Within Range

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Robin rose to her feet slowly, still unable to see Richard. She braced her feet the way he had taught her. Gripped the gun with both hands, finger resting on the trigger. Aim low, she told herself, almost coldly, assume there’ll be some kick.

  There was the top of a blue baseball cap.

  One more step, she begged him silently.

  He took it, their eyes met...and from the foot of the stairs came a harsh command.

  “Drop the gun! Now!”

  Richard whirled, rifle still held in firing position.

  She pulled the trigger, heard the crack of other shots, and saw Richard fall forward and disappear. Three loud thuds had to be his body bouncing down the stairs.

  “Robin?” Seth called, sounding frantic. “Dad? I’m coming up.”

  Her arms lost all strength and sagged so that the gun pointed at the floor. “We’re here,” she managed to say. “We’re okay.” And she crouched to set the handgun down.

  Just as Seth appeared, his face hard and expressing the terror he had felt, she heard a siren in the distance.

  * * *

  ABOUT READY TO abandon Michael’s old pickup in the middle of one of the rows of parked cars at the hospital, and who cared if it got towed, Robin finally spotted an open slot. She pulled in, jumped out and ran for the emergency room entrance.

  They hadn’t let her go to the hospital with Seth and Michael. “They” being responding law enforcement that included a couple of different uniforms and ranks from chief to deputy. She wasn’t injured, so they expected her to walk them all through what happened. Anyway, they told her she wouldn’t be allowed to take a child Jacob’s age into a recovery room or to visit either man if they were put in intensive care or even moved to a room to spend the night.

  Hanging on to her sanity by a fragile thread, she had told the whole story from beginning to end twice, and today’s events half a dozen times. Interviewed in the living room, she’d still been aware of the flashes going off as a crime scene investigator photographed her ex-husband’s body, sprawled over the bottom steps, booted feet up, head down.

  She would never forget the sight of the man she’d once married dead from multiple bullet holes. Although thank goodness for Seth, who had carried Jacob downstairs, making sure he didn’t see even a blood splatter. Except, maybe, the blood dripping from Seth himself.

  She still didn’t know if her shot had killed Richard or hit the body armor he’d worn. Hers hadn’t been the only shots fired, though. Seth had fired multiple times, she thought, and Michael at least once. Whichever of them had killed him, she didn’t feel the teeniest bit of regret.

  Iris had been glad to take Jacob once Robin had been allowed to leave. Now she hurried up to the receptionist.

  “Seth Renner? The detective?”

  “And you are?”

  “Robin Hollis. I’m living with him and his father,” she said simply. “The investigators held me up to take my account of what happened.”

  “Let me check.”

  Two minutes later, she returned. “Mr. Renner senior is still here in the ER, but Detective Renner was taken to surgery. I show him as being in recovery now.”

  Robin asked if she could see Michael, and was ushered through the double doors. She found a frantic man wearing his own pants and a hospital gown who insisted no one would tell him anything. They’d had to remove a large splinter—the four inches long kind—but felt most of his “discomfort” came from the previous wound. He’d been to X-ray and was now waiting to be taken for an MRI when all he wanted was to know how his son was.

  With his blessings, she rushed to the surgical suite, where she had to wait for a maddening fifteen minutes before she was permitted to see Seth.

  Half-sitting up in bed, he was crunching on ice chips. He looked both wonderful and awful, woozy, his skin pasty and his hair lank—but alive. Awake. His expression lightened the minute he saw her, and he reached out his good hand.

  Robin latched onto it. “They removed a bullet?”

  “No, just had to do some repair work,” he said grumpily. “They didn’t even have to use full anesthesia. I’m not in a daze, and I want out of here.”

  She leaned over and kissed his scratchy cheek. “Your father is just as crabby.”

  He demanded to know what had been happening, so she told him about the questioning, about taking Jacob to Iris’s and what she knew about his father’s condition.

  Then he focused on her in that way he had. “Are you all right, Robin?”

  Her smile turned tremulous, but she said, “Yes. It was horrible and scary, but...”

  “It’s all over.”

  “My knees keep wobbling, but at the same time I feel as if I can take a full breath for the first time in years. If you hadn’t stopped me from taking off...”

  “I did a lousy job protecting you.” His voice was bleak, his eyes unflinching. “If Hammond hadn’t called, I don’t know whether I’d have turned around and gotten back in time.”

  “I thought you were dead.” The memory was so vivid, for a fleeting moment he was dead. The memory of her shock and horror was that real. “I thought...” Her throat clogged.

  “You believed him?” For all his postsurgery state and self-imposed guilt trip, Seth pulled a grin from somewhere. “No faith in me at all.”

  Cheeks wet, she leaned over to press her face to the white blanket over his chest. His heart beat strongly, his chest rose and fell. “I hope I killed him,” she mumbled.

  “No.” He stroked her hair, his voice a rumble that was somehow also soft. “You saw plenty to give yourself years of nightmares. You don’t need more on your conscience.”

  Impatient with herself, she wiped away tears and reared up. “Why would it be on my conscience? He intended to kill us, and then steal Jacob. Abuse him, hit him—” Robin choked on the rest. What would Richard have turned her sunny-natured child into? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Okay.” Seth ran his knuckles over her jaw, his expression so tender her eyes burned again. “Have you called home yet?”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  “Bet your mother would like to hear from you. Your sister, too. They’ll get to meet Jacob at last.” Then he smiled crookedly, his eyes clearer than they’d been. “They can let the doctors know to schedule that surgery.”

  “I had to see you.” Actually, the thought of calling home hadn’t even crossed her mind yet. But if it had...she would still have raced right to the hospital.

  Seth captured her hand again. Suddenly he looked uncertain. “You’ll stay in Lookout, won’t you? I mean, after you visit your family. You have to know I’m in love with you.”

  “I’m in love with you, too.” Her vision was annoyingly blurry. “Damn it, you’re turning me to mush.”

  “Good.” This smile blazed with happiness. “C’mere.” He tugged, and she went.

  Normally Robin would have wondered how he could kiss like this with a cocktail of drugs still in his bloodstream and a heavily bandaged arm. As it was, all she could do was kiss him back. Starting gentle, they took the leap into passion. If he’d been in a private room, they might have gotten really serious, or as serious as his blood loss allowed. As it was... Robin broke away to rest her head against his shoulder.

  His hand played in her hair, and his chest rose and fell with each breath. Robin felt impossibly young. No, that wasn’t quite it, she decided, finally identifying a long unfamiliar emotion.

  Hope.

  Epilogue

  On a sunny July afternoon, Robin’s small family barbecued and celebrated in her mother’s backyard. The sun shone, Mom’s treasured roses bloomed brilliantly, Seth flipped burgers on the ancient Weber grill set up on the patio and Jacob had just collapsed in the shade after running in circles until he was too dizzy to stand.

  Having refused help beyond Seth’s con
tribution, Mom bustled in and out of the house carrying food and dishes. Her cheeks looked a little pinker than the warm day justified, possibly because Michael smiled every time he saw her.

  Robin and Allie lay back comfortably in matching chaise lounges. Sunlight and shade flickered over them when the breeze moved the leaves of the flowering cherry tree. Robin wore a strapless sundress, Allie shorts and a polo shirt that hid her dialysis catheter and port, but let Robin see how frail her sister had become.

  “You know I’m going to lose my best reading time,” Allie commented lazily.

  Robin turned her head to grin at her. “Dialysis was so relaxing?”

  Allie laughed. “I just figure I should add a cloud so the silver lining isn’t too dazzling.”

  The surgery was scheduled for tomorrow. By the end of the day, Robin would be short one kidney, and Allie would finally have a healthy, functioning one. Sometimes Robin still had trouble believing they’d gotten this far. And as she did every time she had that thought, she looked toward Seth. Her savior, her lover, her fiancé.

  He’d asked to adopt Jacob, who would soon have a grandfather as well as a grandmother.

  The smile he gave her was warm, sexy...and a promise.

  He set down the plate of burgers on the table and raised his voice. “Come and get it.”

  Jacob leaped and ran straight to him. Seth scooped him up, gave him an exceptionally gentle airplane ride and plopped him into his booster seat.

  Feeling as if she could float to the table like dandelion fluff, she instead rose to her feet and held out her hand for her sister’s. “Enjoy this. I think you’re about to find out if hospital food stinks as much as I hear it does.”

  Allie smiled with simple delight. “Small price to pay.”

  “You’re right.” They hugged, found their places at the picnic table and started to dish up.

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Reining in Trouble by Tyler Anne Snell.

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  Reining in Trouble

  by Tyler Anne Snell

  Chapter One

  Detective Caleb Nash switched his jeans for jogging shorts and hoped to high heaven no one he knew saw him. It was a particularly pleasant day in Overlook. The humidity was down and the heat wasn’t too bad. He’d have to clean the pollen off of his truck before he went to the department unless he wanted his partner, Jazz, to give him grief again. She always reminded him that they represented the sheriff’s department, vehicles included. It was easy for her to say. She drove an obnoxious gray four-door that barely showed any pollen. Not to mention her husband detailed cars for a living.

  Caleb drove an old dark blue pickup that showed every speck of yellow, and as for a spouse with a helpful job? His last girlfriend had split because the only real marriage he was interested in was to his job. Her words, not his. Though he couldn’t deny they held some truth. She’d also never been a fan of small-town Tennessee. The last thing she’d be worried about was him driving around town with a pollen-coated junker.

  Though that insignificant mark of shame would be nothing compared to what would be said if any of Overlook’s residents saw one of the Nash triplets jogging in the short shorts he was currently sporting. Good, bad, or embarrassing, the town already had enough to talk about when it came to the family. Adding his bare legs to the mix was something he wanted to avoid. Never mind keeping the sheriff away from the image. That grief would last for months longer.

  But what was a man supposed to do?

  The reappearance of his short shorts from track in school had been his mama’s fault. Her latest drop-in had resulted in a surge of spring cleaning he hadn’t asked for but couldn’t stop. The casualty in the latest cleaning war had been the accidental destruction of his normal workout wear. Now he was popping in his earbuds at the mouth of Connor’s Trail with more skin than he was comfortable showing, hoping that none of the people living or working on the Nash Family Ranch would find themselves up that way.

  On a scale of one to five, one being a kid-friendly walk meant to enjoy the scenery and five being a laborious attempt at training for trails that went up the Rockies, Connor’s Trail was a three. It began where the woods that were scattered across the back half of the hundred acres of ranchland curved, forming a crescent-moon shape that rose and dipped the farther you went inside the tree line. The uneven terrain warranted several new signs warning guests from the Wild Iris Retreat to be careful. Caleb knew for a fact that there were three in total surrounding the trail because he’d been the one to stake them in the ground. It was supposed to have been his brother, Declan, who did the deed, but work had pulled him away. There wasn’t much Caleb could do about that. He could argue until he was blue in the face with his eldest brother, but he didn’t dare try the same tactic with the sheriff. Even if they were one and the same.

  Caleb leaned into the beat of his music as thoughts of his brother led to thoughts about work. Caleb had been a detective with the Wildman County Sheriff’s Department for five years. In that time he’d learned the importance of routine, especially when it came to exercising.

  “There’s never enough time to do every single thing you want to,” his father, Michael, used to say. “But there’s always time to do at least one thing. You just have to make that one thing count.”

  While his siblings, Madeline and Desmond, thought that was a bunch of bologna, Caleb had taken his late father’s words to heart. That mantra had served the patriarch well throughout his life.

  Until it hadn’t.

  But that hadn’t been his fault.

  Caleb’s thoughts started to darken. The upbeat music did little to stave off that darkness. No matter how many years passed, Caleb knew there would always be moments where what had happened clawed its way to the forefront of his mind. Where it would sit. And wait.

  A horrifying collection of memories from what felt like a different lifetime. The Nash triplets stuck in a loop of helplessness, fear, and pain.

  His feet dug into the dirt as he made physical distance from the home behind him. It had taken years for him, Madi, or Desmond to go back into the woods. To move between the trees without fear. Without worry.

  Yet, sometimes, when Caleb thought about his father he couldn’t help but think about the man with the scar along his hand. Then, suddenly, Caleb was a child again. He’d hear Madi scream. Hear Desmond cry out in pain. He’d hear his own voice quaver in anger and fear.

  Then Caleb would remember
that, even though the memories felt so real sometimes, that’s all they were. Memories. Ones that had no place on the ranch at the end of Winding Road.

  “But, how can it be over if the man with the scar is still out there?” asked Caleb’s inner voice. It was a question that always followed the memories, darkening them even further.

  Today, though, Caleb refused to entertain them for long. He leaned into the beat of his music and focused on the comfort of routine.

  The burn of exertion didn’t kick in until Caleb was passing the third mile marker. Scots pines lined either side of the dirty trail, their roots gnarled and reaching every few yards. Caleb had run the trail since he was fifteen and knew when to jump over or step around the ones that threatened to take a jogger by surprise. Just as he knew the exact spot to veer off the beaten path and forge over a less-known one to his favorite place across all of the ranch. The trees clustered closer but Caleb wove around them and kept going.

  He heard the stream before he saw the water.

  The trees thinned out and the ground dipped. Caleb jumped off a dirt ledge and slapped the trunk of a tree that had his initials carved into it. Rocks worn by erosion lined flowing water that was clear enough to see more rocks making up the bottom in the distance. It wasn’t a particularly wide waterway, neither was it that deep, but it was always cold.

  Caleb was already thinking about stripping down, wading to the deepest point and dunking under for a quick refresher before he rounded the last line of trees. He stopped in his tracks. He wasn’t the only one who had been thinking the same thing.

  A woman was already standing in the middle of the stream. Her back was turned to him but there was no denying the top layer of her clothes was somewhere else. Her raven-black hair was twisted up and showed smooth tanned skin, bare and reflected in the water just over her waist. Caleb couldn’t tell if she had any bottoms on but thought it ungentlemanly to find out. Though he wasn’t above admitting that, even from his limited view, there was an attractive curve to the woman. It brought out a feeling of curiosity that mingled with a more intimate excitement, but he wasn’t about to search out that feeling. Not when the woman had no idea she was being watched.