Settling an Old Score - Delores Fossen Page 0,6

for her to explain more about that. Leon and Marta were both Eli’s criminal informants. Both Marta and Leon had prior drug arrests, but Marta had been small potatoes compared to Leon. And Leon had ultimately been blamed for setting up the ambush attack that’d resulted in the bloodbath the night Marta had been killed.

“Why the hell would you go visit Leon?” Eli asked. She was surprised he could speak with his jaw clenched so tight.

He wasn’t going to like her answer.

“I wanted to hear Leon’s take on what happened.” She paused, because she had to drag in enough breath to continue. “He worked out a plea deal to get the death penalty off the table so there was no trial, no testimony, and I wanted to see if—”

“If I’d been the one to set up what went on that night. You think I purposely had Marta go into that alley so a drug-crazed snake could gun her down.”

That thought had kept crossing her mind until she’d become obsessed with it. “I just had to know the truth.”

“And you thought you’d get that truth from a criminal with a long record. One who confessed to putting Marta on the scene because he didn’t like the competition. She was giving the Rangers and cops more reliable info and therefore getting paid more than he was, and he wanted to put her out of commission.”

Ashlyn hadn’t expected Eli to see it any other way. But then, he hadn’t nearly been killed that night. “I had to be sure.” Her gaze flew to his. “And this proves I’m right. There is something off, or why would these men have taken Cora?”

That felt like a punch to the stomach. Oh God. In her quest to find the truth, she’d put her precious baby in danger.

“Why go and visit Leon now?” Eli pressed, not answering her question. “It’s been nearly two years.”

Ashlyn wasn’t sure he would understand. Heck, she wasn’t sure she did, either, but enough time had passed that she’d finally felt able to start confronting some of her demons. Cora was responsible for that. Ashlyn hadn’t wanted her daughter to be burdened with her mom’s emotional baggage, and she’d thought the way to start dealing with that was to visit Leon.

Before Ashlyn could even attempt to answer Eli, she saw him shift his body a little, changing the angle of the view he had outside the window. He had his attention focused on something, or maybe someone, and he was suddenly so still. Holding his breath and waiting.

“Get all the way down to the floor,” Eli suddenly shouted. He scrambled toward her.

His loud voice woke Cora, and the baby started to cry again, but Eli’s shout wasn’t nearly as deafening as the next sound.

A gunshot.

It blasted through the window where he’d just been standing. A second and third one quickly followed. And the shots set off the security system. The alarms immediately began to blare through the house.

Eli practically threw himself over Cora and her. Good thing, too, because the bullets sent glass flying through the room, and it clattered and pinged to the floor next to her. It no doubt hit Eli, too. She hoped those hits had only come from the glass and not the shots.

As the bullets continued to slam into the house, he turned, pivoting so that his back was to her, and he took aim at the door. It didn’t take her long to figure out why he’d done that. The latest shots were hitting the door. It was as if the gunman was trying to tear right through the wood.

And there was something else...

“Is the shooter getting closer?” she asked, her voice trembling. Plus, the alarm was so loud that she wasn’t sure how he’d managed to hear her.

“Yeah,” he verified.

Oh, mercy. Closer meant he could maybe get into the house and gun them down. Cora could be hurt.

Eli used his phone to turn off the blaring alarms. Probably so he could hear the gunman if he made it onto the porch.

“Move behind the sofa,” he instructed. “If things get bad, crawl down the hall and go into my bathroom. Get in the tub.”

She nodded and moved as he’d said, but things were already bad. The shots were coming nonstop.

“Where’re Kellan and Gunnar?” she asked.

“I’m not sure, but some of those shots are theirs,” he explained.

Ashlyn listened. That was hard to do with her pulse crashing in her ears, but she thought she could hear the different