out. He vaulted the porch railing and when he made it to the end of the cabin, he stopped there with his back against the wall and listened. He could hear the man groaning and that was when he quickly stepped around, in a shooter’s stance, bracing himself for the bullet he expected to come. Instead, he found a man with dark, curly hair, lying in the brush in a fetal position, crying as blood poured out of the hand that had nearly been ripped off by the bullet that hit the end of the rifle.
Razor walked over and kicked him. He howled like a wounded animal. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Call an ambulance! My hand…” Razor kicked him again. He was barefooted, wishing he had his boots on for a greater impact.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Bobby! My name’s Bobby! Now call a fucking ambulance.”
Before Razor could respond, he heard a gasp from behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Kayleigh and she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“What the hell?” Razor had dragged the bleeding man inside and Kayleigh was still looking at him like she didn’t know whether to hug him or shoot him herself. “You’re dead…or at least I thought you were. I saw you get shot!”
“I did get shot. Tore my fucking shoulder up…ahh! Fuck! I need a doctor!”
“No! No doctor, no nothing until you tell me what’s fucking going on or I’ll put a bullet in your head myself! I’ve had enough, Bobby. What the fuck is this? And how did you find me?”
“Look” he said, wincing with every word as sweat poured from the sides of his face and blood soaked the sleeve of his shirt and dripped down onto the floor. “The Vipers want their money. You give it to me; they leave you alone. You don’t, they come after you and keep coming after you until you’re dead. Trust me, Kay. These guys are bad, fucking news.” Razor was sitting back, holding the gun still but letting Kayleigh handle the questioning. He knew it was stupid, but Bobby’s intimate use of “Kay” caused a hot surge of jealousy to hiss through his veins. He bit his bottom lip and continued to listen to the exchange.
“Oh right,” Kayleigh said. “I just hand over the money and they’ll let me go free. That’s bullshit and you know it! And you were shooting this place up, trying to kill us!”
“No. I wanted to scare you, Kay…I wasn’t going to kill you. Come on, baby…”
“Don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you call me baby, ever!” That calmed the jealousy in Razor’s veins. He knew there were a lot of more pressing matters at hand than his sixth-grade envy of the dark-haired man sitting across from him, but he couldn’t control it. Kayleigh wasn’t his…but he didn’t want her to be this bozo’s either. “You shot into the door, and the windows. You didn’t know whether you’d hit us or not. You didn’t care! You were trying to kill us!”
Bobby looked at Razor then. A dollop of sweat rolled down into his right eye and he squinted and said, “Fine, I was trying to kill him. I figured with your big-ass bodyguard out of the way, you’d listen to me and just give me the money. They promised me they won’t hurt you, ba—Kay, but only if they get their money back. All of it!”
“Why didn’t you just go to your mother and ask for it?”
He snorted and said, “She thinks I’m dead. Everyone does.”
“Yeah,” she said, “and they think I fucking killed you. Yet here you are, big as life, letting me be wanted for something I had nothing to do with.”
“You took the money, Kay. If you’d left it alone…”
“They would have come and got it and killed you both, you dumb fuck.” Razor hadn’t meant to say that aloud, but once he had, he couldn’t stop himself. “That money is the only reason either of you are alive. The second they get it back, you’re both floaters in the swamp. But you know that, don’t you? You were going to kill Kayleigh and take that money, but you weren’t planning on giving it back to them, were you? What’s your plan? You got an airline reservation lined up? A boat?”
“You fucker! He’s right, isn’t he? You wanted that money so you could run.”
“They shot me, Kay! Look at my shoulder, there’s a bullet hole clean through. I couldn’t go to the hospital, so it’s