal position, snow clumping in her hair, she whispered, “This is all wrong. It’s not the way it was supposed to be.”

“Too friggin’ bad,” Shaylee said.

The other soldiers in Spurrier’s sick little army, Takasumi, Slade, and Donahue, stared at the muzzle of Meeker’s gun and the bodies littering the snow. One by one, they dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Takasumi was stoic, Slade defiant, and Kaci Donahue shaking, her teeth chattering so loudly they rattled. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled. “Please, please! Don’t shoot!”

None of these three, the second tier of soldiers, it appeared, had gotten off a shot, nor been part of the action. Thank God. If they’d started shooting, the outcome of this battle might have turned out far, far worse.

As far as Trent was concerned, they all deserved to face a judge and long prison terms.

Thank God, Jules and Shaylee were safe. Finally. He rolled to one side, looking down on Jules, her dark hair fanned in the snow, her face pale in the moonlight. “Are you okay?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘okay.’” She managed a bit of a smile, then looked toward her sister. Tears filled her eyes as she saw that Shay was alive and unhurt. “Have I ever been okay?”