Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Hannibal started barking fiercely.
The tone of Tonks’s bark shifted, joining him.
The third guy seemed to be poising to run away.
A blast was heard from downstairs, and along with it the agonized howl of a dog.
My stomach twisted and the pain was insane.
Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!
More ferocious barking, so ferocious, now I couldn’t tell which dog it was.
Zzsst!
The guy who shot first flew back.
Zzsst!
He went down.
The guy hesitating stopped hesitating and started running.
Zzsst!
He went down.
Another blast from downstairs.
My laser light started shaking.
Zzsst! Zzsst!
The guy I had my light pointed at went down.
I could hear barks, snarls, commotion downstairs.
Then I heard glass shattering from beside me.
I looked that way to see Hutch shoving shards of it away from the window frame with the butt of his gun.
He changed magazines and looked at me.
“Stay here until I tell you to come down,” he ordered.
I opened my mouth, but he slid out the upper story window in his pajama pants and a Henley and nothing else.
But his rifle.
I watched out my window, seeing him on the move, at first relieved the fall didn’t break his legs. Then I did it stunned as Hutch made short work of running from one to the other to the other of the men on the ground, aiming his rifle at them at the same time grabbing their guns and tossing them out of reach.
After he did that, he quickly moved to the front of the house, rifle up, and he didn’t fuck around being stealthy.
He disappeared under the roof of the porch.
Within a couple of seconds, the barks and snarls stopped, and all I heard was puppies howling.
“Please let my man be okay. Please let our babies be okay. Please. Please,” I chanted, looking this way and that to see if I could find Hutch.
Nothing.
I kept watching, hyperventilating, shivering uncontrollably.
My body jerked violently when I heard a shotgun blast from the other side of the house.
Then another one.
My head whipped that way. “Oh my God, no.”
I was about to scramble to that side of the house to ascertain if I could see anything out of one of those windows when I noticed movement out of Hutch’s window.
I squat-walked over there quickly and looked out.
Hutch was dragging a body across the ground.
He dumped it next to another guy who was writhing.
He tossed the extra gun he held aside, again well out of arm’s reach, and calmly walked to one of the men who was trying to crawl away.
He grabbed him by the ankle, dragged him across the ground and dumped him next to his buddies.
I heard him say something, though I didn’t hear the words, before he went to the fourth guy and dragged him to the others.
Then he walked to the house, and not long later, the fifth guy was being dragged down the steps by my man.
“Mabel!” Hutch boomed after he dumped him with the rest.
I scurried to the attic door, pushed it down, the ladder unfolded, I scrambled down, and I ran to the living room.
Hannibal was on his belly, but he had his head up, nose pointed attentively to the door. He was bleeding from too many places. Tonks was whimpering, fussing around him and licking him.
I bent to them and put my hands on Hannibal.
When he felt my touch, he kept staring out the door, but he whimpered too.
My heart cracked.
“We’ll get you help, baby,” I promised, stroking his glossy fur. “Hang tight.”
I surged up and ran out the door.
“Put your boots on!” Hutch thundered the instant he saw me.
I skittered to halt, raced back, went into the kitchen, shoved my feet in my Uggs, grabbed Hutch’s brown and black insulated flannel and shrugged it on, then grabbed his sheepskin coat.
I turned around and raced right back out the front door.
Hutch was pointing his rifle at the five men.
I’d seen the pictures on the news.
One was Enstrom.
One was Burress.
What the fuck?
I went to him and handed him his jacket.
He handed me his rifle.
“Keep it on them.”
I hated guns.
I put the butt to my shoulder and aimed.
“Steady, May,” he said then, BOOM! I jumped because a shotgun blast pierced my ears.
I glanced at him and watched as he shook it, heard the ratchet, then, BOOM! he shot it into the sky.
He tossed it aside and grabbed another one.
I turned back to the line of wounded men.
BOOM! Shake. Cock. BOOM!
Headlights could be seen on Hutch’s lane.
He promptly picked up a shotgun, put it to his shoulder and aimed at the old blue truck trundling up the drive.
It stopped, the door opened, and a man shouted, “It’s me! Me! Hutch! It’s Paddy!”
“Get over here!” Hutch ordered.
The man ducked into his truck, came out with his own shotgun, and then he jumped out.
He was an older man, wearing what I was wearing, except with jeans, and obviously his boots weren’t Uggs. He jogged to the opposite side of the men from where we were standing and aimed his shotgun at them.