The effort only threw her off balance, and she succumbed to the force of his arm, tumbling backward to the ground. She lay on her back, her right leg twisted beneath her. She scrambled to push up from the dirt.
She had to get free. What would he do to her?God, save me.
He loomed over her like an ugly monster. Then he came down hard on her, slamming his knees into her belly as he knelt on her. The air exploded out of her lungs and pain shot through her body.
CHAPTER23
Dinah writhed as Chalmers’s knees pressed her belly. She fought for breath. Fought to throw him off of her.
Air. She had to find air.
She would give him some laudanum if only he would let her go. But she couldn't draw breath to say so.
A blast sounded in the distance. Or maybe that was the panic of her heartbeat. She sucked in a tiny gasp, but her lungs screamed for more.
Then his knees lifted off her. His body fell sideways, removing the weight from atop her.
She sucked in a gulp and forced herself up, onto her side, then to her hands and knees so she could crawl away. She had to get far from him while she could.
"Dinah, are you hurt?" A man's voice broke through her panic.
She was away from Chalmers now and scrambled to stand, stepping on her skirts and tripping. Once she caught her balance, she spun to see where Chalmers was. To see if she should run farther.
He lay in a heap on the ground. Not moving.
"Dinah."
She finally let herself follow the voice. Jonah?
She squinted to see better with the light from the door behind casting him in shadow. He stood with his walking sticks under each arm, leaning into them with a rifle in his hands.
"I realized he was gone, and he didn't answer when I called for him. I was already out of the bed when I heard you scream."
Bile rose in her throat as reality washed through her. Jonah had shot Chalmers. The man she'd worked so hard to save. A man created and loved by God. His life might well be wiped out with that single blast.
Yet Jonah had done it to save her. She could still feel the weight of the man’s knees pressing into her abdomen. The panic to breathe. The desperation.
She drew in a deep breath to keep the churning inside from spewing up her esophagus and out onto the ground. Maybe she could save him somehow.
As she crept toward Chalmers, her chest refused another breath. He lay on his side, his face pressed into the dirt. His bandaged arm rested on the ground, the wrist at an angle that would surely be too painful to stand if he could feel pain. A bright red circle pressed his shirt to his side. The bullet must have struck him hard enough to knock him sideways—off of her.
She knelt quickly, keeping distance between them as she pressed two fingers against his neck. She didn't have to worry about holding her breath to better feel his pulse, since her lungs still wouldn't drag in air.
Not even a tiny flutter moved within him. She needed to try once more though. In a different place. She pushed his shoulder, turning him on his back. His eyes stared upward. Unseeing.
Her chest finally released, allowing the bile to surge upward in her throat. She spun away, dropping her hands to brace against the ground as the contents of her stomach spewed out.
* * *
Jericho pushed Pinto as hard as the horse could run up the rocky slope. When the ranch buildings came into view, he scanned everywhere he could see. Nothing looked out of place.
Yet that shot. It hadn’t been one of his brothers bringing down an elk they met on the trail.
Something was wrong, he could feel it in his veins. He should have never left the cabin with that stranger there.
The front door stood open, so he reined Pinto toward the house. Sometimes they left it ajar for fresh air.
But a movement near the barn caught his attention. Lillian. She was motioning him that way.
