A bullet skipped off the top of the cruiser, ricocheting heaven knew where and giving Judson a spike of fear and more adrenaline that he definitely didn’t need. He just had to concentrate. Had to make this work so that everybody except the shooter got out of this alive.
“Get the babies and Etta Jean into the bathroom,” Judson shouted to Rory when the deputy opened the front door.
“Bennie’s doing that now,” Rory replied, and then he had to immediately duck back inside when a shot slammed into the doorframe.
“Don’t do anything to make the bullets come your way,” Addie pleaded. “No shots in the house.”
So, Addie had worked that out as well, that they needed to keep the gunman’s attention solely on them. Judson only wished he were outside alone. That he was the sole target and that Addie was somewhere else.
Someplace safe.
More shots came, all of them hitting the porch posts. Despite the fact that the sun was setting and the light wasn’t optimal for target shooting, their attacker had a decent aim, only missing the mark by a fraction, and that’s why Judson had to move Addie now.
He caught the first part of her that he could reach, her foot. And even though it would likely give her a few bruises and scrapes, he yanked her down the steps toward him.
Not a second too soon.
Because the shooter finally got the angle right, and the next bullet slammed into the spot where Addie had just been.
Judson dragged Addie closer to the cruiser and silently cursed that she hadn’t left the door open so they could dive inside. Of course, she hadn’t known there’d be an attack. But hesure as hell should have anticipated it and done a better job of stopping her from being in harm’s way.
“Who’s doing this?” he heard her say over the loud, thick blasts.
“Don’t know yet,” he had to admit, and then Judson focused on trying to pinpoint the shooter.
He could hear the shouts of the ranch hands who’d been guarding the place, and he hoped they’d taken cover as well. Judson was positive that neither of them was firing, but the shots were coming from the area at the front of the ranch near the fence.
Near the drainage ditch, too.
But not in it.
Judson had played there plenty enough times when he was a kid to know it was deep enough to conceal a shooter, but he was pretty sure the shots weren’t specifically coming from there.
So, he waited. Listened. And all the while he prayed that he could get Addie out of this alive.
For now the best he could do was try to shield her with his body, so he rolled over her, shoving her right against the cruiser. “Get underneath it,” he ordered.
Addie’s gaze shot to his, and he saw exactly what he’d expected to see in her eyes. The fear. Yeah, it was there. But part of that fear was for him.
“You get underneath, too,” she insisted.
“I will, later. After I’ve done some things.”
That was possibly an outright lie. If they got the chance to stop or pursue the shooter, he would. But he couldn’t even start doing that until he had Addie out of the direct line of fire. Of course, a bullet could still reach her, but it would make the shooter’s job much harder.
“Later,” he repeated, and to hurry things along, Judson used his body to muscle hers beneath the cruiser.
He tore his gaze from hers. Had to. And Judson also had to shove aside the hurricane of emotions roaring through him. The fury over this SOB’s attempts to kill them. The danger the gunman had brought right to the ranch’s doorstep, putting the babies in harm’s way yet again.
Yes, he had to put all of that aside and try drowning out everything but the way the barrage of shots was slamming into the porch and cruiser.
And he finally thought he had the location.
There was an old barn just on the other side of the road, and while he couldn’t actually see anyone, he figured their attacker was perched in the hayloft, shooting through the spaces between the boards.
Plenty of room for a sniper to slip the barrel of an assault rifle through one of them and start shooting.
It wouldn’t have been hard for the gunman to get there, either, since no one lived in the house that was about fifty yards from the barn. The elderly owner had died three years earlier, and there was a battle going on to determine ownership. From what Judson had heard, none of those involved in the legal wranglings had visited the place in over a year.
