Close Range Christmas by Nicole Helm (best free ebook reader .txt) 📕

Dev followed Jamison to the door, shrugging on his coat as he went. He looked back once at Sarah. Her face was a storm of fury, but she didn’t say a word, so Dev followed Jamison into the mudroom. There were two bullet holes in the siding of the house. One had come through the window of the storm door before Liza and Sarah had a chance to close it. The second had sliced through the bottom aluminum portion of the storm door and into the wall of the mudroom.

Dev tried not to think too deeply about how close Liza and Sarah had been to those bullet holes—and how there’d been nothing to do to get them inside any quicker except shoot back in the general direction of where the original shots had come from.

“Head for where the shots came from first?”

“Surely he’s moved on from there,” Jamison said. He had his gun in his hand, gaze sweeping the vast landscape in front of them. The rolling hills of the ranch were brown this time of year, dotted with patches of snow from the last accumulation they’d had.

“Unless we hit him.” Dev hoped to God they had. Let this be over. Now.

Jamison grunted, which wasn’t an argument, so they headed for the stables. Dev looked around for anything off. Shells, debris of any kind. A footprint in the patches of snow. Anything that shouldn’t fit the normal day-to-day of the ranch.

Nothing out of the ordinary...except a sound. He and Jamison stopped, ears straining.

“It sounds like...scratching,” Dev said. Then he broke out in a run, though it jarred his bad leg. He made it to the back of the stables, and then there was a bark. It was coming from the old chicken coop that hadn’t been used in years.

“How the hell did Cash get in there?” Jamison muttered, jogging with Jamison to the old coop. Someone had used an old pipe to latch the door closed. Dev supposed he should be relieved whoever had been out here hadn’t hurt Cash.

Dev pulled the pipe out so the door swung open. Cash flew out, snarling and barking. He darted off due north and Jamison and Dev exchanged a glance.

“I guess we follow.”

Dev nodded, pointed at the shells littering the ground on this side of the stables. “This was his shooting point. Then he ran away?”

Cash darted back, then ran off again, the barking becoming more frenzied. The darting becoming more insistent. Quietly, gun tight in hand, Dev followed. They wouldn’t sneak up on anyone with Cash losing it like this, but they didn’t have a choice.

Dev and Jamison stopped on a dime at the top of a small rise of land. The grazing pasture stretched out before them, but not far off was a body. A very still, facedown-in-the-dirt body.

Dev started forward, but Jamison grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Could be a trap.”

Dev gestured around. “We can pretty much see everything. Cody will check out the trees over there when he drives in, but that’s too far away to get any good shot off on us—even with a high-powered weapon.”

Jamison frowned, but he let go of Dev’s arm and together they started forward. They took careful steps, guns at the ready, eyes trained around them until they reached the lifeless body. There was a gun still in the man’s hand, but there was also a piece of paper pinned to the back of his shirt.

“It’s set up just like my note,” Jamison said, crouching to get a better look. Dev kicked the gun out of the lifeless man’s hands.

“‘Mike Christopher,’” Jamison read aloud. “‘Crimes: armed robbery, battery, second-degree murder, but most of all—failure. Sentencing: death by firing squad.’ Signed AW.”

“Hardly a firing squad,” Dev muttered. There was one bullet hole and it was clear the shot had been close range.

“Anth thinks he’s judge, jury and executioner,” Jamison said, looking away from the body and around them as if he could see something that would make any of this make sense.

“Then why did he send someone else to kill you?” Dev crouched too and studied the paper. It was typed like Jamison’s, and set up exactly the same. Sort of like a court document, but more informal.

“Kill my family, you mean. That gunshot was meant for Liza.”

But the more Dev thought about it, the more he wondered. Idly he petted Cash, who’d finally come to sit next to them now that he’d led them where he wanted them to be. “I’m not so sure it was meant for anyone. Maybe it was just to scare us. To scatter us like this.” Jamison looked around them. No sign of another soul. “He sure didn’t give this guy much of a chance. He got off two shots—then got murdered for his trouble.”

“I think that means he didn’t hit his target, Dev.” Jamison stood, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call County. They’ll want to do their own investigation, and get the ME to take the body.”

“Sure,” Dev agreed. Something about this was off to Dev, but that didn’t mean more eyes trying to figure it out was a bad thing. “Good boy,” Dev murmured, giving Cash a scratch behind the ears. “I bet we can even convince Grandma Pauline to let you sleep inside tonight.” They’d need the extra lookout, because one thing was for sure.

This wasn’t over. It was only the beginning.

Chapter Nine

The house was even more crowded now, though Sarah had to admit it helped her nerves feel less...frayed, she supposed. She was still nervous and scared. She kept thinking every little unexpected noise was a gunshot, but there was always someone to talk to or a kid or dog to play with.

The local police came and Jamison and Dev headed outside with them to show them all they’d found. Liza, Nina and Gage went upstairs to put their girls to bed. Once the police had finished their investigation and the removal of the body