Shallow Creek

Confused, Brendan only barely avoided turning to Michelle to see her reaction to all of this.

“You see this little problem we have now?” Grant asked, indicating the general area with his gun.  “This could all have been avoided if you’d just let your guilt propel you right back out of Shallow Creek.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I didn’t want to have to kill you, so we came up with a little plan to make you think you’d banged my wife, at which point any reasonable son of a bitch with any kind of conscience would’ve left.”  Grant pointed his gun back at Brendan.  “But you’re still here.”

Brendan subdued the pain inside as much as he could, but he knew at least some of it would be evident on his face.  How could Michelle betray him like this?  This felt worse than his brother kicking his ass all those years ago.  He thought he’d meant something to her.

“It wasn’t fake.”

Grant stared over Brendan’s shoulder in shock.

“What did you just say?”

Michelle repeated, a little louder this time, “It wasn’t fake.”

Unbridled fury erupted out of Grant as he flailed his gun around.  “What the hell do you mean, ‘It wasn’t fake’?  Sure it was!”

An evil smile crept into Michelle’s voice.  “Wrong.”

“You were supposed to drug him and stick a rubber on him.” Grant’s face turned crimson with the strain in his voice.  “That was it!”

Brendan’s mind was blown.  Michelle kept rubbing the crazy revelation right in Grant’s face.  “I did, but then I screwed him,” she said, unabashed.  Brendan had thought his brother’s marriage had issues, but this was totally nuts.  “And I’d screw him again long before I ever let you touch me again.”

Grant was about ready to explode.  Brendan kept an even pressure on the trigger, just in case.  Angry people did stupid things, even with a gun to their head.

The first shot rang out and Brendan instinctively responded in kind.  He found himself falling backwards through the open doorway, pushing Michelle with him, wondering why his shot had only hit Grant in the leg.

Chapter 47

A series of bullets ripped into the wooden wall next to the door, the accompanying blasts not nearly as deafening now that Brendan was outside.  Woodchip shrapnel peppered him as he shielded Michelle, but he hardly noticed.  They had to find defensible cover.

“You’re bleeding.” Michelle’s voice barely penetrated the barrage.

Brendan kept scooting her back across the porch to the side of the cabin where he’d hidden when she’d originally arrived.  He tucked her out of line of sight right as Jim strode out the front door.  Pain lanced through Brendan’s shoulder as he raised his pistol and dumped two rounds into the man’s chest.  Jim slumped back against the wall and slid to the floor, leaving a bright red splash in his wake.

One down, three to go.

Brendan moved around to the side of the cabin and pushed Michelle along to the far corner, where they ducked below a window near the firewood shed.  Michelle clutched at him frantically, but he urged her back so that he could inspect his wound.  Grant’s lucky shot had clipped his shooting arm.  No wonder he’d missed his brother’s face.

Damn.  This was not good.

A click above his head grabbed his immediate attention.  He quieted Michelle with a sharp glance and listened as the window overhead slid open.  A shotgun barrel appeared through the space, followed promptly by the hands holding it.  Brendan ignored the protests in his injured arm and jumped up, grabbed the man’s forearms, and yanked him clean through the window.  The large man crumpled headfirst into the hard ground with only a grunt, dropping his shotgun in the process.

Not waiting for any signs of a struggle, Brendan pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket and slammed it into the man’s neck.  He wrestled the tool back and forth, using his other hand to muffle the man’s screams.  Eventually the man stopped yelling, but he continued to paw at his ravaged throat, trying in vain to stem the pulsing streams of blood.  Brendan released him and pocketed the weapon he’d procured from Kim’s mom’s truck.  Behind him, Michelle’s face turned fifty shades of green at the sight of the butchered man.  There would be time to apologize later, but right now Brendan didn’t want to advertise their position with a gunshot.

He scooted to the back corner of the cabin and glanced around it.  No one was coming from that side, but the woods were farther back than he’d wanted them to be.  There was no way he was running across that open space when two more hostiles were around.  They’d be easy targets to anyone with one eye and a rifle.

As he turned to relay a new plan to Michelle, a gunshot resounded from the front of the house.  Michelle screamed and hit the deck as Brendan aimed over her to unload three shots into Mohawk, who was crouched by the side of the front porch.  The man cried out briefly before falling back clutching at his neck.

“It’s clear,” he whispered to Michelle, who was still lying on the ground.  “Come on, get back up against the wall.”