J.A. Johnstone - The Loner - Crossfire

Conrad’s pulse began to hammer inside his skull. He didn’t want to believe the things Lannigan was telling him, but deep down he knew it was possible. Pamela could have done it all: fixed things so it looked like she had the children at the sanitarium, rather than her maid; written the letter to be delivered to Conrad after her death; acted like she was the twins’ mother during the cross-country journey, rather than Winifred; struck a bargain with Lannigan to marry Winifred and take in the children, knowing if Conrad made it through all the death traps to San Francisco, he would jump to the conclusion that the twins were his ...

All along, for months, he had played right into the hands of her twisted scheme.

“How do I know this isn’t just one more of Pamela’s clever lies you’re telling me?”

Lannigan chuckled and shook his head. “You don’t. That’s the beauty of it, Browning. You’re going to die not knowing for sure.”

He looked up at the top of the stairs behind Conrad and Frank and nodded.

The roar of guns suddenly filled the big room.

Chapter 31

Lannigan’s nod was enough to warn Conrad and Frank. They were moving even as the guns began to blast, and their superb reflexes flung them apart, Conrad going left and Frank going right, as half a dozen slugs burned through the space where they had been a shaved fraction of an instant earlier.

Conrad landed on his shoulder, rolled, and came up on one knee with the Colt in his right hand and one of the revolvers he had taken from the guards filling his left hand. Flame spouted from the muzzles as he fired up the stairs at the hired killers who had been waiting for Lannigan’s signal to bushwhack him and Frank.

Two of the men staggered, stumbled, and doubled over as Conrad’s bullets tore into them. Another man went down with blood welling from the hole in the center of his forehead where one of Frank’s shots had caught him. Frank lay on his belly on the other side of the staircase, firing upward.

The gunmen retreated, driven back by the deadly accuracy of their intended victims. As the shooting entered a momentary lull, Conrad glanced over his shoulder toward the fireplace. Lannigan was gone. He had ducked out and left his men to deal with Conrad and Frank.

The men upstairs weren’t the only ones they had to worry about. The front door slammed open, and several guards from outside burst into the room, brandishing shotguns. Conrad surged up from the floor and threw himself in a diving leap behind one of the heavy chairs as a guard touched off both barrels of a Greener. The double load of buckshot smashed into the chair, blowing stuffing and splinters into the air. The impact of the charge toppled the chair backward onto Conrad, who was unhurt but pinned down for a second.

Frank took some of the heat off him by opening fire on the shotgunners from the other side of the room. He darted behind one of the thick posts holding up the ceiling and put a bullet through the brain of one of the guards. The man collapsed with his shotgun still unfired.

Conrad shoved the chair aside and tipped his Colt up. The man who had loosed the blast at him was reloading, but Conrad didn’t give him time to snap the Greener closed. He fired and sent a bullet ripping through the man’s throat. The hired killer went over backward with blood fountaining from his torn jugular.

That left two of the shotgunners still on their feet. Conrad rolled desperately to avoid a blast from one of them. A few of the pellets stung his hide but didn’t do any real damage. The gunman was smart enough to fire just one barrel, leaving him with another load of buckshot. He tried to track Conrad with that barrel.

The hammers of Conrad’s pistols clicked on empty chambers. He dropped one, holstered the other and powered to his feet, grabbing the buckshot-shredded chair as he came up. He heaved it just as the man fired. The chair blocked the pellets, then crashed into the gunner, knocking him back a step.

By then Conrad had drawn the Smith & Wesson. While the hired killer was off-balance, Conrad put a .38 round through his head. The man fell back on the stairs, which were painted by the blood and brains that sprayed from his ventilated skull.

That left one more man with a shotgun, but as Conrad swung around in search of that final target, he saw Frank had already taken care of the threat. The fourth guard was down on the floor, kicking out his life as crimson leaked from the bullet holes in his chest and belly. Frank stood nearby, smoking Colt in hand.

Three gunmen were left upstairs, and they had been waiting for a chance. They opened fire on Frank. He grunted and twisted around as a slug creased his upper left arm. A second later, Conrad tackled him and knocked him out of the line of fire. They rolled up against the wall where the gunmen on the second floor couldn’t see them. The shooting stopped.

“How bad ... are you hit?” Conrad asked breathlessly.

“I’ve cut myself worse shaving,” Frank replied. “Anyway, it’s not my gun arm.”

Feet pounded on both sides of them. Men rushed into the room from right and left. Conrad and Frank were facing each other, so they fired past each other, downing the gunmen coming at their backs.

The shooting stopped again. Conrad and Frank reloaded while low voices came from upstairs. Conrad figured the surviving gunmen were debating what they should do next. If they charged down the stairs, they would be easy targets. On the other hand, if he and Frank moved away from the wall, they would be back in the line of fire.

It was a standoff ... and Lannigan was still out there somewhere.

Quietly, Conrad said, “Frank, do you think Lannigan was telling the truth? About the twins, I mean.”

Frank shook his head. “I just don’t know. Sounded like it could have been that way, all right. You knew Pamela Tarleton a lot better than I ever did. Was she smart enough and loco enough to come up with a plan like that?”

“She was,” Conrad answered without hesitation, “and evil enough, too. But that would mean ... everything that’s happened over the past few months ... all the danger I put you and Claudius and Arturo in ... all of it was for nothing. I did just what Pamela wanted me to do, like I was her puppet.”

“Blast it, that’s not the way it was at all,” Frank argued. “Whether those kids are yours or not, you believed they were, and you acted accordingly. You acted like their father, and what you felt was real.”

“But if they’re not mine, then it was all a lie.”

“All those fellas who tried to kill you were sure enough real,” Frank pointed out. “This trap Lannigan set for us was real, and so is the score we have to settle with him.”

Conrad took a deep breath. “Yeah. I guess when the bullets are flying, it’s best to save the philosophical debates until later.”

“You could say that,” Frank agreed with a grin. “Now, are you ready to have it out with those hombres?”

“More than ready,” Conrad said.

“Then I’ll draw ’em out ... and you finish ’em off.”

Before Conrad could ask his father what he meant by that, Frank darted away from the wall, twisted around, and started firing both guns toward the balcony along the second floor. More shots came from above as the gunmen returned the fire. Frank staggered but stayed on his feet and kept shooting.

“Noooo!” Conrad shouted as he dived into the open, turning his body in midair so he landed on his back. From where he lay he could see all three gunmen standing at the balcony railing and firing down at Frank. The guns in Conrad’s hands thundered as he sent a storm of lead sweeping across the balcony. The hired killers jittered and jerked as slug after slug smashed into them. They dropped their guns. Two of the bloody figures collapsed. The other one pitched forward over the railing and fell to the floor with a crash. He didn’t move again.