Page 137 of Forever Dark
Pruitt screamed, but it did not stop him.
Instead, he charged.
No hesitation.No attempt to dive for cover or recover the gun.He came straight through the doorway at her, wounded arm hanging useless, good hand out like a claw.A man possessed.
Selena got one step back and tried to realign for a second shot, but the walkway was narrow and he was too close, too fast.He reached her and hit her hard enough to drive her into the outer railing.Metal slammed across her lower back.Her gun hand went wide.She held onto the weapon by reflex alone.
Pruitt grabbed for her wrist.
His face was inches from hers now, stripped of every trace of the quiet man from the revival.Spit at the corner of his mouth.Blood running down from the wound in his arm into the sleeve of his shirt.Breath hot and sour.
“She killed him with drugs!”he snarled.“She killed what God gave us!”
Selena drove her knee upward.
It caught him in the thigh, not high enough to finish it.Enough to jolt him.He slammed her wrist against the railing and pain shot bright through her hand.The pistol almost slipped free.
Then weight hit him from the side.
Connor.
He came off the motel carpet like something half resurrected, one hand out for Pruitt’s throat, the other around his waist.The impact ripped Pruitt off Selena and sent both men crashing through the broken doorway into the room.
They hit the floor tangled together, Connor on top for half a second, then not, then both rolling through splintered wood and motel grit.
Selena did not hesitate.
She rushed in and went first for the revolver.
Always the gun first.
Connor’s weapon lay under the little table.She scooped it up, backed one step clear, and trained her own pistol on the struggle while Connor and Pruitt fought across the carpet in a blur of elbows and cursing breath.
Pruitt clawed for Connor’s injured head.
Connor answered with a short brutal punch to the ribs that knocked sound out of him.
“Stay down,” Connor growled.
“Go to hell,” Pruitt spit.
They rolled again.Connor’s grip slipped.Pruitt tried to buck him off and nearly managed it.
Selena moved in.
She holstered her own pistol on instinct, dropped to one knee, and drove it hard between Pruitt’s shoulder blades.The breath burst out of him.Connor got a forearm across the back of his neck and pinned him flat.
“Hands,” Selena snapped.
Pruitt thrashed once.
Connor jammed his face into the carpet.“Don’t.”
Selena caught his good arm, twisted it behind him, then the wounded one more carefully but not gently.Pruitt made a raw animal sound into the motel carpet.
“Cuffs,” Connor said through clenched teeth.
“Got them.”
