He looked at her and glared; then he raised his handgun at her.
“If you kill me, there’s no money,” she said quickly. He hesitated a second, walked over, and separated her from Baylor, then shoved her into a chair and held the gun to her head.
“Now,” he said, “I need the money.”
She looked up at Baylor and said, “I don’t even know how to get him that kind of money.”
“I do,” he said, but he never took his gaze off the gunman. The other one stood watch at the open door. “Interesting that you’re here,” he said to the middleman. “I highly suspect that she’s right and that you shot your teammates.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the middleman said. “They were a liability.”
“Does your new teammate over here realize that he’ll get shot too?”
“I am not,” he snapped, glaring at his buddy.
“Oh, I think you probably are, now that this guy found his money,” Baylor said to the gunman. “Why would he share with you? He didn’t share with the other two. The two gunmen looked at each other, with the middleman, the one seemingly in charge, saying to the other gunman, “Forget it. He’s just trying to cause trouble.”
“He better not be right,” the other guy said. “You know how I’ll handle that.”
“You’re not going to handle that, of course. You don’t have to,” he snapped. “Don’t let this asshole even begin to turn you down that pathway.”
“You mean, the one of truth and justice?” she said, unable to resist the snide comment. “Jesus, can’t you even tell when he’s lying? He gets this little tick in the side of his cheek,” she said, staring at the gunman. That earned her a hard whack across the face.
She cried out and stayed curled up, as she tried to regain her senses. She heard angry shouting around her and realized, of course, that Baylor was trying to defend her. He shouldn’t have to, and she had provoked it, not that she really felt like being that calm about it all. As she sat here, curled up in a corner, she studied the layout and noted how the gunman stood there with his gun. As always, the men never seemed to think that she was a threat. For whatever reason, that just pissed her off.
She looked at Baylor and studied the gun right next to her. As the man shouted and yelled at the other gunman, she reached up and, without warning, pulled the gun free of his hand, then quickly flipped it, so it faced him. He stared at her, stunned, and backed away. Immediately Baylor stepped up and, with a hard fist to the jaw, knocked him out. But as he did that, the middleman, the other gunman, bolted.
She groaned. “What’s the point of getting one if we don’t get both of them?” But Baylor was already gone. She immediately got up and stared down at the unconscious gunman. She walked to the front door, closed it, and then stepped into the kitchen to find something to tie him up with.
He started to moan, so she came back and held the gun against his head and said, “Don’t move.”
But the moaning was apparently just a minor symptom of everything else gone wrong in his world because he didn’t move after that. She waited, hating that she was holding a weapon in her hand. Hating the scenario and everything about this. But, if it got the last gunman off her back, she would be more than happy. The door burst open suddenly, and she had absolutely no warning before she faced another gunman, a stranger, who stood there, staring at her.
He looked at the gun in her hand and, quick as a flash, pointed one toward her. “Put that down.”
She stared at him in shock. “Who are you?” she asked, lifting hers.
“Put that gun down,” he said, his voice cold and cutting.
She looked at him and said, “I think I recognize that voice.” She nodded, studying him. “I didn’t see your face, but I heard you. You’re one of my kidnappers, aren’t you?”
His glare darkened. “Did you hear me now? Put the gun down.”
She nodded. “What if I shoot your buddy here first?”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I came to make sure he was dead anyway.”
She sucked in her breath. “So, you’re the one who shot the two outside then, aren’t you?”
“I am,” he said, “and now I just have these two to take care of, and then we’re free and clear.”
“Oh, so you’re the contractor for my kidnapping? You already got paid for the job, didn’t you? You do know that these guys you hired came after me for their cut of the money you stole,” she said in a conversational tone.
“Of course I do,” he said in disgust. “All I’ve been doing is chasing these guys, and you keep getting in my way.”
“Not me,” she said. “That would be Baylor. He’s out there looking for you right now.”
“That’s his problem,” he said. “Once I’ve taken care of these guys, it’s a done deal.”
“Then you should be chasing the one he’s after right now.”
“He’s too late. I already got that one. And, because they came out of this residence, I came in here myself, and look what I found.”
She stared at him, at the unconscious man at her feet, and asked, “What? You’ll really shoot him while he’s lying here out cold?”
“It’ll hurt him less this way,” he said with a snarl. “And I don’t have time for this.”
“That’s because Baylor is on his way back. No way he’s not.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have left you alone in the first place,” he said, lifting the handgun, as if to shoot her.
She immediately took several steps back. She had the gun in her hand, and it faced him, but she was struggling to pull that trigger and to kill him.
“You see?” he said. “There are killers out there, and then there are victims. People, like you, will always
