Darkness. Lori’s head swam in a sea of darkness.
Her eyelids fluttered open. She lay facedown, her cheek pressed against the tile floor. Dust and acrid smoke tainted each breath, clogged her throat.
Her ears rang above the pounding in her head. Her lungs were like heavy, wet sandbags. She coughed, barely able to breathe, the throbbing ache remaining.
Nick!
A terrifying blast had torn through the front of the sheriff’s department. The intensity of the explosion had hit the building like a magnitude-ten earthquake. Nick had grabbed her and shoved her down behind a desk. She would’ve sworn he’d been right there beside her.
Nick!
She wanted to move, to find Nick. But it was as if she’d been displaced from her body and had no control over her limbs.
On a primitive level, she knew she had to get up—had get out of there. But her brain was full of static, blaring white noise.
One thought broke through. Belladonna was coming for her. That assassin wouldn’t stop until Lori was dead and permanently silenced.
Her mind staggered at the grim reality.
She had to move. Now. Lori mustered her strength and pushed up to her knees. The movement made her head spin and her sluggish body ache in places that had been numb a moment ago.
“I’ve got you.” Nick clutched her shoulders, his voice bringing instant comfort.
He was alive.
“Can you stand?”
She had to try. “Think so.”
Holding her by the arms, he hauled her onto her feet. Her chest heaved with the harshness of her strained breathing.
Pain ripped through her side and she pressed her palm to the area. It was tender and sore.
Lori swayed and staggered, desperate to orient herself. “What happened?”
“My best guess, it was an RPG. We have to move before they come in and slaughter us all. The smoke and the flames at the front are the only reasons that they aren’t already in here.”
His words were the adrenaline-fueled shot of reality that she needed. Survival instinct kicked in, jump-starting her brain and snapping her out of a stupor.
She gave a weak nod and turned to him. His appearance rattled her. Plaster dust and ash covered him, his face peppered with cuts and bruises, but he was alert. Closer inspection made her freeze. Blood dripped from his temple down along his cheek. The breath locked in her lungs. She touched a gash on his head above his brow.
He hissed in pain, reeling away from her fingers.
The sound gripped her heart, reminding her of the secrets Belladonna had spilled and twisted. Not into lies, but into an oversimplified, convenient version of the truth.
“Nick, are you okay?”
His lips thinned, the look in his eyes savage. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said in an uncompromisingly male tone. “You?”
Her skin was hot and damp with perspiration, and every muscle throbbed like a wound. “I’m walking and talking, so yeah. I guess.” She looked around.
There were too many things to register at once. Plaster was still crumbling around them. Ashes rained down. Sparking electrical wires hung from the ceiling. Everything was in ruins—shattered glass, twisted steel, chunks of concrete. The reinforced shutter that had been shielding the front door was decimated. A gaping hole ringed by a jagged line of fire was left in its wake.
Nick rushed to the far rear of the station and checked on the others inside the sheriff’s office. Lori tried to catch her breath and stayed close behind him, battling the dizziness.
The sheriff, the deputy and the receptionist were in shock, but managed to climb to their feet.
Suzie’s bleeding arm appeared to be the worst of their injuries, but she didn’t look too good. She swayed, unable to find her balance.
Lori wondered if she might have a concussion. Hell, they all might.
Suzie doubled over and vomited.
That wasn’t good. The receptionist needed medical attention.
“We’ve got to pull it together, quickly,” Nick said to the room. “Time is the enemy and it’s working against us.”
The deputy hurried and made sure his aunt was okay. Once she nodded and waved him off, Denny grabbed Suzie’s arm, slung it over his shoulders, and helped steady her.
“They’re about to storm in here and kill everyone.” Nick’s tone was as grave as their situation. “We need to be ready. In position to open fire first and not let them in.”
“No!” The sheriff shoved off her desk and pushed forward. “We can’t use lethal force. What if Renee is still alive and they use her as a human shield? Or she could get hit by a stray bullet. We can’t fire unless we have clear shots.”
The possibility of Renee taking friendly fire hadn’t occurred to him. The idea was more than he could swallow. He’d left her to hang out to dry twice already. This wasn’t going to be the third time. If she was alive out there, then he’d take every precaution to see that she wasn’t harmed. He owed her for how she’d helped them when she didn’t have to.
“All right,” Nick said. “With all the smoke and dust, the only way to get a clear shot is to go outside, which might work to our advantage better than staying cornered and letting those murderers pick us off one by one.” He went to the stockpile of weapons on the table a few feet away. Slinging a rifle over his shoulder, he also took the machete. “I’ll start with nonlethal force.” He snatched the stun-grenade launcher from the table and held it up. “The rest of you, arm up.”
Propelled by a sense of urgency and self-preservation to evade, to escape, they each grabbed weapons.
Lori took two handguns and made sure the safety was off. Nick had taught her the basics of gun safety, even though they’d never practiced shooting.
If her skill at carnival shooting gallery games was any indication of her skill level, then her aim was lousy. But she reasoned that if someone got close enough, she’d be able to put a bullet in them.
“Okay, move it, people.” Nick gestured and it got them all in gear, shuffling along. “We’ve got to hurry.”
They made their way through rubble toward the front of what was left of the station. Stumbling around a block of concrete, Lori narrowly avoided an electrical wire that dropped and sizzled when it hit the floor.
Nausea bubbled in her stomach, but she kept going, hurrying along. One step in front of the other.
At the ragged, charred entrance, they separated and dispersed on either side. They all crouched down low behind what walls were left, staying out of sight. The billowing smoke and falling ash helped to camouflage them.
“I know it’s called a stun grenade, but will it be strong enough to slow them down and give us a chance?” Lori asked.
Nick took her hand, his thumb brushing over her skin, and just as quickly let go as if he’d touched an exposed electrical wire. The spark of awareness hit her hard and deep. Then his gaze turned glacial, his features shuttering.
She wished they had thirty seconds alone, hardly enough time to explain how complicated things were for her, but enough to apologize for disappointing him. For hurting him by not being a better person.
“Each grenade will issue a flash of around six million candela—a huge pyrotechnic charge that will cause immediate blindness—and one hundred eighty decibels that will render them deaf. It’ll knock them on their butts for a few minutes and give us a shot.” He looked to the sheriff, letting Lori’s hand go, and she rubbed her palm, surprised by the residual tingle. “Getting outside is the only way to see what’s what. Right after I unleash a can of fury, or rather three, we make a break for it. We’ll have minutes at best. Seconds at worst. We’ll need to make each and every one count.”
“Everybody watch your aim, in case Renee is out front,” Sheriff Holmes said, and the group nodded in response. “You two should take off, get out of town. No offense, but if you leave, then maybe the trouble will follow you.”
The sheriff wasn’t wrong, and Lori wasn’t offended. The trouble, aka Belladonna, would most certainly follow them.
“Fair enough,” Nick said in response. “But we won’t get far on foot. Does anyone have a car we can use?”
“I do.” Denny fished keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Nick. “My Bronco is parked out back. It’s an old beater, but it runs.”
Nick gave a nod of thanks and stuffed them in his pocket. Turning, he took a knee and peeped around through the opening.
“Damn. They’re coming across the street,” he said low, raising the hair on the back of Lori’s neck.
Her pulse skyrocketed, beating too fast, adrenaline soaring in her blood. She could do this. She had to do this. No other choice.
He lifted the launcher, lowered his eye to the sights and pulled the trigger. Three cans discharged with a soft pssh sound.
“Everyone, take cover,” he whispered.
A hard lump of ice dropped in her gut, blipping out the nausea. Lori pressed her back against the wall. She closed her eyes and covered her ears.
THE CLATTERING SOUND was soft, barely perceptible over the car alarms blaring in dee-do, dee-do succession. The others had missed it. Three small canisters that had dropped, rolling on the asphalt in front of them. Putting them dead center in the kill radius of the grenades.
But Belladonna was several paces behind them and saw it.
She turned and shouted, “Grenade!” as she ran and dove for cover behind a nearby pickup truck. But it was too late to save them.
Brilliant flashes of light erupted behind her and at the same time two-hundred-decibel teeth-rattling bangs cracked the air.
Flash-bangs designed to disorient and confuse anyone in the vicinity. Not high-yield explosive or incendiary grenades meant to kill.
This was law enforcement she was dealing with. Stun grenade should’ve been her first thought, and if it had been, she would’ve covered her ears. But she had reacted on pure instinct.
She had been turned away from the flashes and had shut her eyes the second she processed what was happening, sparing her retinas the worst of it. Her vision was a little blurred and she saw stars.
Her ears were a different story. Forget about hearing at all.
The concussive blasts and deafening bangs turned her brain to mush. Ruptured her tympanic membrane. Disrupted the fluid in her middle and inner ear.
She tried to stand. The ground became a Tilt-A-Whirl ride, her balance obliterated.
Before she looked at her men, she knew what she’d find. The agonizing bursts of light had fried their eyes and since they had been farther ahead of her, they had absorbed the full brunt of the brain-hammering pops.
She peered around the rear of the truck. Her rooks and bishops were disabled and useless, writhing on the ground, holding their heads. Easy pickings.
Smokey and another rook were the closest to her. Both outweighed her by a good one hundred pounds. She grabbed Smokey by the collar and heaved with all her might, dragging him behind the vehicle.
Daring to go for the other one, she snatched his arm and hauled him across the pavement. Everything was off center and spinning. She stumbled and fell. There was no shaking off the effects of the stun grenades. She just had to muddle through it until the brain-caught-in-a-blender side effect wore off. Gripping her rook by both his wrists, she heaved again.
It wasn’t team spirit and it certainly wasn’t compassion that spurred her on.
Replacing them wouldn’t be simple or easy. The more she had to do on her own, the more risks she’d have to take, and the less likely she’d be to survive this assignment.
She was acting out of sheer practicality.
Nick McKenna was the first one to emerge from the smoke and ashes of the building, a semiautomatic rifle at the ready. Lori Carpenter was behind him, wielding a gun in each hand.
What was this? The OK Corral?
McKenna opened fire. There was only a high-pitched ringing in her ears, but the flashes from the muzzle were unmistakable. She registered the gunfire as distant muffled thuds. Each one she felt more than heard as it resonated through her.
Two of her men on the ground stopped moving. Shot and killed.
Panting, she released the second rook, content that his head and torso were out of danger of being hit by a stray bullet.
She took a beat to recover her breath and duckwalked toward the hood of the pickup.
Her vision had cleared. She didn’t see white spots fading in and out any longer. Belladonna drew her suppressed 9mm and rose. The world still seesawed and her gun hand shook. Lining up her sights, she aimed for Lori Carpenter’s forehead and pulled the trigger. Her HK VP9 snapped twice, and she took comfort in the familiar recoil if not the sound.
A bullet struck the target.
In the damn vest, of all places.
The force of the projectile knocked Lori Carpenter backward and she dropped.
McKenna trained the barrel of his rifle on Belladonna and opened up on her.
She ducked behind the truck.
With the loss of her hearing and the disruption of the fluid in her ears, Belladonna’s equilibrium was toast. Her normally perfect aim had been thrown way the hell off, but this was ridiculous. She’d had the woman in her sights and only caught her in the chest near the collarbone.
The target had fallen from the impact, but the vest had taken the bullet, and Lori Carpenter was still alive.
A red haze of fury filmed Belladonna’s vision, anger flooding her limbs like battery acid. This wasn’t what she needed right now. Her eyesight was the one thing going for her and she needed to get a grip.
She cursed her luck and checked her watch. Four and a half minutes left. The game was still on.
The target would be dead weight. McKenna would have to carry her. And he wouldn’t be able to fire behind him at the same time.
Taking a breath, she took her chances and stood.
Precisely as she’d forecasted, McKenna had the target slung over his shoulder and was hightailing it east.
She leveled her gun at them, took a steady breath, strained to focus the sights on Carpenter’s dangling head and—
The truck windshield in front of her exploded, struck by a fusillade of bullets that drove her down behind the frame of the vehicle.
She pivoted and peered around to see the sheriff, Deputy Barney Fife and Aunt Bee taking potshots at her as they maneuvered down Main Street.
In what upside-down world was she playing defense instead of being on the offense?
Not the OK Corral, but The freaking Andy Griffith Show!
If she wasn’t worried about getting shot, she’d look around for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and say, “You’ve been punk’d.”
The trio was headed in the opposite direction from McKenna and the target, but Belladonna would have to expose herself to have another go at Carpenter.
She growled her frustration, preparing to do something reckless and impulsive, totally against the grain, when her men started to recover enough to shoot back and lay down suppressive fire.
Before she could draw a relieved breath, the second rook she’d saved lurched back and twisted like a spinning top, falling on top of her and knocking her to the ground.
Blood poured from his face. His cheek had a gruesome hole in it. He was a goner and nothing could be done for him, but even worse, he was leaking all over her, getting her filthy and leaving the worst mess.
This was a DNA nightmare that housekeeping wouldn’t have time to clean.
They needed to pull the plug on this gunfight and get back on point, tracking the target.
She shoved the corpse to the side and sprang to her feet. Catching the eyes of Smokey and a handful of the others, she motioned for them to follow her. She returned fire as they fled, but the three locals, who’d ended up being an effective distraction, slipped inside an establishment.
Glancing around, she counted four men dead and two more wounded. McKenna and the target were nowhere to be seen.
They’d gone east but couldn’t have gotten far. Especially on foot. McKenna’s car was still parked two doors down. They’d go for a new vehicle.
She checked the time. Two minutes until the State Police arrived on the scene.
Gritting her teeth, Belladonna and her team split up into two different SUVs. They would find the target and McKenna.
They weren’t called Los Chacales for nothing.
Jackals were fast, deadly hunters, and the primary reason they weren’t an endangered species was because of their resourcefulness.