Chapter 24 Critical Strike #2
Keeping in-between the other two was a middle-aged, grim-faced man with slicked hair and nicer clothes.
His polished loafers were a bit too shiny as they scurried down the steps and in the direction of the garage.
He had no visible weapon, but held himself with the posture of a man of self-importance.
Lance didn’t need to be told to know which one was their main target.
“Keep eyes on,” Jon whispered before twisting around to emerge from the other side of the tree.
Lance lowered his eye to the scope and watched the scene unfold with an almost numb focus.
“Going somewhere, Q?” Jon called as he marched up to the men. His rifle was already up, so when the younger guy reached for the handgun at his side, Jon only gave a short shake of his head.
All three flood victims came to a stop. The older male stood slightly off to the side, as if he didn’t know his position in such a situation. The one Lance presumed to be Pretty Bird raised his chin. “Are you so threatened by me that you invade my home with automatic weapons?”
A scoff built in Lance’s throat.
“If this was only about you making unwanted advances on my fiancée,” Jon said, “I’d dress you down on a public street until you were two inches tall and all of Leeland County knew it.”
Lance watched as Jon’s declaration made the other man’s face contort in a sneer. They were on the precipice. Man-child was seconds away from pulling his trigger.
“The confidence you American soldiers carry is truly absurd,” Pretty Bird said. He made a small gesture he surely didn’t think Jon could see. One his forward gunman wouldn’t miss.
The guy with the Glock made to adjust his weapon, brow dipping with recognizable determination.
Lance curled his finger around the trigger, exhaled, and squeezed.
The guy’s body jerked backward at a slight angle, blood spraying the air before he collapsed in a heap on the ground. He was crumbled partially against the side of the building and the stagnant floodwater quickly stained red.
The older male cried out and stumbled back, eyes wide.
Pretty Bird glared down at his deceased tool, then out at Jon, an obvious question shining in his eyes. He recognized that the boy had been shot from an angle Jon couldn’t have managed, and that Jon hadn’t fired his weapon. But, of course, he hadn’t been aware of a sniper on the scene.
That’s how it fuckin’ works, asshole.
Jon shifted and swiftly pulled his own trigger, as if to further their target’s doubt, pumping several rounds into the older male without effort. And just like that, Pretty Bird was on his own.
Anger darkened the man’s face. “You have no idea who you’re crossing,” he said to Jon.
Jon spun his rifle around to rest on his shoulder.
A statement and blatant insult. “You’re obviously someone of distinction in the Veracruz Cartel,” he replied.
“The thing you’re missing is that I don’t give a fuck.
It’s you who doesn’t know what you’ve stepped in.
” He started forward. “You moved into my hometown. Set your sights on my girl. And brought your filth to my streets. One of your guys even put my buddy in the hospital. But you think because you can talk to birds and have some connections down in Mexico that you’re going to win this pissing contest? ”
Pretty Bird’s lips pulled back in a snarl. “I have more than ‘connections’, you imbecile. And nothing about this town, this county, or this country, belongs to you. I’ll take who and what I want from it. No washed-up Marine will stop me.”
Jon came to a stop barely arm’s length from the target. “You sure you wanna say that”—he pointed down—“while you’re ankle deep in water?”
Lance moved his head from his scope and studied the broader scene.
Jon was right. They’d positioned Pretty Bird perfectly so that the fucker had come to a stop on the ground, his feet wholly covered in whatever water Jon had pulled up from the pipes of the house.
Water that surrounded both corpses, but didn’t touch Jon and surely hadn’t flooded to their brothers out of sight. Jon was thorough like that.
Lance set down the rifle he’d planned to use and pushed to his feet. Important as the job was, it was also personal. And he wanted in.
As soon as he made himself visible, Pretty Bird’s eyes snapped to him, undoubtedly putting together his previously hidden position and whatever sniper speculation he’d had. His glare raked over Lance. “Aren’t you supposed to be in a hospital somewhere?”
“Oh, so you know who I am,” Lance said as he stepped up to Jon. “Then you know I have a bone to pick with you.” Multiple, really.
The arrogant bastard scoffed and tipped his head up to the sky. “I know neither of you will matter in another minute.”
Assuming the man was preparing to assault them with more weaponized birds, Lance quipped, “It takes you a whole minute?”
“Embarrassing,” Jon said in his best mock-gossipy tone.
Predictably, PJ looked back at them with open agitation. “Mock it while you can, but by minute’s end—”
“It’s just,” Lance interrupted, making a deliberately lazy gesture between them, “it takes me … way less.”
Pretty Bird blinked once, hard. Openly startled.
The lightning crashed down around him like a beautiful, yellow-gold cage of crackling electricity.
Lance didn’t let it touch the man, not directly.
He wanted the bastard to see it. He wanted Pretty Bird—PJ, Q, Quetzal, whatever-the-fuck his name was—to have that split-second of dawning horror and dread upon realizing that he was about to die from electrocution.
And there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.
His precious birds couldn’t save him. Even if he threw them at Lance like spears of old, it was too late.
The water lingering around his ankles was the perfect conductor.
Lance and Jon held perfectly still while their target wailed and convulsed in his final moments. It was not the expedient death of a bullet to the brain. It was not the painless death of passing in one’s sleep. It was not the quiet death most hoped for.
It was the deserved death of a man who had done terrible things and had no intentions to stop.
Minutes passed before the last of the bastard’s life slipped from him, and only then did Lance release the charge. Only then did the unnatural flood recede.
It was … strange how strange Lynnette felt, sitting in the hospital once more. She tried telling herself that was because she wasn’t used to being a patient or relegated to the waiting room, but those details were only part of the truth. Probably less than half.
She’d lost track of time somewhere between when Jon had parted with them on the edge of the forest and the ambulance had pulled up outside her old place of work.
Given how long it took merely to make the drive, and that she was sure she’d been sitting in the same seat for well over an hour, far too long had passed.
She had a vague memory of making a phone call and a clearer memory of backseat-nursing the obviously amateur paramedic who’d transported her and Jenna.
Who had she called again?
Deputy-turned-Interim Sheriff Raph Dennison stepped into view once more, returning from whichever conversation he’d been having, and lowered himself back into the seat adjacent to the double-seater she and Jenna had piled into.
His vibrantly green eyes flicked between the two of them for a moment before he spoke, keeping his voice to a respectable whisper.
“I spoke to the doctor, and he says your battlefield patch probably saved Billy’s life.
It’ll leave a heck of a scar, but better that than the alternative.
” He dipped his head. “The doctor says once he wakes up, if he’s willing to see you, they’ll be fine letting you in—one at a time. ”
Jenna released an audible breath.
Lynnette tried not to take the response personally—she hadn’t truly been worried Billy would die, not since they’d gotten the bleeding to stop.
Instead, she nodded and pulled a smile onto her tired face.
“Thank you for checking.” It came as no real surprise that the hospital that had fired her wouldn’t give her information about a patient she wasn’t closely related to.
More than one of the passing nurses had given her dirty, or at least questionable, looks already.
The whole situation was damn ridiculous.
Dennison scrubbed a hand through his hair, blew out a breath, and said, “Now that we’ve made sure you’re all going to live, I really am going to need to talk to you. The hospital says we can borrow a conference room. I thought you might prefer that to driving all the way back to Leeland County.”
Lynnette saw Jenna start to bob her head and forced herself to speak up first. “With all due respect, Deputy”—and she mostly meant it, as so far Dennison seemed to be the one keeping the Leeland County Sheriff’s Department afloat—“I don’t think we should be having those types of conversations without our lawyer present.
Given that your department has already required us to take that step. ”
Dennison winced but inclined his head. “I understand. But the sooner you can get Ms. Rodriguez involved, the better.”
“Sure.” Lynnette pulled out her phone and called up her text thread with Lilia.
She was less concerned about being framed or otherwise mistreated by Dennison, but she meant what she’d said all the same.
Especially since the case surrounding the Parkers and their controlled version of the department wasn’t over by a long shot.
So, she typed out the simplest message she could think of.
Hey, some more stuff’s happened. Jen and I are at the hospital. Banged up but okay. Friend of ours is worse. All ties back into the mess the Parkers were wrapped up in, and someone died outside Jenna’s apartment. It’s complicated. Deputy Dennison wants to talk to us about it all.
Yeah, there’s nothing simple about that, is there? At least she could console herself with the fact that the headache wasn’t her fault.
As if on cue, an unpleasantly familiar voice shrilled practically in her ear. “What the hell are you doing here, Garver?”
Lynnette looked up from her phone and straight into the glaring eyes of one of the catty bitches who’d gotten her fired.
She didn’t have the energy to fake a smile.
“Leave me alone, Claire.” She skimmed her gaze over the other woman pointedly, then made a half-hearted motion to herself.
“As you can see, I’m not here to work.” Unlike the blonde in the wrinkled scrubs.
Claire cocked a hip and nestled a hand on her protruding hipbone. “At least we agree on one thing. But since you’re obviously also not being admitted, you should leave. No one wants you here.”
Jenna sat up straight.
Dennison, seated almost parallel to Claire’s position, angled to one side and opened his mouth as if he wanted to respond.
Claire’s eyes widened and her entire posture faltered as a pair of strong, warm hands came to rest on Lynnette’s shoulders from behind.
Calloused fingers dug subtly into Lynnette’s skin and thumbs rubbed over the back of her neck in a soothing, massaging motion that immediately relaxed her.
She had to fight not to smile as Lance’s voice filled the air, the irritation in his tone not even registering.
“Claire, right? You got my girl fired over some petty, stupid shit we all know you made up. Now you’re throwing a hissy fit ‘cause she still exists?” His grip tightened faintly.
“Your high school mean-girl attitude is tired and fucking stupid. So let me make something crystal clear. Never come for my girl again.”
Claire sucked in a scandalized breath.
Dennison cleared his throat roughly.
Lance stretched his fingers beneath the straps of Lynnette’s dress. “Just establishing boundaries.”
That really shouldn’t have been sexy, but it was so incredibly satisfying to watch Claire’s face as she processed everything Lance had said to her.
The way her eyes widened and darted in too many directions.
The way her skin flushed and paled. It all happened in seconds before, finally, Claire backstepped and dipped her chin.
Lynnette couldn’t help her smile as Lance pulled her to him and buried his face in the crook of her throat. He’d kept his promise. He’d come back to her in one perfect, functional, piece.