Chapter Seven
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Jesse gripped the wheel, his jaw tightening. “Damn it.” He immediately pulled up Isabel’s number and hit redial, but it went straight to voicemail.
“You think someone could have forced her to hang up on you?” Lauren asked.
“Possibly.” He drew in a breath and made another call. “Dispatch, this is Deputy McCain. I need you to call back a recent contact, Isabel Markham. She just phoned and said she had information about Abilene but insisted on meeting in the morning. I want to make sure she’s okay.”
“Copy that,” the dispatcher responded. “We’ll get back to you.”
Jesse glanced at Lauren. “She sounded…off.”
“She just lost her stepsister. That could shake anyone up.”
“Yeah, but something about her tone…” Jesse shook his head as he pulled away from Reardon’s house. The tires crunched against the gravel and made popping sounds. “It wasn’t just grief. She sounded afraid. What’d you find out about her?” he asked, tipping his head to her phone.
“Isabel Markham, thirty-two years old. Born in Houston, but she’s lived in Austin for the last twenty years,” Lauren immediately replied.
“Father deceased, and her mother, Felicity, is very old money who hobnobs with people of similar backgrounds and portfolios. Isabel is widowed. No kids. Her husband died about four months ago from cancer. He was a venture capitalist. Left her a fortune.”
Jesse drummed his fingers against the wheel. “So Isabel doesn’t need anything from Abilene. No inheritance issues. No financial motives.”
Before Jesse could say more, the police radio crackled. “McCain, Dispatch here. No answer on the call back to Isabel Markham. Should we request an Austin PD unit to go check on her?”
His grip tightened. He didn’t like this. Not one damn bit. “Yeah, do that.”
Jesse barely had time to register the spike strip before the cruiser jolted violently. The tires shredded beneath them, the sickening thump-thump-thump of rubber grinding against the asphalt.
Hell. Who had done this?
Was it Reardon? Had he cut through those trees while they’d been on the phone with Isabel and dispatch? Jesse didn’t have time to even consider it before there was another sound. One he didn’t want to hear.
Gunshots.
The first one pinged off the hood of the cruiser. The second slammed into the windshield. The glass was bullet resistant, but the direct shot caused it to crack, fracturing it like a spider’s web.
“Get down!” Jesse barked, drawing his weapon as he got out of his seatbelt and dropped low.
Lauren was already moving, unhooking her seatbelt and grabbing for her sidearm while keeping her head below the dashboard. The glass would hold, probably, unless it took some more direct hits.
And the shooter was obviously trying to do just that.
More shots rang out, the echoes ricocheting off the cruiser, into the windshield and even on the ground around them. Jesse couldn’t see their attacker. The sun had dipped too low, the shadows stretching too long for that. But someone was out there.
Someone who wanted them dead.
That was for certain. And there was another certainty, too. Lauren and he were sitting ducks.
As the shots continued to eat their way through the windshield, Jesse used the voice command on his phone to call dispatch. The sound of ringing was nearly drowned out by the gunfire, but he managed to hear the dispatcher answer.
“This is Deputy McCain,” he blurted. “Deputy Whitman and I need backup now. We’re at the end of Mill Creek Road. Have backup approach with caution. We’re under fire.”
“I’ll get someone out there right away,” the dispatcher assured him.
Jesse ended the call so he could focus on pinpointing the direction of the gunfire.
Hard to do now that he could no longer see out the windshield, but he was pretty sure the shots were coming from directly across the road.
There were no houses there. Just woods. So, the shooter would have plenty of places to hide.
“I smell something,” Lauren said, the words rushing out. “Gasoline.”
Jesse pulled in a deep breath. And cursed. Because, yeah, he smelled it, too. He lifted his head enough to peer out his side window, and there was enough illumination from the cruiser’s headlights that he could see that the gravel and dirt were wet.
Shit.
Either the cruiser gas tank had been ruptured, or else their attacker had poured gasoline around the spike strip. And there was only one reason to do that.
To set them on fire.
“Hell,” Jesse spat out. “The gunman’s not missing when he’s shooting into the ground. He’s trying to ignite the gasoline.”
Jesse got confirmation of that when the next three shots all slammed into the road.
“How deep is the ditch on your side?” Jesse asked Lauren.
That meant lifting her head so she could look out, and he prayed this wouldn’t be the exact moment the shooter managed to tear through the windshield.
“Deep,” she replied. “At least two feet.”
Good because the ditch on his side was half that depth.
“Open your door and get out now and into the ditch,” Jesse ordered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Lauren didn’t hesitate. She threw open her door, and with the bullets still coming, she scrambled out of the cruiser and into the ditch. As promised, Jesse was right behind her.
It hadn’t rained in days so there was no water in the ditch, only rocks and dirt. Lauren and he landed hard, and Jesse knew they’d have bruises, but it was going to be a hell of a lot worse if they didn’t move away from the cruiser.
Lauren clearly understood the danger because she started a commando crawl back toward Reardon’s house, the only direction they could go and keep cover in the ditch.
Jesse was right behind her. They had to move fast and keep watch in case someone came out of those woods and shot them.
After all, the shooter might not be working solo.
Reardon and Belinda could be doing this.
But why?
There was only one answer that made sense. If Reardon and Belinda were behind this attack, it also meant they were likely behind Abilene’s and Nicky’s abductions.
Hell, maybe Lauren’s, too.
He couldn’t think about that now though. He could only focus on getting them out of there alive.
Lauren and he kept crawling, the rocks and debris digging into their hands and knees. His heart was pounding in his ears. His breath coming out in ragged, fast juts. He tried to tamp both down so he could listen for anyone coming at them.
Jesse and Lauren froze when the shots stopped. Just stopped. They went from the thick noise of the blasts to nothing.
Silence.
And it wasn’t a comforting kind of silence either. It was the kind that sent an icy warning down his spine and tightened his gut into a hard knot.
Maybe, just maybe, their attacker had given up on killing them, but Jesse doubted that. There wasn’t the howl of sirens yet. Nothing to indicate that backup was only a few seconds out.
Nothing to get their attacker running.
Not yet. But Jesse decided to do something about that. He couldn’t fire into those woods because he could end up hitting someone who just happened to be driving by on the main road. But he lifted his gun toward the sky.
“Cover your ears,” he warned Lauren.
Once she’d done that, he fired. The shot roared through the air, and he lowered his gun. Waiting. Listening.
And Jesse soon heard something.
A rustle came from the tree line directly across from them. Footsteps. Jesse raised his weapon, taking aim, finger steady on the trigger. He heard another sound but couldn’t pinpoint the location. Not at first anyway.
Then, there was more movement. But not closer. Damn it. The person was running away.
Cursing, Lauren levered herself up, no doubt to try to figure out how to stop this asshole who’d just tried to murder them. But there were no more footsteps.
However, there was another sound.
A gunshot.
Followed by a deafening blast as the cruiser exploded into a fireball.