Page 82 of Never Stay Gone
“Me? I’m keeping an eye on you. I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you came out here. You see, I never did trust you, Dakota…” As he spoke, Wayne shifted, his weight moving from his front to his back foot.
It was all the warning Dakota got.
Wayne turned, the barrel of the gun leaving Shane’s forehead and twisting toward Dakota. Dakota breathed in, a sharp, rasping gasp, one thought blazing through him, the same thought he’d had when he’d felt a different bullet tear through him on that dusty border airstrip all those months ago:Shane.Shane.
His eyes snapped to Shane, and he thought he could get one last “I love you”in before the shot came, thought he could die looking up at him—
Shane lunged, wrapped both hands around the barrel of his gun, and dragged the muzzle to his chest.
Right over his heart.
“No!” Dakota’s shout was almost as loud as the gunshot.
It sounded like bones exploding, like a million rubber bands breaking as time slowed and stopped. A shell ejected from the chamber, winking in the sun as it tumbled end over end, and a puff of smoke made a little cloud around Shane’s chest. Shane looked at Dakota with the widest eyes Dakota had ever seen as he crumpled to his knees and fell across Wayne, dragging them both to the old wooden porch.
Dakota roared. Flying up the stairs, he launched himself at Wayne, ripping Shane’s gun from his hands. The muzzle burned Dakota’s palm as he flung it across the porch. It bounced off the siding, sliding behind a flowerpot. Dakota had surprise on his side, a half second gifted by Shane grabbing the gun, another half second from the weight of Shane’s body unbalancing Wayne.
He wrestled Wayne away from Shane. Got on top of him. Straddled him, knees on either side of his hips, left hand wrapped around his throat. An echo of what Wayne had done to Shelly, and to the others.
Dakota slammed his right fist down into Wayne’s face once, twice, three times. His knuckles shattered, and the skin over Wayne’s cheek and chin and eyebrow split. Wayne sputtered, spat blood up at Dakota, and Dakota punched him again.
Wayne scissor kicked, got a leg around Dakota’s shoulders, and heaved, shoving Dakota off him. He rolled to his belly and crawled forward, like a lizard skittering across the wooden planks. One hand reached for the small of his back.
Dakota threw himself at Wayne, grabbed him around his legs, and yanked. Wayne fell to his face, cheek sliding over the worn wood porch. He cried out, bellowed with rage. His hand kept searching in his waistband, opening and closing around air, like he was trying to find—
Dakota spotted the barrel of Shane’s gun, glinting behind the flowerpot.
Wayne’s hand finally closed around the grip of his gun. He pulled, turned—
Dakota lunged for Shane’s weapon and rolled onto his back. He brought the Glock up, pointing into the center of Wayne’s face, and pulled the trigger. Once, twice. A third time.
He didn’t even wait for Wayne’s body to hit the porch. He scrambled back, crawling, scrabbling to Shane’s side, the wet gurgles of Wayne’s dying gasps behind him.
Shane wasn’t moving. He hadn’t moved, not since he’d taken that bullet. Point-blank range. He’d done it on purpose. He’d dragged the gun away from Dakota. Had taken the shot right to his heart.
“No, no, no.”
Shane was the color of ash, his eyes slits, nothing but whites showing through his wet eyelashes.
There was so much blood. A lake of it around Shane, slowly growing.That’s what happens to shattered hearts: they bleed out completely.Dakota felt his own heart breaking, all of himself bleeding like Shane was, agony sliding down his ribs as his world was destroyed.
He tore Shane’s shirt open, whispering Shane’s name and nonsense prayers, begging God or anyone who would listen to save Shane, to spare him. Praying that Shane, somehow, was wearing a vest, when none of the deputies out there wore vests. He didn’t feel anything under Shane’s shirt, didn’t see the telltale rise of ceramic plates or Kevlar.
All he saw was blood.
Dakota pressed his face to Shane’s, forehead to forehead, one palm over Shane’s heart as he squeezed Shane’s limp right hand. His throat was clenched almost all the way shut, the world shifting on waves of salt water and Shane’s death-still face. “Shane, you stupid bastard,” he choked out through his sobs. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
Shane coughed. He squeezed back on Dakota’s hand, harder than a dying man had any right to. His eyelids fluttered, and twin blue orbs rolled down to stare into Dakota’s eyes.
Dakota felt Shane’s heartbeat, hummingbird-fast but strong, beneath his palm.
And he felt something else. Jagged metal, slivers that dug into his skin. Dakota hissed and looked down.
Where his hand had lain, a dozen silver shards protruded from Shane’s skin. Twisted metal that still bore traces of a stamped diploma, the outline of a football. One sliver sticking up from Shane’s nipple read “96.”
The broken ends of a chain lay in a shallow pool of blood at Shane’s throat.
Dakota ran his hands all over Shane, feeling every piece of his class ring embedded in Shane’s chest. He wiped away the blood and finally saw the ricochet: a long, deep cut—the path of the bullet—that ran from Shane’s left pec, where it had shattered Dakota’s ring, and veered sideways, sliding across Shane’s sternum before burrowing into the meaty flesh on his right side between his collarbone and lung. There was an exit wound below his shoulder, a clementine-sized ragged hole Dakota could put two fingers into. Blood flowed from the wounds.
