had the lieutenant been when that first shot had been fired? Brandon hoped Shore hadn’t managed to injure Bo or worse.
Another sound, not a bullet this time, sent Brandon’s heart to his knees. Because this one had come from inside. From Willa’s bedroom. It was the sound of footsteps.
The assassin was in her house.
Brandon glanced at Willa. Her eyes were wide, and her breath was gusting. She’d obviously heard the footsteps, too, and she knew the danger was bearing down on them.
He couldn’t wait for word from Bo or for backup to arrive. Once Shore made it to the tiny kitchen, he would see them immediately. They would be sitting ducks, and that meant Brandon had to act fast to keep Willa alive.
“This way,” he mouthed.
Brandon kept his gun ready and aimed at the opening that led from the dining room and into the kitchen. No doubt that was where Shore was headed. He maneuvered Willa behind him so he could shield her with his body, and he started to back them out of the room. It wasn’t the best of plans because Shore could double back or even have an accomplice who could come from the other direction, but Brandon had no choice.
He had to get Willa out of there.
Each step seemed to take minutes, but he led them across the kitchen and toward the tiny mudroom and the back door. He wasn’t sure what was on the other side of that door, but hopefully it was a yard with some kind of cover. He needed to get Willa behind a tree or something to shelter her from the bullets that would come at them when Shore realized they were no longer inside.
They made it to the opening of the mudroom where they heard a plinking noise as if something metal had been dropped.
Brandon glanced back into the dining room and soon noticed something he didn’t want to see: the small, dark green oval object on the floor.
A grenade.
“Run!” Brandon shouted.
Willa reacted fast, thank God. With the knife and pepper spray in her left hand, she pushed her messenger’s bag out of the way, disengaged the locks and threw open the door. Brandon had one last look to make sure Shore wasn’t about to gun them down from inside the house, and changed places with Willa, so he could be in front of her. Either position was a risk because it was possible the grenade was a decoy to get them to run. If so, they were about to run directly into a professional assassin.
They hurried out onto a small porch and down the steps that led into a yard. No trees, something that made Brandon curse. But there was a small storage shed. He grabbed Willa’s arm and made a beeline for it.
There was no sign of Bo. No sign of backup, either, but then it’d only been a couple of minutes since he’d made the call requesting help. Bo had likely called, too.
Well, Bo would have if he wasn’t lying dead somewhere.
Shore could have managed to take out Bo before he started the attack on the house.
Brandon hated to force Willa to run, but he had no choice. He prayed this exertion wouldn’t hurt the baby. Of course, the stress couldn’t be good for the child, either. But Brandon also pushed that aside. Right now, he had to keep Willa alive because it was the only way to save the child.
He positioned Willa to the side of the small wooden shed.
Just as the explosion ripped through the yard.
Brandon had considered that the grenade might be a dummy, but it obviously wasn’t.
The debris from the blast came right at them.
Brandon tried to keep watch, to make certain Shore hadn’t come into the yard for another attack, but it was hard to see anything. The left side of the house was literally a fireball, and bits of wood, the roof and even wads of fire were raining down on them.
His instincts and training were to protect his fellow peace officer, but Brandon couldn’t risk taking Willa closer to the house. There could be a secondary explosion, and he needed to put some distance between the burning building and her.
Thankfully, she still had the bag draped across her body, and she used it to shelter her face from the dangerous falling debris.
“Is there a gate on the back fence?” he asked her.
She nodded, tried to speak, but no sound came out. Willa was obviously terrified, and there was nothing he could do to assure her that he could protect her. Shore could have orchestrated this entire attack just to get them out in the open.
And the open was where they’d have to go to get to the gate.
Brandon checked the strips of grass and shrubs that made up the side yards. No one was there that he could see. No one was on the porch, either, and it was too much to hope that Shore had blown up with that grenade. No. The man was out there, somewhere, waiting.
“Let’s go,” he told Willa.
As he’d done in the kitchen, Brandon kept in front of her and backed her toward the gate. The debris continued to fall, and he could hear neighbors shouting for help. What he couldn’t hear was Bo or the sound of sirens from backup. Until he had help, he had to do everything within his power to get Willa away from there.
Thick black smoke billowed out from the house, fanning out across the yard, and making it impossible for Brandon to see all the places where Shore could be hiding. He kept his gun aimed. Ready.
He saw the movement just at the edge of the smoke. It was a man. And it wasn’t Bo. Brandon recognized him from intelligence photos.
It was Martin Shore.
The killer was there, coming for them.
Behind him, Willa fumbled with the gate to open it. She’d obviously put some kind of lock on it, and that lock was now a trap.
Brandon protected Willa as best he could, but he couldn’t help with the locks. He kept his eyes and gun trained on Shore and was ready to push Willa to the ground if necessary. That wouldn’t take her out of the line of fire, but it might shield her long enough until backup arrived. By now, all the neighbors and anyone for blocks around had probably called for help or come out of their residences to see what was going on.
And what was going on was that Shore was about to try to kill them again.
The man kept walking but lifted his gun, aiming it at them.
Willa cursed, but she must have finally gotten the locks to cooperate because she shoved open the gate. In the same motion Brandon pushed her through to the other side.
A bullet slammed into the fence.
The shot came so close to Brandon’s head that he swore he could feel it.
He jumped out of the way, staying low and lunged out of the yard to join Willa on the other side. They made it to a sidewalk that was rimmed with a street and then another row of pristine suburban houses. They could try to duck into one of them, but that wouldn’t stop Shore. He’d just fire into the place and possibly kill some innocent bystanders.
“We have to run,” Brandon told her. He
