Chapter 16 #2
Hartley speaks just as calm. "Mrs. Lyle. Put the gun down. I'm not here for you."
Marlena is quiet for a moment, and repeats herself. "Get off my ranch."
Hartley's boots come closer. "I'm here for the boy, Mrs. Lyle, not you, or anyone else."
Nash flinches against me. I clamp my hand harder over his mouth and pull him tighter against my chest.
Marlena fires.
The sound is so loud in the kitchen that everything in my head whites out for a moment.
Hartley fires back.
Twice.
Marlena's boots stagger backward across the kitchen tile and then she goes down hard.
I scream—not anything specific, just a sound—and Dakota fires from the side window twice and then three more times and Hartley moves through the kitchen toward me.
Diesel breaks from somewhere out of view and lunges. Hartley fires once and Diesel drops.
I can see his shoulder from under the table. He's not moving.
Hartley's boots come around the side of the table.
Then the back door of the kitchen explodes open behind him.
A bigger sound than Hartley's boots. Bigger than anything in the kitchen.
Thunder.
He comes through the back door at a full run with his sidearm out and his hat gone, and his eyes go to me on the floor with Nash and then to Hartley standing over us, and Thunder doesn't slow down.
He hits Hartley from behind like a freight train hitting a fence post.
They go down on the kitchen floor four feet from where Nash and I are pressed against the table.
Thunder is bigger. Thunder lands on top.
Hartley's pistol arm is pinned, but his other hand has a knife in it that he comes up with from somewhere and Thunder is grabbing for it.
The two of them are rolling on the kitchen floor, and I'm watching from under the table with my son's mouth pressed into my palm and I can't move.
The knife clatters across the floor.
Thunder has Hartley pinned now. His forearm is across Hartley's throat. Hartley's free hand is scrambling at his belt.
There's another pistol at Hartley's belt.
His hand finds it before my mouth opens to scream.
Hartley fires up from the floor.
Thunder makes a sound I'll never forget for the rest of my life.
The bullet goes into him at an angle from below.
Thunder collapses on top of Hartley like the bones have come out of his body.
Hartley pushes the big man off him and stands up.
There's blood on Hartley's shirt that isn't his. His left arm hangs the wrong way at his shoulder from Marlena's shot. He's breathing hard. The shoulder is bleeding through his jacket.
His eyes find Thunder on the kitchen floor—curled around himself with both hands pressed against his lower abdomen and his hip and the blood coming through his fingers fast—and then me under the table, and then Nash.
He bends down and reaches under the table.
I fight him. I claw at his face and his arms and his good shoulder. Nash is screaming now and Hartley puts his good hand around the back of Nash's collar and he pulls.
Nash comes out from under the table.
I come with him.
Hartley brings his pistol around and points it at my chest from a foot away.
He's breathing hard but his hand is steady. "Mrs. Cross. Let him go. Or I put a hole in you that your fiancé gets to look at when he comes home."
My hands are on Nash's arm. Nash is reaching for me, his face wet, his mouth open.
Behind me Dakota's voice, "Hadley!"
Dakota has her pistol up but she can't fire because Nash and I are in her line.
I look at my son.
I look at Hartley.
I look at the gun.
Hartley repeats himself. "Mrs. Cross. Let him go."
I don't.
Nash is in my arms. My grip on him is the kind of grip a mother makes that you'd have to break her fingers to undo. I am not letting go of him. I'd take the bullet first.
Hartley reads my face. Something almost like respect passes through his eyes and is gone.
He flips the pistol in his good hand.
The grip comes down across the side of my head.
* * *
The kitchen tile is cold against my cheek.
There's a high whine in my left ear and my mouth tastes like a penny and I can't get my eyes to track the ceiling.
Voices. Dakota, somewhere over me. "Hadley. Hadley. Stay down, stay down—"
A door slamming. Footsteps on the porch boards. A man's voice fading into the gravel.
Then Nash. Nash crying my name from somewhere outside the kitchen.
I push up off the tile and the kitchen goes sideways. My hand finds the table leg. There's blood in my hair. The ring on my finger is dim with it.
I get to my knees.
Dakota's hands are on my shoulders. "You stay with me. Hadley. Hadley, look at me—"
I find Dakota's face. She's wet. Her stepmother is on the floor behind her, not moving.
"He took Nash," I say. My voice doesn't sound like my voice. "Dakota. He took Nash."
"I know, honey. Don't stand up yet. You got a head wound. Help me with Marlena. Towels—get me towels."
The only thing causing me to not lose my mind is what I know.
Hartley doesn't want my son. He wants my fiancé. He wants him alive, to work with him.
He'll trade him for Rogue… but Rogue will kill Hartley to get our son back.
Dakota looks at me for a split second, "He wanted me to tell you Rogue has six hours."
The bunkhouse is quiet for one moment.
Then Dakota is on the floor next to her stepmother and Grace is coming out of the safe room with both babies still in her arms.
Bex is moving toward Thunder and the kitchen has become a thing I don't have words for.
I know I'm not supposed to stand up, but I have to. There are things we have to fucking do, and multiple people and animals that need help.
I open the drawer next to the stove where Marlena keeps the dishtowels, grab everything in it, and bring them to Dakota on the floor next to Marlena.
Marlena is breathing. Shallow. Her sundress is dark red under her cardigan. Dakota has both hands pressed into her mother's chest. Her face is wet.
I drop to my knees on the other side of Marlena. I take Marlena's wrist and find her pulse. It's there, but it's faint.
Dakota speaks up, her voice stressed. "Press here. Here. Both hands. Hard."
I press.
Grace is across the kitchen with the babies on her hip and her phone at her ear. "—shots fired, bunkhouse, Sharp Shooter Ranch—three down, two adults critical. One's my stepmother. I'm a vet, I can help but I need two ambulances, fast. Yes, the address is on file, front gate is open—"
She sets the babies down on the rug by the stove. Waylon doesn't cry. Cal does. Grace doesn't have time to comfort either of them.
She drops down next to Diesel.
Her hands go on him fast. "Hadley, he's alive. He's alive. Shoulder wound. I need… Bex, first aid kit under the kitchen sink, and some clean towels, and ice from the freezer—"
Bex throws Grace the first aid kit and towels, and runs over to Thunder.
She's on her knees on the kitchen floor with her hands pressed into Thunder's lower abdomen and her belly resting against the side of his thigh because that's the only way she can get her weight into the pressure she needs to be putting on the wound.
"Thunder. Thunder, you stay with me. Banshee is gonna come through that door any minute and he's gonna need you to be alive when he does. You hear me?"
Thunder's eyes are open. He's looking up at the kitchen ceiling. His mouth moves but I can't hear what he says.
The kitchen has three patients and four women and two babies on a rug.
My hands are pressed into Marlena's chest and her blood is coming up through my fingers and I am terrified, because I don't know how this is going to turn out.
The sound of bikes comes up the gravel hard from the south.
Multiple sets of pipes cutting off outside, boots hitting gravel.
Phantom comes through the front door first.
His hat is gone. His sidearm is in his hand. His eyes go across the kitchen—Banshee on the porch boards behind him bleeding, Marlena on the floor with Dakota and me pressing into her chest, Thunder under Bex's hands, Diesel under Grace's hands, the two babies on the rug.
He turns his head over his shoulder toward the porch. "Roan. Get on Banshee. Now."
Roan's voice comes back from outside. "Already on him, Prez. He's breathin'."
Bex's head comes up off Thunder. Her hands don't move from the wound but her eyes find the front door. "Is he—"
Phantom doesn't waste any time in letting her know. "Roan's got him, Bex. He's breathin'. You stay where you are. You hear me?"
Bex's chin drops once. Her hands press harder into Thunder.
Phantom rushes up to Marlena. He puts his forehead against hers. His shoulders shake once and then they go still.
He lifts his head. His eyes find Dakota's. "'Kota?"
Dakota's voice shakes, "Daddy."
"You holdin' pressure?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good girl."
He stands and turns to the rest of the kitchen.
Rogue is in the doorway.
His eyes find me on the floor next to Marlena. His face goes the color of old paper.
He crosses the kitchen and crouches down behind me and his hands come up under my arms and he pulls me up off the floor without taking my hands off Marlena's chest until Dakota's hands are pressing where mine were.
He turns me around and his hands are on my face.
"Where is he?"
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
"Hadley. Baby. Where's Nash?"
I can't speak.
Rogue's hands tighten on my face. "Hadley."
I find the words. They come out wrong. "He took him. Hartley took him. He came in. He shot Marlena. He shot Diesel. Thunder came through the back and tackled him and Hartley shot Thunder and he told me he wanted him, then the next thing I know I was on the floor—"
Rogue pulls me against his chest hard.
His mouth presses against the top of my head. His hand is in my hair. He isn't breathing right.
"You did right, baby. You did everything you could?"
I nod into his chest. I'm shaking now. Now that I'm in his arms I'm shaking.
"Did he say anything?"
I pull my face back to look at him. "Six hours. He said tell you six hours."
Rogue's eyes go past me to Phantom.
Phantom's eyes are on Marlena. Then they come up to Rogue. The two of them look at each other across the kitchen.
Phantom swallows hard, "Brother, go get your boy."
Rogue's hand tightens at the back of my neck. He looks down at me. "Baby. I gotta go."
I get my hand into the front of his cut. I grip the leather. The ring on my finger is slick. I look up at him.
The woman who answers him isn't the woman who sat at this table an hour ago and let her family fold around her.
"You bring him home, Silas."
"I will."
"You bring him home or you don't come home in one piece. You hear me?"
His hand stays at the back of my neck. His eyes don't leave mine. "I hear you, baby."
He presses his mouth against my forehead and keeps it there for the count of my own heartbeat.
Then he lets me go.
He goes out the front door. The sound of his boots on the porch boards is the last thing in the kitchen for one moment.
Then the bikes outside fire up again.
The sirens come up the gravel a few minutes later.
Two ambulances. A sheriff's truck.
EMS comes through the broken front door and takes over from Dakota and me on Marlena and from Bex on Thunder. A second crew works on Banshee where Roan has him on the porch. Grace stays with Diesel because Diesel isn't going in an ambulance.
I sit down on the kitchen tile with my back against the cabinet under the sink.
My hands are red. The ring on my finger is red. My shirt—Rogue's shirt—is red across the chest where I pressed against Marlena.
Cal is crying on the rug. Waylon is on the floor next to him, watching the people moving around the kitchen with eyes too big for his face.
I get up off the tile and cross to the rug. I sit on the floorboards between the two babies and pull both of them onto my lap. Cal stops crying when I hold him. Waylon presses his head against my collarbone.
I put my mouth against the top of Waylon's head and I close my eyes and I don't let myself cry yet, because if I start crying I won't stop and there are two babies in my lap who need me to hold the line.
My boy is gone.
The man who took him has six hours.
The man who is going after him isn't the man I'll get back.
I know that the way I know my own name.
The Silas who comes home tonight will be the man who came out of his old life.
He's going back into that life this afternoon to get my son.
I press my mouth into Waylon's hair.
Whatever he has to be when he comes through that door tonight, that's who I'm marrying.
Bring him home, Silas. However you have to.