Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(65)

I draw the shotgun out of Eve’s hands smoothly, in a single motion, but the seat belt catches my leg as I kick the door open and I go down. I squeeze one trigger. Martin is already down, but his driver’s side door window shatters along with the shocking report of the shotgun. I have another shot. I roll, free my leg, touch off the other trigger, punch a dozen holes in Martin’s door but he’s not there. He was moving around the other side. Eve is out of the car. Moving around the front, crawling. Good girl. The engine block will give her some cover, the bullets will go through the car but not the solid aluminum block of the engine. There are some shells on the floor. The box I was carrying split open sometime, maybe during the crash, maybe before. I grab a handful, shove two down the shotgun’s throat and get up.

At some point, I hurt my leg. Can’t worry about that now. Martin is over there somewhere. I can’t see him.

I guess if this was a movie, wind would blow, the soundtrack would come up, and we’d face off, staring each other down for a moment before firing the climactic shot of our duel. Instead, Martin looks startled when he sees me and starts shooting wildly, and so do I.

Just like they said, I don’t hear the one that gets me. I never hear the sound, just feel as sledghammer in my thigh. A second too late I tug both triggers and the shotgun goes off. I lurch around and Martin spins. I see blood. I think I got him.

He turns back and clutches his face. Somehow I missed with a f*cking shotgun. He strides over, clutching his face. There’s blood between his fingers. I got his ear. Hah.

I clutch my leg. That’s a lot of blood. It doesn’t hurt.

I’m pretty sure that’s bad. I’m sorry, Eve.

Martin kicks the shotgun away, not that I could have reloaded it. He raises the pistol and aims at my head.

“Boy, you are no end of trouble. It will be very difficult to explain this.”

“Yeah,” I manage to rasp, “Sorry about that.”

He shrugs, and then Eve picks up the shotgun and swings it like Ol’ Betsy in a cheap Western and bashes the buttstock right into Martin’s skull. His hands shock open and the pistol drops right out of his grip. He turns back, moves to grapple the gun away from Eve, but she recovers from the swing and puts her full weight into it, twisting it like she’s swinging a baseball bat. The stock hits his upper arm and there’s a solid meaty crack, and he howls, clutching at the limb. Her backswing catches him right on the kneecap.

Watching a man’s leg fold up the wrong way is unpleasant, even if it’s a simple f*ck like Martin Ross.

He goes down to the ground, rolls. His hand slips behind his back.

Of course f*cking Martin would have a backup. He slips the little black pistol from his back pocket. Eve doesn’t see it. She raises the shotgun over her head, ready to bring the sharp bottom corner of the buttstock right down on his f*cking head, but I can already see it playing out, as in slow motion. He’s going to shoot her right in the gut.

His pistol, the one he dropped, is slick with blood in my hand. Doesn’t matter. I put the muzzle against the side of Martin’s head. He stops as he feels it. Eve sees the pistol in his good hand.

Bang, bang. Once and then twice for sure. Eve screams. She’s covered in blood.

Mostly not hers. That works for me.

The shotgun falls with a thump in the dry dirt and suddenly she’s tugging at my arm.

I’m so tired. I need a nap. Just let me sleep, damn it.

When I don’t get up she locks both arms around mine and pulls me over the ground. She wraps something around my leg and shoves me in the passenger’s seat. I flop over as she pushes the door shut and climbs in the other side. The little Toyota groans as she pulls back up onto the road.

You know, I’ve never let her drive. I wasn’t even sure she could. Guess it doesn’t matter.

I fade in and out. Red and blue lights bruise the night sky. Eve stops the car, gets out screaming and waving her hands.

At some point, somebody picks me up. I keep calling for Eve.

A small, silky hand closes tight around mine.

“I’m here,” she says, over and over and over. “I’m here.”

I keep hearing it as I drift off.

When I finally wake up again I feel like I’m covered in concrete. The lights blind me, so I press my eyes shut. Eve’s soft hand grips mine.

“Hey,” she murmurs.

I still can’t open my eyes.

“Where the hell am I?”

“You’re in the hospital, Vic. You got shot in your leg and your hand was pretty badly burned.”

“Oh.”

That would explain why my leg hurts so badly I’d like to tear it off.

I finally manage to get my eyes open. Eve has a bandage around her head and a cast on her hand.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she says, quickly.

I touch her cheek. She rubs against my palm.

“They won’t let me get in the bed with you, but they can’t make me leave.”

I listen patiently as she tells me what’s going on. First, and most importantly, I’m not going back to prison. As soon as she was able, she sent Alicia and her lawyers to Martin’s house, gathered up a mound of evidence linking him to, well, everything, and papers were being filed to plead for an official pardon from the governor. There was quite a bit of proof that I was not involved in anything I was convicted of.