Tricks barked again, that joyous, welcome sound that she gave when she saw just two people: Bo and Morgan.
“She likes to be petted before she’ll eat,” she said jerkily, unable to think of anything else to say but hoping she could distract him from Tricks, both her barking and the possibility that she might be dancing toward Morgan.
Dear God, please let Morgan be coming toward them. Please don’t let this asshole jerk force her inside the house and catch him unawares. If that happened, they were both dead.
“What?” Kingsley sounded startled, as if he couldn’t put her words in any context. That was good. That was what she’d wanted.
“Tricks. When she gets fed at night. She likes to be petted.”
“Forget the damn dog. Don’t open your mouth again.”
He pushed her once more, his hold on her hair pulling her head slightly to the right. At the very edge of her vision she saw movement, movement that wasn’t Tricks. A pistol was jammed against the back of her skull but she had to do something to keep him from seeing Morgan. If she startled him he might pull the trigger anyway. She had no way of knowing whether or not she was signing her own death warrant but there was nothing else she could do. At least Morgan and Tricks would be okay.
The two beings she loved most in the world would be okay, and that was all that mattered.
She simply lifted her feet and let herself drop heavily to the ground.
Hot pain seared through her scalp. Her whole body jarred as she hit the ground. Shots, both a sharp crack and a deeper roar, shattered the morning, the world. Her head and neck burned as Kingsley’s grip on her hair jerked her head around. Moisture, hot and red, drenched her.
Then everything was quiet except for her ringing ears. She felt odd; her focus was both blurred and sharpened, a series of images flashing in great detail while everything else blurred. She was lying on her side without knowing how she’d gotten there, staring at small pieces of gravel and blades of grass, the first post on the porch, the concrete. Everything was sideways, which puzzled her until she realized why. Oh, right; lying on her side would cause that.
She knew she was alive, but wasn’t sure how. She couldn’t order her thoughts enough to . . . Kingsley . . . where was Kingsley? He wasn’t gripping her hair any longer though she tried to move her head and couldn’t. Maybe he was the bulk she could feel at her back. Maybe he was still using her as a shield.
She saw Morgan charging toward her, big black Glock in his fist. She saw Tricks right at his heels, heard her barking. She said, “Tricks, be quiet,” afraid Kingsley would shoot her. Then she realized there was no point in being quiet now, nothing to be gained from it, because obviously he already knew Morgan was there. Why wasn’t Kingsley shooting? And why was her voice so weak and distant?
Then Morgan skidded to his knees beside her and shoved away the heavy mass that had been resting against her back. His eyes were pale blue fire in his strangely white face as he gently eased her flat on the ground. “Let me see, sweetheart,” he said softly.
She frowned up at him. “See what?”
“Your neck.”
He was pulling at her clothes. Tricks was whining, nosing her arm. Bo lifted her left hand and gently stroked Tricks’s leg, which seemed to be about all she could reach.
“What about my neck?”
“Kingsley shot you.”
“He did?” she asked, surprised. “I don’t feel shot.”
“Trust me on this.” Morgan turned her head to the side, his touch tender, and he blew out a breath of relief. “It’s more than a graze, more like a deep gouge, but no important veins or arteries were hit.”
“That’s a plus.” She managed a scowl, though she wasn’t certain why—maybe to reassure him that she was okay because grumpy meant okay. “Are you sure you didn’t shoot me? By accident, of course.” Kingsley’s pistol had been against her head. How could he possibly have missed enough to just graze her neck? Or gouge. She couldn’t quite picture the difference.
“I’m certain,” he growled, shucking his tee shirt off over his head and tying it around her neck, cinching it almost painfully tight with the knot right over where her neck was beginning to burn.
“How? I heard two shots.”
“Because my shot hit him.”
That made sense, so she stopped arguing and instead grappled with the logical conclusion. “He’s dead, right?”
“Very.”
She was fairly certain “very” meant something grisly. She didn’t want to look. She kept her head carefully turned away as Morgan slipped his right arm under her knees and his left one under her back, lifted her, and easily stood with her cradled against him. Her head swam from the movement, and she clutched at his bare shoulder. He carried her inside the house, pausing at the door to call Tricks in a sharp tone that had her trotting obediently to him, as if she knew this wasn’t a time for mischief. She whined as Morgan carefully laid Bo on the sofa.
“Don’t try to sit up, that’ll put pressure on your neck and make the bleeding worse,” he said as he grabbed up the phone.
“Wait,” Bo said, lifting a hand toward him. She was surprised to see blood on her arm, her hand. “I’m not critical, right?”
He hesitated, his expression still fierce and set as he stared down at her. “Right.”
“Get in touch with Axel first. That’s more important.”
Morgan’s jaw set, then he started tapping the screen of her phone. “I’m sending him a text. If the hacker is capturing all his calls and hears my voice, he’ll know it’s all gone to hell and bolt, alert Congresswoman Kingsley. ‘Ha ha, big brother, I was right,’” he read to her. “He should be able to figure that out, because you’d never call him big brother.”