see the shooter yet?” Dade called down to the bodyguard.
“No.”
“The shooter’s probably moving,” Dade growled. He levered himself up just slightly and re-aimed his gun toward the front of the house.
Kayla could do nothing other than hope this would end with her baby unharmed. She’d been a fool to come back, a fool to respond to Charles’s latest threat.
But what else could she have done?
She had to get out from beneath the hold Charles had on her. She had to try to make a safe, normal life for her son. But instead, she’d gotten this.
“Someone told Charles I was here,” she mumbled. “Probably the D.A. or a Ryland.” She hadn’t meant to say Dade’s family name so loudly, but by God it was hard to tamp down the anger while bracing for another attack.
“No one in my family is responsible for this,” Dade informed her. “Lady, you got into this mess all by yourself.”
She wanted to argue, but the sound stopped her. In the distance she heard sirens. No doubt the backup that Dade had called. Even though she didn’t like the idea of the place crawling with any more Rylands, it was better than the alternative.
She hoped.
Beneath them in the foyer, Kayla heard her bodyguard moving around. Maybe so he could try to spot the shooter. Dade moved, too. He used his forearm to push her face back to the carpet, and he maneuvered himself off her. This time not just an inch or two. He reared up and took aim at the front windows.
He fired.
The blast roared through her ears, and she had no time to recover before there was another shot. Not from Dade. This one came tearing through the foyer but from a different angle than before. This bullet took out one of the front windows and sent glass flying through the air.
Dade had been right. The shooter had moved. And now Dade and she were in his direct line of fire.
For a few moments at the beginning of the attack, Kayla had hoped the shots were meant as a warning. A way to get her to grab Robbie and go back into hiding. But this was no warning.
This was an assassination attempt.
Dade sent another shot the gunman’s way, and she put her hands over her ears to shut out the painful noise. However, she could still hear them. And the siren. It grew closer and closer as the gunman’s shots came faster and faster. He wasn’t panicking, and he definitely wasn’t running. He was trying to kill her before the sheriff arrived.
“Stay down,” Dade warned her. He shifted his gun toward one of the other front windows and fired.
This time, Kayla heard another sound. A groan of some kind, following by a heavy thud. Had Dade managed to shoot the gunman? Maybe.
Kayla looked up and followed the direction of Dade’s aim. There. Through the jagged shards of glass jutting from the window frame, she saw something.
A man.
He was dressed head to toe in black, and it was only because of the porch light that she could see his silhouette. She could also see his gun, and he took aim at Dade and her.
Kayla yelled for Dade to get down, and she latched onto him to pull him back to the floor. But he threw off her grip and fired at the shadowy figure.
The man fired a shot as well and then clutched his shoulder. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought this time maybe Dade had managed to shoot him.
Dade must have thought that too because he headed down the stairs, taking them two at a time while he kept his gun trained on the person on the porch. Kayla could only watch with her breath held and her heart pounding so hard that it might come out of her chest.
The man on the porch fired.
She yelled to warn Dade, but her warning was drowned out by another shot and the sounds of the approaching sirens. She heard Dade curse as if in pain, but what he didn’t do was get down. He raced toward the door, threw it open and fired again.
But so did the gunman.
Oh, God.
She realized then that if this assassin managed to kill Dade that he would come after Robbie and her next. Of course, Kenneth was down there, somewhere, but if the gunman got past the bodyguard, then Kayla would have no way to defend her baby and herself.
Kayla cursed herself for not bringing some kind of weapon with her. But she wouldn’t need a weapon if this goon tried to get to her baby. No. Pure raw adrenaline and the need to protect her child would give her the strength to fight whoever came through that door.
She stood, preparing herself for whatever she had to do, but instead she saw the blue swirls of the lights from a police cruiser. Red lights, too, maybe from an ambulance. The vehicles tore across the lawn and screamed to a halt. There were no more shots, just the noise of the men who scrambled from those vehicles.
Kayla waited, the seconds clicking off like gunshots in her head, and when the waiting became unbearable, she began to make her way down the stairs. The foyer was still dark, and the only illumination came from the jolts of red and blue lights from the responding vehicles.
“Kenneth?” she called out, her voice hardly more than a hoarse whisper. He didn’t answer. “Deputy Ryland?” she tried.
No answer from Dade either.
Kayla inched down the steps, praying this ordeal was indeed over but also bracing herself for whatever she might see.
She didn’t brace herself enough.
There was blood on the floor of the foyer. In the darkness it looked like a pool of liquid black, but she instinctively knew what it was.
And there, slumped in the doorway was Dade Ryland.
Chapter Three
Dade looked down at his left arm and cursed. This was not a good time to get shot.
Hell.
Using the doorjamb for support, he got to his feet and tried not to look as if his arm was on fire. He figured he’d failed big-time when he saw Kayla. Her eyes were wide, her face way too pale.
“You’ve been shot,” she said, the words rushing out.
Was that concern he saw and heard? He had to be wrong about that. No, this was probably just a reaction to the blood. And there was no doubt about it, there was blood.
“Check on your bodyguard,” Dade barked, and he pulled back his shoulders so he could face the responders who were coming right at him.
First, there was his brother, Sheriff Grayson Ryland. Tall and lanky like most of his five siblings, Grayson might not have been the biggest of the half-dozen people who came out of the cruisers and ambulance, but he was automatically the center of attention and the one in charge. Grayson commanded respect just by stepping onto the scene.
Another brother, Mason,
