Page 93 of Breaking His Exile

He got a hand on her neck. She leaned into it. He reached for the lead and worked the knot at the halter, and that was when the world snapped to full awareness.

Movement at the top of the ridge. Not a flicker, not a sliver of metal caught wrong. A man, standing.

Creed stepped out of the tree line onto the bald rise where the sightlines converged, rifle held loose across his body, and made no move to raise it. He wanted to be seen. He stood there against the last of the light and let Evander get a long clean look at him, at the fact of him, at who had walked the horse down and staked her out and waited.

Then he brought the rifle up.

Evander shoved Sable’s head away and dropped, and the shot arrived a half-beat behind the motion — the crack rolling flat across the clearing, no suppressor now, Creed past caring who heard. Sable screamed and yanked back against the stake.

Boone hit the dirt beside him. “That’s Calder.”

“I know.”

“He’s not hiding.”

“No.” Evander came up on one knee behind the deadfall and put two rounds on the rise to move him. “He wants us to know it’s him.”

Creed didn’t scramble. He dropped to a prone line behind a shelf of rock, and his next shot punched bark off the ponderosa four inches from Evander’s ear. Close. Deliberate close. A man that good who missed by four inches hadn’t missed.

He was toying with them. Or he was making a point.

“Move,” Evander said.

Boone rolled up and drove for the next fallen log in a hard lunge. Halfway there his jacket snapped back, his left arm jerked, and blood sheeted across the dark fabric. He didn’t stop. He hit the ground behind the log and called it out flat. “Shoulder. Not through.”

Evander’s world went cold.

He tracked the muzzle flash back to the rock shelf and put three rounds on it fast, walking them across the position, driving Creed’s head down while Boone got what cover he could. From the rise came a shift — Creed pulling off the shelf, repositioning, not running. Buying the angle he wanted. He hadn’t come for a firefight. He’d come to make Evander watch what happened to men who stood next to him, and then he’d come to leave.

Sable tore at the stake, wild, hauling her full weight against the lame leg every time a shot cracked, and she was going to stand in the open and take the next one if he didn’t get to her.

He couldn’t get to her.

Evander crawled to Boone instead.

Blood ran down Boone’s arm to the dirt in a fast, steady line. He had a hand clamped over it and he grinned up through it, wolfish, teeth white in the low light. “Told you he’d come for you.”

Evander tore open the med kit. “This is bad.”

“I’ve had worse.”

He found the entry, high and medial, pressed a wadded bandage into it and wrapped tight, heel of his palm bearing down hard enough to count — and behind him the stake pulled free of the earth and Sable bolted. Lame, lurching, three good legs and one bad one, crashing into the black timber and gone before he could have reached her if both his hands hadn’t been full of Boone.

He didn’t go after her.

He kept the pressure on and let her run, and the thing in his chest that had spent all afternoon daring to want her back went quiet and dark.

Up on the ridge, the fire stopped.

Evander held still, rifle in one hand and the other on the wound, and waited for the shift, the last round, the thing Creed had climbed up there to do. It didn’t come. When he risked the rise, the skyline was empty. Creed had gotten what he came for and walked off the mountain, in no more hurry leaving than he’d been coming.

He’d wanted Evander to see him. He’d wanted him to know. Then he’d shot the man standing next to him and left, because that was the whole message and he’d delivered it.

“Bear.” Evander keyed the radio, voice gone flat. “Boone’s hit. East ridge, above the timber break. Shooter’s Calder — he’s off the mountain, but assume he circles. Extraction now.”

Bear came back even and controlled. “Jonah and River are en route. Hold position. Coming to you.”

Evander stripped off his jacket and wadded it under Boone’s head. He kept pressure on the wound. He counted Boone’s breaths and the seconds between them.