Snapped (41 page)

He peered through the scope and waited. The familiar weight and shape of his rifle calmed him, made his heart slow. His scope was zeroed for eight hundred yards, and he wasn’t sure he could make it even if the shot presented itself.

But failure was not an option.

A brief flash, and Jonah’s breath caught. The sun, glinting off a scope. It was a serious mistake, and now it was up to Jonah to make it fatal.

Three deep breaths. He paused. He pulled the trigger and took the shot of his life.

A jolt of movement in the bushes behind the rock.

The shooter falling? Was he dead?

Jonah’s ears were still ringing as he stared through the scope and tried to determine.

The shot had been clean. Steady. He thought he’d made it, but there was only one way to know for sure.

He had to go see.

Sophie squeezed her eyes shut and murmured a prayer. Jonah was alive. She’d just heard his gun.

But the shooter could have returned fire, and she wouldn’t even know it.

She looked at Wyatt again, passed out and slumped over the console. He was breathing. He had a pulse. It wasn’t strong, but it was there, and Sophie was praying it would be there when Jonah came back.

And if he didn’t … She couldn’t think that way. It was like a betrayal.

Sophie needed to be ready for anything. She needed to be alert. She adjusted her grip on the pistol and stared at the door.

The sniper wasn’t there.

Jonah crept up on the hide and saw that it had, indeed, been recently used. He noted the flattened plants, the scuff marks in the dirt.

The trail of blood leading away.

Jonah gripped his Glock in his hand now as he glanced around. He followed the trail into the plants and saw the olive green object protruding from the base of a bush.

Another wary glance around. Jonah crouched down and slid the rifle out from where it had been discarded.

The scope was destroyed. The front layer of glass was shattered. The bullet had penetrated a good twelve inches through multiple layers of thick glass but hadn’t come out the other end.

Son of a bitch. What were the odds? A perfect shot, and the fucker was saved by his own scope.

Maybe.

The impact would have been tremendous. Even at eight hundred yards, the force of a rifle absorbing that round would be a major blow to the head.

Hopefully, a mortal blow.

Jonah unslung his rifle from his back and slid it under some brush. This was up close and personal now, and he needed to be ready to move quickly.

His heart hammered as he tracked the blood through some bushes. It moved in the direction of the Explorer, but the path was erratic—either purposely so or because of a severe injury.

Then suddenly, nothing. No more trail.

Jonah stopped and listened.

A whisper of wind through the scrub brush. The buzz of insects. The distant croak of a bullfrog down near the creek.

Snap
.

He dropped to a knee and whirled around, gun raised. A deafening
boom
an instant before he pulled the trigger. Jonah dove to the ground, rolled, and scrambled to his feet.

A flash of movement, so close he didn’t even have time to aim, he just threw his weight into him. They crashed against a tree and a pistol went flying just as Jonah pointed his Glock. A burning twist of his wrist and it fell to the ground. Jonah brought his arm up and shoved it against the man’s throat. He got his first good look at his attacker as the man’s head snapped back against the tree trunk. Green and brown greasepaint, blood-matted hair. Sharpe’s right eye was swollen shut, maybe even missing, from when the rifle had pummeled him.

Jonah felt a hot pain in his side and leaped back. Bad move. The sniper landed a knee in his kidney. Jonah sensed the knife swinging in again and dodged right, then spun around again, slamming his weight into him.
He hit him squarely in the solar plexus with 230 pounds of angry muscle, and in the instant of paralysis that followed, he seized the knife hand and crushed the wrist. The weapon dropped to the ground alongside Jonah’s Glock. He lunged for the gun and Sharpe was on him. Jonah reached back and grabbed him by the shoulders, and with a giant heave, flipped him over his head to land on his back. Jonah rolled sideways to grab his Glock and brought it up just as the attacker got to his feet and charged him with the blade.

Pop
.

Sharpe jolted back as if he’d hit an invisible wall. He fell against a cactus bush and rolled to the ground.

Jonah was on his knees in the dirt, staring at the dead gunman. Jonah’s gun was still raised and aimed, as if the man might suddenly spring back to life.

Jonah stood up on unsteady legs and took a step forward. His heart thundered. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, and he could have taken on an entire enemy platoon with his bare hands.

This enemy was dead.

He stared down at the man with disgust. The streaks of blood on his face contrasted with the greasepaint and the greens and browns of his woodland camo. One eye was swollen shut while the other stared sightlessly up at the sky.

Jonah thought of his dad. And Sophie. He dropped to a knee and did a quick pulse check before rooting through the sniper’s pockets. He came up with not one set of car keys but two.

Jonah’s mind reeled. Was there another getaway car? Another accomplice?

He shoved both keys into his pocket and took off running.

Sophie couldn’t wait any longer. Wyatt needed help
now
. She shoved the truck in gear and slowly pressed the gas.

The truck inched forward, then stopped. She heard the painful sound of something hard grinding against rock. She shifted into reverse and tried that way, with no better result.

Sophie cast a frantic look at Wyatt. His skin looked gray now and his pulse was thready. She didn’t know what was going on with Jonah—couldn’t even bear to think what those pistol shots meant—but she knew she had to do whatever she could to get them out of here. She engaged the four-wheel drive and tried backing up again.

Movement
.

The truck lurched backward, bumping over something in the road. Or was it the tire tread? She had no idea, but they were rolling. She peered between the gap in the two front seats at the rectangle of blue behind her. Nothing tall, at least. She was still afraid to peek her head over the dash, but she did her best to navigate as she steered backward toward what felt like the direction of the woods. How far could she manage to go on one good tire? The air smelled like burning rubber, and an excruciating scraping noise was coming up from the front wheels. Was there any chance she could find the road and make it out to the highway?

They hit a bump, and Wyatt slid forward in the seat. Sophie stopped the truck and leaned over to catch him.

Noise outside. A vehicle approaching. Loud, bigger than a car. She grabbed the pistol off her lap and held her breath. Oh, Lord. Would she have the courage to shoot someone? Or would she be paralyzed with fear?

Sophie leaned back against Wyatt’s body and pointed the gun.

“Sophie!”

Jonah dashed for the truck and stopped short as he found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol. She was sprawled across the front seat, shielding his father’s body with her own as she leveled that gun at him.

She went limp with relief, and Jonah yanked open the door.

“Is he alive?”

“Barely. He needs help.”

Jonah was already rounding the hood to go to the other side. He jerked open the door.

“Is it safe now? The sniper’s dead?”

He met her gaze over his father’s motionless body. “He’s dead.” The words sent a chill down Jonah’s spine as he scooped his dad up and heaved him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Jonah rounded the truck.

“Get in the back. Help me get him in.”

She hurried to the Explorer and yanked open the door. Jonah tried to muscle his dad inside and onto the backseat without jarring his wound.

Sophie went around to the other side and helped pull him through using his uninjured arm. Then she climbed in the back and settled his head on her lap as she jerked shut the door.

“Go!”

Jonah grabbed a barn jacket from the pickup, rushed back to the Explorer, and jumped behind the wheel. He took off for the nearest road—a back route that skirted the south of the property before spitting out on the main highway.

“We need a phone. A landline,” Sophie said. “We need to call an ambulance.”

“No time.” Jonah floored the pedal, going as fast as he dared over the rugged terrain. This SUv wasn’t designed for these conditions and they had no time for a flat tire.

Jonah’s heart pounded. He glanced at Sophie in the rearview mirror. She was adjusting the bandage, which seemed to consist of both of their shirts now. She had a determined fire in her eyes, and he thought about how she’d looked aiming that gun at him. She’d been shielding his father with her own body, and Jonah had no doubt that if he hadn’t called her name out the second he did, she would have blown him away.

Jonah took the barn jacket off the seat beside him and shoved it back at her. “Put this on.”

She grabbed it and pulled it into her lap, making it a pillow for his dad’s head.

The SUv bounced as they hit a rut. Jonah eased his foot off the gas, but not much. They didn’t have time.

Sophie glanced around impatiently. “Why aren’t we taking the main road?”

“Get your head down,” he told her. “There could be another shooter.”

The frantic race to the hospital turned into an unbearable wait.

Sophie fetched a third soft drink from the vending machine and trudged back down the hallway to the waiting room, where Jonah sat with a pair of FBI agents. They’d been interviewing him for an hour now, and she could tell he’d had enough. Every few seconds his gaze darted to the double doors, where he was hoping a doctor would appear to deliver the outcome of Wyatt’s surgery.

Sophie didn’t think it was good. She wasn’t normally a pessimist, but she couldn’t keep the feeling of dread from closing in on her. She remembered way too many times when her father would come home after a marathon surgery, and the defeated look on his face would tell the story without him even having to utter a word.

Sophie glanced at the clock. Four and a half hours.

She strode into the waiting room, and all three men looked up.

“Hi.” She offered Jonah the soft drink. It was a caffeine-and-sugar-packed Dr Pepper, and she’d hoped it would perk him up, but he shook his head.

“Everything all right?”

The two agents, whose names she’d been given and promptly forgotten several hours ago, looked up at her silently.

“It’s okay,” Jonah said. “You can tell her.”

“Tell me what?”

The younger of the two men cleared his throat. “We just got word from our evidence response team. They’re
processing the crime scene now, which as you can imagine is quite extensive.”

Sophie pictured a team of black-suited FBI agents swarming the deer lease like ants.

“And you found the sniper?”

“We did.”

“Has he been IDed?”

The agents exchanged looks, and seemed to decide she merited this bit of information.

“Joe Shugart,” the designated spokesman said. “Also known as John Sharpe. We intend to confirm that through fingerprints.”

“Assuming they’re on file,” Sophie said.

“They are. He’s ex-military.”

Sophie looked at Jonah, whose gaze was trained once again on those double doors. He wore a gray T-shirt with the sheriff’s department logo on it that some deputy had given him. He’d managed to clean some of the mud off in the restroom, but he still had streaks on his neck and arms—not to mention a slash on his left side that he’d refused to talk about as a nurse had bandaged him. Sophie would ask later.

She made eye contact with the agent who wasn’t mute. “How did he find us at the deer lease? I was told no one knew we were there.”

“I led him right to you.”

Her startled gaze met Jonah’s. “What?”

“We found a GPS tracking device,” the agent informed her. “On Detective Macon’s truck.” He looked at Jonah. “It was well-hidden, underneath the back axle.”

Jonah raked his hand through his hair and looked away. She could tell he was torturing himself about this.

“And he was acting alone?” Sophie asked, trying to change the subject. “What about the second set of keys?”

“All the evidence we have tells us he was a lone operator. Those keys belong to a Dodge, possibly the one that ran you off the road the other day. We’ve got some agents looking for the vehicle right now.”

Sophie looked at the two men, who’d been summoned out to this rural hospital on a holiday weekend. She imagined dozens more trekking around the deer lease.

“A lot of agents on this thing,” she observed.

“Sharpe has been on an FBI watch list for years.” This was the first she’d heard from the silent agent.

“A watch list?”

“Suspected ties to governments hostile to the United States,” he elaborated. “If he weren’t dead right now, he’d probably be looking at treason charges.”