Page 76 of Westin

Was she? She had an idea, but she wasn’t positive. The next few hours would prove her right or wrong. They were coming. She had no doubt about that.

“I should go move the truck,” Westin said. “Leaving it out front will be like a beacon, showing them exactly where we’ve gone.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. Let them see it.”

“You want them to find you?”

“No. But is there anywhere else we can make a stand? Anywhere that would be easier to defend than this building?”

“She has a point,” Remington said. “There’s only the one window, only the one door. They won’t be able to come in here without us knowing it.”

Westin studied her face. “All right. Tell us what you want to do.”

Bowie walked over with three shotguns laid over his arms. He handed one to Remington and one to Westin before snapping the third open to make sure it was loaded. “We’ll take the door. You should go get cleaned up and stay back there with Landry.”

Lee nodded. It seemed like the best idea she’d heard yet. She leaned forward and kissed Westin, a little surprised when he grabbed both sides of her head and drew her into him, kissing her with the same heated passion he’d offered her the night before. When he finally backed away, her head was spinning and she’d forgotten for a moment where she was.

“Be careful,” she said softly.

“You too.”

She walked back to the open space in front of the oversized bathroom and pulled the guns she’d stuffed into the back of her waistband out, checking both to see how many bullets they had left. The gun Clint had given her was down by three, leaving twelve bullets, and the other was down by two. Twenty-five bullets altogether.

“That’s Clint’s,” Landry said, coming out of the bathroom again, fully dressed this time minus his boots. “Where’d you get that?”

“He gave it to me.” She turned it around and offered it to him by the handle. “You know how to fire it?”

“Who do you think gave it to him?”

He released the clip and popped loose the one in the chamber. Then he counted, doing the same inventory she’d just done before he put it all back together. Knowing that these men knew their way around a gun should have made her feel a little better. Somehow, it didn’t.

She had no idea what was coming for them. If one of these innocent men got killed because of her, she’d never be able to live with it. Bowie tried Clint on his cell three times, but it kept going to voicemail. Westin took up a position by the window, watching until his vision was blurred, expecting trouble to appear at any instant. But five minutes turned into thirty, and that turned into an hour. Time passed slowly, the world darkening as the sun disappeared from the sky, and the moon refused to show itself behind the high winter clouds.

“How many are there?” Remington wanted to know.

“I don’t know. Two broke into the cabin, and she took them out. We saw one on the way over here, but I’m sure there’s more than that.”

“They’re probably gathering more,” Bowie suggested. “That’s what’s taking so long.”

“Probably.”

The whole thing was surreal, like something out of a John Wayne movie. He just wasn’t sure who had the advantage here—the guys who had all the time in the world to gather their forces, or the ones locked up in a small building with only one way in, one way out.

It was just about two hours since they’d arrived when something finally happened. Westin peeked out the window and saw someone running from the barn to the back of his truck.

“They’re here.”

Bowie came up and peeked out the window, too. “Where?”

At that moment, the truck exploded, flipping into the air and landing just feet from the door of the bunkhouse.

“Fuck!” Bowie cried, jumping back as the window shattered from the concussion of the explosion. Westin had seen a flash and managed to get down before the window broke, but he hadn’t managed to grab Bowie. He clutched his arm, pulled him onto his back, checking him for injuries. He was fine, though, unharmed. Just startled.

“We’ve got to move,” Remington said, grabbing the back of Westin’s collar. “That fire is going to catch the walls.”

Even as he said it, the front of the building burst into flames. It was like the wall had morphed from wood to fire in just the seconds it had taken for Westin to turn his head.

“That’s our only way out!”

---