One Night Standoff - By Delores Fossen Page 0,66

have driven out.

Hopefully Quentin didn’t have other gunmen stashed outside to ambush them.

“Shoot him, Lynnie,” Quentin demanded. He forced her to move forward, toward the door and the hall. No doubt where he was planning to escape.

Lenora shook her head, and even through the pain, he could see the tears shimmering in her eyes. “Give me another option,” she demanded right back.

Quentin laughed, but there was no humor in his tone. “You always were difficult. I would have killed you sooner, you know, but I couldn’t find you when you went into hiding after Jill’s murder.”

That put a new height on the hatred Clayton felt for this piece of slime.

“If you’d wanted me dead, you could have just waited at my house, the one you vandalized,” Lenora reminded him. “But I don’t think you wanted to kill me. I think you wanted to torment me.” Despite the tears, her voice was surprisingly strong.

Clayton wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

He didn’t want Lenora to do anything to provoke Quentin more. The man was obviously operating on a short fuse. So all Clayton needed was some kind of distraction. Just a few seconds, so he could draw the Smith & Wesson from his boot holster and blast Quentin to smithereens. Of course, for that to happen, he’d first have to get Lenora out of the way.

“Guilty,” Quentin agreed. “I do love tormenting you.” And with his gaze now fixed on Clayton, Quentin kissed Lenora on the cheek. “Wish I could drag this out a little bit longer, but I figure Clayton has reinforcements on the way, and you and I need to leave before they get to the house.”

Quentin shoved her forward again. Closer to the door. And he lifted Lenora’s hand, pointing the gun right at Clayton. “Put your finger on the trigger.”

“No.” And she tried to shove the gun away.

“Either put your finger on the trigger,” Quentin warned, “or Clayton will get the pleasure of seeing me kill you where you stand.”

It was the first thing Quentin had said tonight that Clayton believed. He would kill Lenora, and with the way their bodies were positioned, Clayton wouldn’t have the shot to stop the man.

“Lenora?” Clayton called out. Just as he’d hoped, she quit struggling. He didn’t want the gun to go off accidentally, because it could still kill her.

Her gaze came to his again, and she seemed to be waiting for him to give her some kind of signal. He wanted her to move out of the way, but he didn’t see how she could safely do that. After all, Quentin had her hand clamped around the gun.

“Do you still want to marry me?” she asked. “If so, my answer is yes.”

Clayton didn’t know who was more stunned—Quentin or him. The timing certainly sucked, but Clayton thought the sucky timing was exactly what Lenora wanted. It was such a simple thing. Just a couple of sentences, but she must have known it would send Quentin into a jealous rage.

And it did, all right.

Quentin made a feral sound, and he latched on to Lenora’s arm so hard that Clayton was sure that he was about to kill her on the spot.

But Lenora made her own sound—a loud screech, and she tore herself from Quentin’s grip and dove toward the bed.

Just as the blast echoed through the room.

* * *

LENORA INSTINCTIVELY PUT her hands over her stomach to try to protect the baby, and she tried to scramble across the bed and to the floor.

She failed.

The shot came anyway, before she could protect herself. And she braced herself for the feel of the bullet slamming into her body.

That didn’t happen, either.

Instead, the bullet went in Clayton’s direction. Into the floor where he’d been only seconds before she’d started this whole distraction thing to get her away from Quentin. It’d been a gamble. A huge one. And she was counting heavily on Clayton having some other weapon. If not, well, they were both about to die.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Clayton roll to the side, and when he came up, he had a gun in his hand.

Thank God.

He fired at Quentin, but just as Clayton had done, he got out of the path of the oncoming bullet. Quentin landed in the doorway, part of him in the bedroom and the other part in the hall.

The shots came instantly. A battering of bullets that nearly felt like an earthquake. It took her a moment to realize that neither Quentin nor