Cal cursed and lunged at Melissa. She jerked back, but he was faster, grabbing for the gun. Melissa screamed, twisting, fighting like a woman possessed. They slammed down into the dirt, struggling, the weapon caught between them.
“Drop it, Melissa!” Cal barked, straining against her resistance.
Arneson’s face twisted with something ugly. He yanked his own gun from his holster and stalked forward, eyes locked on Melissa. “Let her go, Granger. She’s not worth it.”
Alena’s blood iced. She snapped her weapon up, her voice slicing through the chaos. “Put the gun away, Arneson. Now.”
For a beat, no one moved, the standoff stretched tight, every muscle in Alena’s body coiled to fire. The fight betweenCal and Melissa thrashed in the dirt at her feet, Arneson’s finger twitched against the trigger, and the night held its breath.
Then a gunshot cracked through the dark.
Chapter Eighteen
The gunshot split the air, and Cal didn’t think, he just reacted. He slung his arm around Melissa and dragged her hard toward the pile of rocks at the edge of the clearing. She fought him for half a second, but survival took over and she went down with him.
He snapped his gaze to Alena. She was moving his way, fast, but another shot cracked and slammed into the dirt right next to her boot. Cal’s stomach clenched. That had been too damn close.
“Alena!” he shouted, but she was already pivoting. Instead of making a run for him, she dove behind the back corner of the cabin, the closest cover she could reach. It wasn’t enough.
Too much open ground around her.
Whoever was out there had them pinned, and if they didn’t get control fast, Alena was a sitting target.
Cal checked fast, scanning the chaos. Raines was crouched low behind the front end of his cruiser, the metal shielding him. Good. At least the vehicle was bullet-resistant.
Arneson wasn’t nearly as smart. He was sprawled on the ground with nothing between him and the shots. Cal’s gut twisted. If this was Dexter firing on them, Arneson probably didn’t have to worry. But what if it wasn’t Dexter?
He yanked Melissa closer, his voice sharp. “Could this be one of the men you hired to take you?”
Her head jerked toward him, eyes wide. “No. It can’t be.”
“Melissa.” His tone left no room for games.
She flinched, then swallowed hard. “All right. Maybe. The two of them wanted more money. I didn’t pay. Keller’s dead, but Salvetti… it could be him. If he thinks he can scare me into giving him cash…”
Cal’s blood boiled. Rage cut through the adrenaline. She’d lied. Lied about this, about the danger shadowing all of them.
“You should’ve told us,” he snapped, his voice low and lethal. “We could’ve handled it. Now you’ve put every damn one of us in the crosshairs.”
The crack of another bullet against stone punctuated his fury.
More shots cracked, each one chewing into the ground and bark near Alena. Cal’s chest tightened. She was hunkered down, making herself small, but she had nowhere to move. Sitting duck.
He shifted, tracking the angle. The shots weren’t coming from the trees around the cabin. No, the sound carried sharper, flatter, from across the creek—the same direction Dexter had used to make his escape before.
His stomach turned hard as stone.
“Stay put,” he growled at Melissa. She started to argue, but Cal was already moving. He rolled out from behind the rocks, brought up his gun, and squeezed off two shots toward the flash of muzzle fire across the creek.
The echo thundered through the night, and Cal’s pulse thundered with it. He had no idea if he’d clipped the bastard, but at least he’d shifted the fire away from Alena—for now.
Another volley of shots ripped through the clearing, but the sound was wrong. Too spread out. Cal froze for a split second, listening past the echo.
Two shooters.
One across the creek where Dexter had slipped away before. The other up by the road to the left. Hell. They were boxed in.
Beside him, Melissa cursed and started scrambling up. “I can take him. I can shoot Dexter—”
