Page 121 of Crosshairs

Colton struggled to stand.

Maddox ignored the boy. “I’m asking you for the last time. Where is she?”

“I told you, I don’t—”

Maddox backhanded her again.

Don’t push him,Linc urged silently and risked another look. Maddox stood over Ainsley with his hand drawn back.

“Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said.

“The ranger that’s been sticking to you like glue.”

“I came by myself.” From his vantage point he could see Ainsley working her jaw. “But Sam Ryker will be here any minute.”

“I’m shaking in my shoes.” Maddox laughed. “You don’t mind if I don’t believe you? I’m only going to ask you one more time. Where’s your boyfriend?”

“I don’t care what you believe,” she snapped.

Linc raised his gun, pointing it toward Maddox. It wavered in his hand. He couldn’t do it.Lord, help me.

In his peripheral vision, Maddox jerked Ainsley to her feet and pressed the gun against her head.

“Nooo!” Linc rushed toward them.

Maddox jerked his head toward the sound. Ainsley broke free from his grasp as Maddox turned toward Linc and fired.

Linc barely felt the stinging in his leg until he went down. Still holding his Glock, he rolled, and a bullet kicked up dirt by his face. Muscle memory kicked in, and he raised his gun, aiming at the center of Maddox’s chest. Linc squeezed the trigger.

Maddox went down, dropping his gun. He didn’t get back up, and Ainsley kicked it away. Linc used a headstone to climb to his feet and then hobbled to her.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she felt Maddox’s wrist for a pulse.

“Yeah. Is ... is he dead?”

“I think so.”

He raised his head at the faraway wail of a siren. “Help’s on its way.”

“I hear them, but we better make sure an ambulance is on its way too.” She held up her hands to be cut loose. “You were great.”

“I don’t know about that.” His head swam as he fished his pocketknife out and managed to cut her loose before darkness closed in.

64

My mother—how is she?” Colton asked.

Ainsley looked up from where she was leaning over Linc. It was impossible to answer the boy without looking at Maddox. Death was never pretty, and no matter what kind of man he was, a human life had been lost. “She’ll make it. I cut her loose from the restraints.”

“She was trying to protecthim,” the boy said. “I don’t know why.”

Neither did Ainsley. She would never understand the dynamics of marriages like theirs. She turned her attention back to Linc. Judging from his pants leg, he’d lost a lot of blood.

Gingerly, she used his knife to slit the pants past the wound. It wasn’t spurting, and Ainsley placed the pants material over the wound and pressed against it, hoping one of the sirens she heard was an ambulance.

“Cut us loose,” Jesse Mason demanded.

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