“I’ll count to three,” the remaining man said, his voice fading as he paced further away and then growing louder as he returned. “If you’re not out here by the time I reach three...” He stopped pacing and his voice grew darker, nastier. “Let’s just say you’ll be sorry. We understand each other, right? Uncle Nick wants you alive—but that leaves me plenty of options.
Tricia stood in the darkness, shaking. There was a part of her that wanted to step out, gun blazing, take this man down before he knew what hit him. But could she hit him? It was far from certain. She’d fired guns before, every kid in South Dakota did, but not for a while now, and not in a darkened barn, and never at a target that was armed and ready to shoot back.
Meanwhile, there was another part of her that wanted to surrender—drop the gun, step out with her hands up, tell the guy she had Nicolazzo’s photos and demand that he take her to him unharmed, untouched. It might work. It might. But it might not. And even if it did, then what? Nicolazzo would have his pictures back and she’d have no gun and no way out, nor any way to help Coral get out.
“If you’re in here,” the man bellowed, “I’m going to find you. You can’t get away.”
Tricia heard the door to one of the stalls—it sounded far enough away to be the one on the other end—swing open and slam against the stable wall. A few footsteps, then another door swung and slammed, this one a little nearer. “There’s nowhere you can hide. Don’t you understand that?”
She understood. She understood it fine.
At the rate he was going, he’d reach her end of the row in seconds—thirty seconds? Forty-five? And then she’d be forced to make a decision. A terrible decision with terrible consequences, whichever way she decided it.
Another door slammed and she heard the man leap into the newly opened stall with a loud
“You are making me
He was just two stalls away now.
Tricia tried to will her right hand to stop shaking. She steadied it with her left, held the gun between both, fit both index fingers inside the trigger guard. Her breath was coming fast now, and she could hardly believe he couldn’t hear it, that and the pounding of her heart. It was a cacophony to her. Shooting Star whinnied beside her —he probably smells the fear on me, Tricia thought, and why not? I must stink of it.
“Shut up, you nag,” the man said. He stopped at the stall beside Tricia’s, put his hand on the door latch.
He yanked it open, let the door swing free, and began another exclamation—
Shooting Star reared up and bucked wildly; the other three horses sounded like they were doing the same. Dodging the horse’s flailing hooves, Tricia flung herself at the door to the stall, scrabbled up and over and landed in a heap on the ground. She saw the man lying there, blood pooling around him, just a few feet away. From the open stall a figure came forward, gun in hand—
“Don’t shoot!” Tricia screamed and swung her hands up, thinking too late that maybe she should have dropped her gun first. That would’ve made for a more convincing surrender. But instead of blasting her, the figure lowered its own gun.
“Trixie?” Erin said. “Is that you?”
“Erin?” Tricia said. “How did you—never mind, you’ll tell me later. We’ve got to get out of here before Bruno comes back.”
“Hold on,” Erin said, and bending over the fallen man, calmly put another pair of bullets into him. Judging by his lack of any reaction, they were superfluous; but judging by the clicking of Erin’s gun she would gladly have given him more if she hadn’t run out of bullets. “There,” she said, to the corpse. “How’s that for a little taste?”
“Jesus, Erin!” Tricia stood up, pulled at Erin’s arm. “Come—”
But Bruno was filling the doorway now, silhouetted in the light from outside. They ducked to either side as a twin-barreled shotgun gun swung up and spat flame at them. The hammering of the horses’ hooves against the stall doors echoed like a further fusillade.
Bruno ran between them to where his fellow gunman lay. “What did you do?” he shouted, swinging his shotgun back around, trying to find them in the shadows. With his other hand he pulled a second gun from his belt, a handgun. “If you...if you killed him, you’ll pay for it!”
“Probably,” Tricia heard Erin say, “but not today.” Then came the sound of a door being unlatched and swinging open, followed by a half-ton of angry horse erupting from the stall.
Tricia felt a hand on her arm, pulling her toward the entrance, saw Bruno, illuminated by brief flashes of gunfire, shooting point-blank into the horse’s pale brown torso but making not the slightest dent in his momentum. She saw Bruno go down, still firing, saw Braddock’s Bane tumble onto him; then Erin pulled her out into daylight and they both began running at full speed, arms and legs pumping hard, toward the front gate in the distance.
‘There!” someone behind them shouted, and a pair of gunshots chased them across the gravel walk and onto the track. Tricia expected a bullet to catch her at any instant.
“You! Stop!”
More shots whizzed by, one tearing up the dirt by their feet and spattering clods against their shins.
The turnstile seemed very far off. And past it was the largest of the parking lots—nothing but blank concrete there, nothing to hide behind: not trees, not cars, nothing. If they could make it through the lot to the sidewalk they’d have a better chance, but even there...
And that was assuming they made it to and through the turnstile. Doing so would require them to get past this no man’s land in the center of the track, half planted with trees and shrubs, half empty soil. On the barren side, Tricia saw an earth grader standing silent and unhelpful; on the other, a paddock where a track walker with remarkably bad timing was trying to keep the bay stallion he’d brought out for a trot from running each time a gunshot split the air.
Erin, meanwhile, was falling behind—she didn’t have the benefit of dancing two shows a night to build up her stamina and endurance, not to mention the lingering effects of whatever mistreatment she’d suffered at the hands of Nicolazzo and the gunman she’d put down back in the stable.
“Can you make it?” Tricia said.
“Do I have a choice?” Erin said. She stumbled and almost fell, but she caught and righted herself, kept going.
Behind them, Tricia heard the pounding of feet, the heavy breathing and cursing of their pursuers. There were at least three of them, maybe four, and no more than forty yards away.
“Is there a car somewhere?” Tricia said. “Something we could use...?”
“Just that thing,” Erin said, jerking her head toward the grader. “If you know how to jumpstart it.”
She didn’t—but glancing over the opposite way, Tricia had another thought. She angled off to the left, running along a line of low bushes.
“Trixie! It’s—it’s longer that way—”
It was. But it also intersected the paddock where the walker was working, with some success, to calm his horse. He looked up as they burst in on him.
“We need that horse,” Tricia said, gesturing with her gun. His mouth opened, but before he could say anything she grabbed the reins out of his hands and hoisted herself up onto the horse’s back, bunching her dress around her waist, modesty be damned. She kept the gun trained on the man with her other hand.
Erin tried to follow but slipped off the horse’s side on her first attempt. The men chasing after them were shouting now, just twenty yards away and closing. One of them sent a bullet at them through the trees. Tricia heard a branch crack and fall. The horse squealed and jerked to one side; it was all Tricia could do to keep him from bolting.
