Harper Allen - Desperado Lawman

“You’re not even warm, Fed. Yeah, we were sent to eliminate the kid, and if we could we were supposed to make it look like you snapped and shot him yourself. But we didn’t intercept—”

The first shot caught Connor high on the shoulder, breaking his hold on Petrie. Even as Tess’s horrified glance took in Malden, still prone, but with his trouser leg pulled up to reveal an empty ankle holster, the man fired a second time. His wavering aim missed Connor and hit Petrie.

In the middle of Petrie’s forehead a small, neat hole appeared. On the open door behind him was a brilliant explosion of scarlet. His eyes wide and sightless, slowly he collapsed to his knees, pitching face forward onto the carpet. Instant nausea rose in Tess.

But there was no time for squeamishness. Already Malden’s unsteady aim was swinging back toward Connor. Forcing herself not to think about what she was doing, she threw herself across Petrie’s lifeless body, her outstretched arm scrabbling past him for the automatic pistol he’d dropped only seconds ago.

Her fingers closed around it. Clumsily she flicked the safety off, raised herself onto her elbows and squeezed the trigger.

The report of her shot was overlaid with another, louder discharge that came from behind and above her. As if swatted by a giant hand, Malden lifted off the ground, completing a half roll before landing again, this time on his back. One knee jerked up and then slid back down.

She’d just killed a man. This time when the bile rose in her throat, Tess knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep it down. Scrambling to her feet, she took a lurching step across Petrie’s body toward the door, her gaze fixed on the tired clump of bushes just beyond the walkway.

“No!”

Connor’s arm shot out as she stumbled by him. Almost losing her balance, she struck blindly out at him.

“Let me by, Connor. I’m going to be—”

Five years ago she’d gone backpacking in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Tess recalled. It had been in the weeks following the Joy Gaynor incident—which was why, on her third morning out, she’d found herself standing on a ledge a hundred feet above a valley staring into the charcoal predawn and waiting for the sun to show itself over the horizon before doing what she’d decided to do.

The sun hadn’t shown itself. Instead the heavens overhead had split open with a crash so loud that she’d clapped her hands to her ears in pain and had nearly fallen from the ledge.

But she hadn’t fallen, and the dozens of lightning strikes that had lit up the mountains over the next hours hadn’t touched her. It had been as if some Great Being had chosen that way to show her that her time to die wasn’t upon her yet, no matter what she’d intended.

When the storm had passed, she’d hiked out of the mountains, had driven back to Albuquerque and had handed in her resignation at work—just a formality, since she’d known she no longer had a future with any legitimate newspaper. Within days she’d landed her job at the Eye-Opener, and although she’d known she couldn’t put the past completely behind her, gradually she’d learned not to dwell on it.

But she’d never forgotten how that first crack of lightning in the Sangre de Cristos had sounded, Tess thought now—as if the very mountains themselves were being split asunder. So, as Connor jerked her backward, her first thought was for Joey, still hiding under the metal bedstead and a prime target for any bolt of lightning following the one that had just lit up the night in front of the motel unit, so close to Connor’s parked sedan that it actually seemed to have come from the car.

Her second thought was the realization that what she’d just seen wasn’t lightning at all, but an explos—

“Take cover! The gas tank’s going to blow next!”

Before she could react to Connor’s hoarse command, a deafening whump! came from the vicinity of the sedan. Tess had a glimpse of the car lifting off the pavement before a towering fireball of yellow flames hid it from view.

“Dammit, woman—down!”

One strong arm snugging her tightly to his body, his other hand spread protectively wide against the back of her head, Connor pulled her to him. She felt herself flying through the air, his arms around her.

They hit the motel room floor heavily a heartbeat later, Connor on the bottom and taking the brunt of the fall. In one swift movement he hooked an ankle around the nearest leg of the dresser, yanking it in front of them, but not before Tess felt a stinging sensation in the back of her thigh.

Against the front of the dresser she heard several fast thuds, as if tennis balls were being volleyed at it. Across the room the telephone jingled once and smashed to the floor. With a high, icy sound of glass shattering, pieces of the dresser’s mirror flashed around them, while sheered-off metal from the explosion outside turned into flying shrapnel.

The bed was in the safest area of the room, shielded by the half-open door of the unit from the storm of debris. Thank God she’d told Joey to hide under there.

From the parking lot outside came a metallic groaning noise that ended with a jarring crash. The abrupt silence that followed was broken only by the roar of flames.

“The car just collapsed onto its axles,” Connor muttered from somewhere near her ear. “You okay?”

He was still holding her, but as he spoke he loosened his grip and peered intently into her face. Tess nodded.

“I…I’m okay.” She heard the tremor in her voice and changed her nod to a shake of her head. “No, I’m not okay. How could I be? I…I killed a man, Connor. He was going to kill us and I didn’t have any choice, but I took a life. I killed a man.”

“You killed my car. I killed Malden,” Connor said abstractedly. He began to get to his feet. “We’ve got to get Joey out of here before the police arrive and decide to engage in a jurisdictional pissing contest with me. I’d win, but I don’t want to waste time getting into it with—”

He paused, his glance sharpening on her. Swiftly he sank back down beside her and took both her hands in his. “I killed him, Tess. I fired just before you did, and my bullet caught him in the upper chest. Your bullet was lower, which was why it ricocheted off the pavement into the car’s gas tank.”

The apparent lack of emotion in his voice was belied by his tight grip on her fingers. Virgil Connor wasn’t the man she’d first seen him as, Tess thought slowly, her gaze locked on his. She had the sudden certainty that he wasn’t even the man he saw himself as. He’d glimpsed her horror at the belief that she’d been responsible for taking Malden down, and some part of him had needed to take that horror away from her.

He got to his feet, pulling her up with him. She saw the spasm of pain that crossed his features, and realized with a start that a similar spasm had involuntarily crossed hers.

“You’re hurt.” His brows drew together. “Where?”

“My leg twinges, that’s all. I think I pulled a muscle when we landed on the floor.” He was all business again, she noted. She followed his lead. “Forget me, what about you?”

As she spoke she remembered what had happened just prior to Malden’s death. She bit back a gasp.

“You were shot, weren’t you?” Placing one palm on his chest, she began to draw aside the right lapel of his jacket. His hand clamped around her wrist, but too late to stop her.

Beneath the suit fabric one whole side of the formerly white shirt was drenched in blood. This time her gasp was audible.

“We’ve got to get you to a doctor,” she said decisively. Releasing his lapel and shaking off his hand, she stepped out from behind the dresser. “Joey!” Ignoring the state of the room, she sped over to the relatively untouched area near the bed and knelt beside it. “Joey, it’s safe to come out now. Are you all right?”