Page 136 of Perfect Cowboy

So where is she?

And then she’s running straight at me, diving onto the snow and pulling the sweatshirt over her head. She’s going to freeze in a tank top and I try to protest, but she wraps it around my shoulder the best she can and pushes me back onto the ground.

She uses her knee to apply pressure and it hurts like a bitch, my teeth clenching as sweat soaks my body. The adrenaline crash must be coming.

“It needs to clot, cowboy. Sorry if I’m hurting you.”

“I told you to stay in the house.”

“And I told you not to die. Guess we’re even,” she says.

“Funny. You’re even a smartass when people are trying to kill us.”

All of Brad’s companions are either dead or critically injured, and Cameron’s guns are leveled at the man who was a second father to me. Henry will be here soon – he has to be – and then Brad will be arrested.

It’s over.

The threat is neutralized.

Now I’m just left with the emotional wreckage.

“Why?” I shout at him. It’s the only question I can manage.

Mark Chalmers is one of the men lying on the ground, and the rest of them are his buddies. He wasn’t man enough to confront me himself, so instead, he created an elaborate plot to try and ruin my life from behind the scenes.

Mark’s family lost a lot of money to Ashley’s dad, and they were very vocal about it when she and Brady fled the state. But many of the other people in town also lost money. He’s the one who chose to turn to the destruction of property, trespassing, and attempted murder.

Jesus.

But all the pain and disappointment come from the fact that Mark got Brad to turn on me, a man who I consider my blood.

Considered.

Guess it’s the past tense now.

“Oh, please,” Brad snaps. “I should be retired by now, Gavin! And I’m still working because ofher! You think I fucking want to be here? You’re sitting pretty because of your Hollywood brother, and I’m still out here busting my ass. When these guys offered me money for information, I took them up on it.”

“You wanted to help them kill us.”

My jaw clenches tightly against the pain. Ashley runs her fingers through my hair while applying pressure to the gunshot wound, doing anything she can to try and give me some comfort.

But my heart is what hurts the most.

“That’s not true, and it wasn’t supposed to go down this way,” Brad replies. “They just wanted to scare the bitch out of town. But she wouldn’t fucking leave, so they upped the stakes. And then shit escalated too far.”

“Where are all the dogs? Did you kill them, too?”

“They’re muzzled and locked in the barn at the back of the property.”

Well, that explains why they didn’t alert us. They trust Brad, so they wouldn’t have had an issue going with him when he corralled them.

“Are these all the guys involved or are there more?” I demand.

It suddenly hits me that there could be more people hiding out on the property or on their way here. All I need is a stray bullet to hit Ashley, and Brad is the only one with the information I need to keep her safe.

“Fuck you.”

“You need to go back inside,” I say to Ashley, but her track record for listening to me is pretty fucking low.

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