Sam was shaking so badly that she could barely get the safety off the gun. Braden. He had to be okay. But he wouldn’t be if the shooter kept firing into the cottage. Or if they came into the cottage firing.
She ran into the living room and fired back through the shattered patio doors until the loud sound of gunshots came only from inside the cottage. The shooter was gone.
She dropped to her knees beside her husband, ignoring the bite of glass in her skin, and tried to focus on Braden through the tears blurring her vision as fear gripped her heart. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s just…”
“Were you hit?” Hell, he must have been, or he wouldn’t have dropped like that. But then she saw the glass, pieces of it stuck in his arm and the side of his chest as blood oozed from the wounds. She had first aid training; she knew how to help him. But did she have the things she needed? She scrambled around the cabin until she found a first aid kit under the bathroom counter.
When she ducked back out of the bathroom, Braden was gone. He’d gotten up from the floor, which was stained in places with his blood. She glanced toward those shattered doors. It would be just like her husband, despite his wounds, to run after the shooter. But she found him in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed as he spoke to someone on the cell phone he’d plugged into a charger.
He gave out the directions from the note that had been left on his desk. Had Mack really left it? She hadn’t even realized that he was back in the country, let alone that he would have made a trip to Northern Lakes. And then to set up all of this…?
Of course he had the means and the connections to do anything; she’d learned long ago that she would never know everything about her oldest brother, about who and what he was. She drew in a shaky breath. Help was coming. But would it get here before the shooter returned? Before he tried again to finish them off?
As Braden finished up his call, Sam set to work with a pair of tweezers, pulling out the glass fragments and treating his wounds. They all looked to be relatively shallow except for one on his arm that probably needed stitches. She used the liquid bandage and pulled the sides of the wound together with a butterfly patch.
“Hurry,” he said before disconnecting his call.
“9-1-1?” she asked.
He nodded. “I don’t even know what area picked up the call. It could be a while before help arrives.”
She nodded, knowing what that meant. They had to protect themselves. “It’s not a hunter,” she said.
“It is if we’re the ones being hunted.”
That was how it had felt last night and again today. “Who the hell—” she began.
“It could be anyone,” Braden said. “Whoever keeps sabotaging the equipment.”
Trick could have been hurt the last time that had happened. Was the saboteur focused on her husband now? Or was this about her?
She remembered how the dad of the most recent arsonist she caught had looked at her. Not with surprise that his son was involved in the arson but with resentment that she was bringing his kid in for questioning.
She shivered.
Was it her fault that her husband was in danger?
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