Page 88 of Ambush

It was so dark she couldn’t see well, and the light flashed again and again.SOSin Morse code. Then she spotted the figure moving around in a tree flickering the light. Wait, were hyenas around the tree? It had to be Blake trying to signal with a flashlight.

***

When Blake heard the first shot ring out, he thought it was thunder, but a bullet plowed into the platform, digging a rut through the wet wood. It sounded like a .223 round. With the second shot he caught movement from atop the barn on the outside of the enclosure. He peered through the dark rain but couldn’t make out the person’s identity. Either they were a terrible shot or they didn’t want to hit him. Were they trying to knock him off the platform and into the jaws of the hyenas milling around below?

His murder would appear to be a tragic accident. He shifted position on the platform so the metal support pole sheltered more of his body. The shooter would need to change positions to hit him. Had waving the flashlight signaled his position? A little earlier he’d decided to try an SOS signal in case Paradise had gone to the house. It was too far from here to see well, but he’d thought he caught a flash of light along the drive and had tried to signal. Whether anyone had seen it was the question.

A bullet struck the metal pole, and he flinched. The rain continued to pound his head and saturate every inch of his body. He couldn’t stop shivering. He peered down through theleaves below and saw the hyenas had taken note of the shooter’s presence and moved toward the far fence. There was no way out, though, with them blocking the gate. If he dropped to the ground, they’d be on him in moments.

If only he’d been able to retrieve his phone. The longing didn’t fix a thing, and he would have to figure this out by himself. He could go down into the shelter of the leaves and branches for a while, but he feared he wouldn’t be able to hang on with his hands numb from the cold. And his perch down there would be thinner and slicker. It would be a precarious position.

Wait.

The inner prompting to stay on the platform was too strong to resist, and he clasped his wet arms around his shivering torso and tried to ignore the desire todo something. He hadn’t been able to text Paradise or his mom, so they were undoubtedly worried. He thought it likely Paradise would try to find him, but the roads might be flooded and impassable.

His watch glowed the time. Nearly midnight. All he could do was pray and wait.

Chapter 42

Paradise followed Clark back toward the parking lot and prayed Blake had seen her flick the lights on and off on his truck, but the angle and the rain made her doubt he’d seen it. She’d intended to give him hope that help was on the way.

But how? She couldn’t crash the truck through the gate to get to him without releasing the hyenas into the wild. Rounding them up before they harmed someone might not be possible. Blake wouldn’t want her to try that. There had to be another way.

She parked behind Clark and got out into the storm. He rushed to her side. “Someone’s shooting a rifle!”

She turned and tried to see through the darkness. “Where?”

“On top of the barn.” He reached into his truck and pulled out his rifle. “He’s shooting toward Blake but missing. I think he’s trying to knock him into the hyenas. I’ll try to knock him off the barn, or at least distract him.”

Thunder rumbled overhead and she looked around for another vehicle. “How’d he get in here?”

“Hard to say. Someone else dropped him off? Maybe a neighbor and he walked?”

Clark started toward the barn and she followed. “Hey, I thought of something,” Paradise said. “Blake has night-vision binoculars in his apartment above the garage. There’s a line of sight to the barn from the window up there too. I’ll go fetch them. It will just take a minute.”

“You go ahead. I gotta stop him from knocking Blake down.”

She nodded and ran for the house. The side door to the garage was unlocked, and she threw it open and raced for the steps at the back. The sandbags hadn’t kept the flooding from the garage, and she splashed through six-inch-deep water. The house might be as bad.

She pounded up the steps and used her phone to find the flashlight Blake kept by the door at the apartment. Its beam pushed back the dark, and the cone of light swept the room and landed on the binoculars where she’d last seen them by the back window. She snatched them up and pressed them to her eyes to peer out the window toward the barn.

The greenish images were sharp and she spotted the figure on the barn. She adjusted the view and gasped when the man turned. Owen Shaw held a rifle in his hand and aimed it toward the tree.

When she lowered the binoculars to go back out and help Clark, another movement by the barn door caught her attention. She brought the binoculars back to her face and focused them. Lacey’s face jumped into view. Behind her through the open barn door was a pickup. They’d hidden the vehicle.

Paradise took the binoculars and flashlight with her and went back outside to find Clark. When she reached him in the shelter of the overhang of a shed, he was aiming the rifle at the barn roof.

“It’s Owen, the vet from town. And his girlfriend is waitingin the barn with a truck for it to all be over.” She brought the binoculars up to her eyes and found Owen again. He didn’t seem to know anyone had spotted him and was aiming the rifle again.

“They’re both about to get a big surprise.” The rifle gave a small kick against Clark’s shoulder.

Through the binoculars Paradise saw Owen turn and slip. He caught his balance and brought the rifle around toward where they stood. “He’s seen us.”

“Don’t matter.” Clark aimed the rifle again and fired.

The bullet plowed into the roof by Owen’s feet, and he teetered again. This time he fell onto his backside and slid down. His arms and legs flailed as he tried to catch his descent, but the roof was too slick from the rain. He plunged off the edge of the barn and landed in the water near Lacey, who ran to him. Owen didn’t move. She lifted his head out of the water and held it.

Paradise swept the focus of the binoculars to the tree where Blake hunkered beside the pole. His head hung low and he shivered violently. She lowered the binoculars. “Let’s get over there and make sure they’re no longer a problem. We’ve got to get Blake out of there as quickly as possible. I don’t know how much longer he can hang on.”

---