From the sounds coming from the back of the house, Connor guessed his intruders were having a difficult time getting up over the window boxes built along the outer sills. A bout of heated swearing and pained cries followed by wood cracking lightened Connor’s worry. The boxes wouldn’t be able to hold up a full-grown man, but obviously Rollins and whomever he brought with him didn’t know that.
“Hey, whoever’s with that asshole, did he tell you I’m a cop?” Con slid down the wall and switched over to the short L in the hall, bringing him in line with the downstairs bedroom. Another few feet, and he’d be able to wedge himself into a corner at the back of the house and see into the long family room.
“He’s a fucking cop? You came here to rip off a fucking cop?”
Con smiled, glad for the reaction. He heard another man cussing the first out, but no one else chimed in. The rain thickened, muting anything else the men said.
“Your friend Gary didn’t come here to rip me off.” Con risked peeking around the corner to see if the way was clear. Drawing his gun up, he slid forward another foot. “He came here to kill me. Like you killed Frank Marshall and everyone else who got in your way. You’ve got a lot to answer for, Rollins.”
“I came here for that fucking faggot whore.” A weedy male voice broke through the sound of the rain. “You can walk away from this!”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” Another step and he froze. They’d brought a flashlight with them, and Con could see the powerful beam cut across the hallway opening. If he could make it past the doorway, he’d be able to get enough cover on the other side to bring the men down. “Kind of fond of Forest.”
“Fucking bitch put me in jail,” Rollins—if Con guessed right—screamed back. “He started this whole damned thing. A couple more minutes, and he’d have been begging me for my dick. Fucking Marshall should have minded his own business!”
Connor remained silent, watching the beam cut across the hall again. The second the light passed back toward the front of the house, he was off, his bare feet moving across the slick wood floor. Grabbing at the shadows on the other side, he pressed his shoulders against the bathroom door at the end of the hall. Bringing up his matte black gun, Con took a deep steadying breath and waited for Rollins to move into his line of fire.
SOMETHING WAS wrong. Forest could feel it. Or at least he guessed it was. There’d been some muffled scrapes coming through the walls, but after that, nothing. Not until he heard a loud thump.
“I’m going to put the phone down,” he whispered to the dispatcher. “Just tell them to hurry the hell up, okay?”
He turned the volume down as much as he dared, mostly to drown out the dispatcher’s increasingly aggressive orders for him to stay on the line. Leaving the phone as close to the jamb as he could without it being stepped on, Forest slowly eased the door inward and peeked outside.
Then he jerked his head back into the dark as soon as he spotted the large bulky shape crawling through the shot-out window.
Forest braved another look as the man nearly tumbled back out. The intruder grabbed at anything he could to anchor himself, snagging the sink’s faucet handle. Water gushed from the spigot when he pulled on it. He grumbled in surprise, then slapped at the elongated handle until it turned off.
From what he could see, the guy crawling through the window wasn’t Rollins. Not unless he’d gained a hundred pounds since he’d been let out. The phone’s screen really didn’t give Forest enough light to see by, and the safe’s sickly green illumination barely extended beyond its own door. The man’s bulk was going to be hard to take down, and Forest couldn’t see if he was armed.
“A gun,” Forest murmured, standing up quickly. “The safe!”
Ignoring the creaks in his knees from crouching on the hard floor, he scrambled to the safe and carefully swung it farther open.
Only to stare at a very disappointing emptiness.
“Not like I know how to fucking shoot a gun, but shit, Con,” he grumbled. “Throw me a damned bone here.”
Going back to the door, he peeked again, trying to see if the man’s hands were free. Since they appeared to be mostly flailing about as he worked to get through the tight space, Forest thought they were empty. From the writhing and the man’s windmilling arms, Forest suspected the heavyset man was stuck.
“Doesn’t mean he can’t have a gun on him.” He chewed on his lower lip, trying to work out a plan. “Think, dude. What the hell am I going to do?”
A knife was out of the question. A wood block of blades was out on the kitchen counter, too far for him to snag one and defend himself against the intruder, and short of grabbing one of the spindly wooden chairs at the table, there wasn’t anything he could really use to bash the man’s head in.