Again, with more force now, he pushed off from Beverly and tried to dislodge Mel. “My kids!” he said when Mel resisted him.
“Stay down, don. It’s a sniper. We got guys trying to track him down. I’ll make sure we get everybody under cover, but I don’t want you exposed until we nail the bastard. You stay down.”
He didn’t like Mel deciding what he could and couldn’t do, but he was too surprised by the rest of it to complain.
“Sniper? From where?” The house was on a hill, and all the neighboring homes were friendly—and part of the perimeter his guards controlled. There was nowhere for a sniper to set up. This was a secure location. It was his fucking home.
But Alex Di Pietro answered his question from somewhere close by. With horror in his voice, he said, “The lighthouse. Oh, fuck—if they got in the lighthouse …”
The lighthouse hadn’t been manned for years, since the town had voted in a bond issue to automate it.
“Get somebody to the fucking lighthouse,” Nick yelled, “and get everybody here back inside now!”
“I think we’re clear,” Tony called.
“Yeah, clear. We’re clear.” That was Donnie. “Another shot would help us locate the shooter. Whoever it is, he knows that.”
Mel rose, still keeping his body crouched to cover Nick, and helped Nick to his feet. When Mel believed the attack was over, he stood back. Nick helped Beverly up. Alex had Lia, and Carina got Ren to his feet.
Elisa didn’t get up.
She lay sprawled, face down, on the lawn, the skirt of her pretty red dress hiked up to show her legs to mid-thigh. Her dark coat was was spread out like a cape around her.
Beverly hadn’t noticed yet; she was checking on the younger kids, directing Alex to get them into the house.
Nick crouched beside his daughter. At first, he thought she was having a panic attack, and as evidence mounted for a different truth, he clung to that first idea with both hands.
“Come come, signorina, it’s okay,” he murmured, trying to will it to be true. “You’re safe. I’ll keep you safe.”
He caught the hand he’d held only moments before. It was slack. Lifeless. Then he saw, in the glare of all those headlights, the glistening dark pool forming on the frosty grass beneath her.
The world around them, which had become such chaos in a flash, was quiet again. Eerily so. It had shrunk to this one point in time and space.
“Elisa, it’s okay,” he said, feeling something come loose under his breastbone. “You’re safe, you’re safe. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ll never let you get hurt.” He scooped his little girl into his arms, turned her so he could cradle her close. Her eyes were open. Beautiful, bright blue eyes, so like her mother’s.
Beverly came then, rushing back to him and Elisa where they sat on the cold ground.
She pulled up short beside them. And screamed.
~oOo~
“Nick. Let me handle this. You don’t need to deal with it. You need to be with Bev right now.”
Nick looked at Donnie’s hand on his arm until Donnie pulled his hand away. “Don’t tell me where I need to be or what I need to deal with.” Firmly turning from Donnie, he faced Tony, who’d just come to the hospital, which was why the three of them were sequestered in an empty patient room now.
They were in the hospital because Trey and Giada had both been shot and were in surgery. Giada had been shot in the neck, Trey in the back. Their wounds were severe, life-threatening, but both were alive yet, and in surgery.
One shot each. And one meant for Nick.
It had killed his daughter instead.
Nick closed his eyes and dug deep for his dwindling reserves of calm before he ordered Tony, “Tell me.”
If he’d had a gun in his hand, he might well have shot Tony for the way he shifted his attention to Donnie for just a blink before facing his don again. But Nick rarely carried these days; he was surrounded by armed men tasked with protecting him and his.
“I can confirm it was a sniper, and Alex was right—they were set up at the lighthouse. With the blind eye, it doesn’t look like a good vantage at all, but with the right scope and good aim …” He let that sentence go and went back to practical details. “They didn’t leave much behind, but there were fresh footprints on the floor at the bottom. Soft-soled boots.