CHAPTER EIGHT
He would have shot Gen square in the center of the forehead if she hadn’t dived behind the trunk. Gen hit the floor. The gunshot echoed in the raftered room as the bullet thumped into the wood directly above her.
“Damn it,” Michael snapped, moving forward again. “Don’t make me chase you. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to.”
That actually made Gen laugh. “You’re an ass, you know it?”
She scuttled away again, trying her best to reach one of those old rifles along the wall. She couldn’t fire any of them, but she could damn well swing them.
She never got that far. Her head was still down, so she could gauge Michael’s progress only by the sound of his footsteps. He’d just made it past the trapdoor. Suddenly he let out a surprised oath. Gen stole a peek around a corner to see him wide-eyed with astonishment. She saw the gun hand go up and the rest of him topple forward.
Then she saw the hands around his ankles.
“Hit him!” Rafe yelled, clambering through the gaping square as Michael hit the floor with a flat thud.
Gen scrambled for one of the guns. Michael was already twisting toward the new threat, the gun coming around. Rafe let out a roar of aggression, and Gen knew he was going to throw himself between that gun and Gen. She couldn’t let him.
She got her hands around an old Richmond musket. The thing probably hadn’t fired in a century, but it was good and heavy. She clambered to her feet with it.
Michael fired again, and Rafe grunted in pain. Gen turned, the rifle in her hands, and saw Rafe’s shoulder blossom scarlet. She cried out, the fear as old as this place, the desperation too deep for words. Still Rafe fought, trying to pin Michael to the floor. Michael bucked and kicked, the gun held firmly in his hand.
“Back away!” Gen screamed at Rafe, ready to swing. “Get away from him!”
But he wouldn’t. If he let go, Michael would bring the gun to bear again. So Gen did the only thing she could do. She swung the rifle butt down on the pistol.
Both Michael and Rafe yelled and pulled away. The gun clattered across the floor. Gen dived for it before Michael could get hold of it again. As she turned back, she saw that Michael was still fighting. She saw that Rafe was losing. And she saw Michael come up off the ground. There was no time for the pistol. Winding up like a long-ball hitter, she swung the rifle at Michael’s head.
The old rifle butt cracked in half as it hit Michael with a sickeningthunk.Michael gave no more than a grunt of surprise and then crumpled, unconscious.
“Rafe?” Gen cried, dropping the rifle without a thought. “Are you all right?”
Rafe never moved from where he was crouched before her, his astonished gaze on the inert man stretched out in front of him.
“What if I say no?” he asked, finally turning one of the most wicked smiles Gen had ever seen on her. “You gonna hit me, too?”
He made her laugh. How could he make her laugh at a time like this? She was shaking like a tree in a windstorm and crying like an infant. Her husband, whom she’d buried no more than five months ago, lay unconscious on the floor, and her lover, whom she’d buried over a hundred years ago, sat smiling at her, bare chested and bleeding. This was going to take a lot of working out.
“We need to get you to a doctor,” Gen insisted.
Rafe looked down at the fresh blood on his skin. “I’m not going to die, girl. But let’s make sure he doesn’t cause us any more trouble.” He reached over into a pile of furnishings and came away with a curtain tie. “Did I hear you say he was supposed to be dead?”
Gen found herself sighing as she went about tying ankles while Rafe tied wrists. “That’s kind of getting to be a common theme around here, isn’t it? I’d like you to meet my husband, Michael, who I thought had died in a private-plane crash over the Caribbean.”
“What do you think this means?”
She gave in to a stunned shiver. “I think it means I’m going to be getting myself a divorce.”
Rafe just nodded. “He wasn’t worth dying over.”
That brought Gen to an uncertain halt. “Do you think this was it? This was what you were protecting me from?”
He seemed to consider the question for a moment. “Considering the fact that you mostly protected me, I guess I probably wasted a lot of the celestial effort it took to bring me here.”
Gen nodded, numb and shaky, her equilibrium forever shattered by the events in this house.
This house.
There was one other thing Gen needed to do before she left this attic. Stepping gingerly over a now-moaning Michael, she returned to her grandmother’s trunk. She lifted out the briefcase, which was embossed with the initialsMPM,and set it aside. She’d have to take it to the police when they handed over her husband. Until then, she wanted no part of what was inside. Duplicity had no place here. Gen was looking for something much older, much more important.
