Chapter 13
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Flint waited behind the concrete slab.
Scarlett had gone to cover at the same time, across from him behind the low fieldstone wall. She kept her weapon ready and her gaze on the door.
He couldn’t see the shooter and Scarlett couldn’t either.
The gunshot had come dead center through the wood and passed between them. The round had been placed. Which meant the woman inside could see them. She’d missed deliberately.
There was no CCTV out here.
He scanned the upper edge of the stone wall on the front of the building. The structure under the eave was old, warped wood. He couldn’t see a gap where the fieldstone ended and the tin roof began from his position, but the shot’s placement told him the gap had to be there.
He keyed his comms. “Drake.”
“Already on it.” Drake’s voice was low and steady.
“I heard the shot. The pump house is small enough that there’s only one door and probably no good sightline to the back wall from the inside.
I’m coming around through the equipment shed and the brush on the far side.
I’ll reach the back wall in two minutes. ”
“Hold there once you’re set.”
“Copy that.”
Flint cut off and looked across at Scarlett. She had heard the exchange on her comms. She gave him a small nod and kept her weapon leveled on the door.
The woman inside the pump house spoke again. “Stay where you are. Both of you. I can see you fine. I won’t miss the next time.”
A long count passed. Hot wind moved the dry brush at the base of the wall and a flock of grackles called to each other from somewhere past the barn.
Less than two minutes had passed when Drake came back on, speaking just above a whisper.
“At the back wall. I can hear her breathing.”
Flint clicked acknowledgment without speaking and held his weapon trained on the door.
Scarlett spoke first, low and even, into the open ground in front of her.
“You’ve got to be sweltering in there with the door closed. Limestone holds the day’s heat all afternoon and there’s nowhere for it to go.”
When the woman didn’t reply, Scarlett continued. “It’s cramped, too. No room to spare in there.”
Still, the woman said nothing.
“The flies’ll be coming through the gaps up under that old roof. Same gaps you’re using to look at us.” Scarlett kept up the conversational tone. “And that drain in the concrete hasn’t worked since before I was born.”
The wind moved the dry brush. Flint heard the tin roof tick once as it shifted in the heat.
A long count later, the door swung outward like it was pushed from the inside. Hinges that hadn’t been oiled in a decade at least squealed like pigs in a pen until it stopped close to the exterior stone, refusing to carry the heavy old wood another inch.
The woman inside had moved back from the opening where she remained in shadows.
Drake’s quiet voice came on the comms. “Repositioning.”
Flint clicked acknowledgment. In his periphery, he caught Drake clearing the back corner of the building, fast and silent. He settled against the exterior wall a few feet from the open doorframe on the hinge side. Out of every sightline from the interior. Weapon ready.
Flint could see the woman standing to the right of the door with a rifle held at her shoulder. The muzzle was aimed at Scarlett.
Scarlett raised her hands slowly, holding the Glock in her right hand, with her fingers off the trigger and her grip loose. She held both hands at shoulder height.
Then she stepped out from behind the fieldstone wall.
She walked four paces into the open ground and stopped. Her body was fully exposed to the doorway and the woman looking through the rifle’s sights.
Flint kept his pistol pointed at the woman.
Drake was a step from being inside.
The woman with the rifle didn’t speak. She held her aim.
Then she lowered the muzzle. Slowly and not all the way down, but her finger came off the trigger.
Scarlett lowered her hands. “Can you come outside?”
The woman was thin and weathered. Her hair was shorn like a sheep. Her gaze darted from Scarlett to Flint to the open ground beyond them and back again. She made up her mind and stepped outside, meeting Scarlett halfway.
Before Scarlett had a chance to say anything more, Drake cocked his head. “Do you hear that?”
Half a moment later, Flint heard it too. A helicopter rotor chopped its way through from the east traveling in this direction.
The woman turned her face toward the sound. She gasped and her hand flew to cover her mouth. “They’re coming! They found me!”
“Who found you? Who are you afraid of?” Scarlett asked.
Her gaze stared past Scarlett, fixed on the sound in the sky. She gripped the rifle tighter. “I thought I’d have more time.”
“What do you mean?” Scarlett said. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”
She shook her head violently. “They’ll kill me next. I have to go.”
“Let’s get out of here before they damage our transport.” Drake stepped away from the building and jogged toward the Sikorsky. “I’ll assume they’re hostile unless they show me otherwise.”
The woman’s eyes shifted to the open doorway of the pump house. “I can’t leave my gear.”
“I’ll get it,” Flint said.
He strode through to the dim interior. A bedroll waited along the back. A kerosene lamp sat on an upturned crate and a canvas pack was propped against the stone wall next to it. He’d grab the pack. She wouldn’t need the rest.
Outside, he heard a sharp thud and then Scarlett cried out.
Through the open doorway Scarlett kneeled on the ground, arms crossed over her chest, struggling to breathe. The woman wasn’t there.
An engine turned over on the far side of the building.
Flint brought the pack with him as he rushed out the door. He reached Scarlett as she was pushing herself up off the ground. Her hand was pressed flat against her sternum, and her face was tight with her struggle to breathe.
He saved his questions because she didn’t have the wind to answer anything. He pulled her up and held on until she found her feet and her balance.
“Go.” She pushed the word out. “I’ll be fine. Go.”
The ORV was already racing ahead, kicking dust behind it. The woman was bent low over the handlebars. She cleared the back of the pump house and angled toward the equipment shed on the way to the main house.
The helo noise was near deafening now. It would be on the ground before he could get there if he followed the ORV.
Flint set off at a dead run. He went straight toward the equipment shed, through the side door and out the front, then across the open ground to the back of the barn. He had cover all the way.
When he glanced back, Scarlett was running a bit slower on the longer path behind him, headed for the main house.
Flint slowed through the back door of the barn, and across the dim center aisle. The pigeons came up off the rafters in a rush. He cleared the front of the barn and picked up speed just as the Bell came in over the property and descended on the far end of the front yard.
The ORV must have reached the back of the abandoned house. He gave it a quick glance. The woman had already swung off the seat. She went through the kitchen door without looking back.
The Bell’s rotors slowed after landing. The pilot climbed down from his seat. Mid-forties, dark clothes, a pistol at his hip but no weapon in his hand. He started toward the Sikorsky.
A second man climbed down behind him from the co-pilot’s seat. He was heavier through the neck, grayer. Flint recognized him.
Drake had positioned himself behind the Sikorsky, with his weapon pointed, watching the two men from the Bell advance.
Flint stayed in the shadow of the barn doorway. Drake had no way to know who they were. After the woman fired at them through the closed pump house door, he shouldn’t assume these two were friendly.
The pilot walked with his hand near his hip but not on the weapon. Cody Patterson was a step behind him. They were armed but they weren’t moving like men who’d come here to fight.
What Patterson wanted here at the Lazy M, Flint didn’t know. The fastest way to find out was to step out, identify himself, and ask.
Before he had a chance to move, a rifle shot cracked from one of the upstairs windows of the house above and behind him.
The pilot took the bullet. After momentum took him two more steps, he dropped to the dirt.
Patterson quickly crouched behind the Bell, raised his weapon, and searched the scene for the source.
A second rifle shot rang out from upstairs.
The pilot jerked once on the ground and then lay still.
Patterson got the angle with the second shot. He looked up at the second-floor window and raised his pistol, aiming toward it.
He was too slow. A third shot fired from the same window.
Patterson’s arm jerked sideways and a dark line of blood opened on his arm below his short sleeve. He scrambled behind the Bell’s door and stayed there.
Drake had not fired. His weapon was ready and he stared at the window. He’d read the angle the same way Patterson had and held his position.
Flint waited. No fourth shot came. The rifle had stopped.
Scarlett’s voice came over the comms. “The shooter is secured.”
“Copy that.” Flint stayed inside the barn doorway and called out. “Patterson. It’s Flint. All clear.”
He turned toward Flint’s voice and, after confirming, lowered the pistol.
Drake stayed in position. He stared from the window to Flint to Patterson and back to the window.