Defiance: A House Divided (The Defending Home Series Book 2) (3 page)

With two bullets remaining, Sandy struck the man with the rifle, dropping him to the ground like a sack of dirty laundry. The sight made the other man flee back behind the barn. He was shooting from his left hand, likely not the one he was most comfortable with, which explained why he’d decided to tuck tail.

Dale and Sandy changed magazines and headed toward the front of the house, staying low as they approached, in case more of Ortega’s men were by the road.

But that didn’t seem to be the case. There were a few shots coming from a group of vehicles fifty yards away, but most of the firing was coming from inside.

Glancing from right to left, Dale spotted a clear set of tire tracks leading from a gaping hole in the fence by the road toward the boarded-up front entrance. The pickup had plowed into the house right up to the windshield, its tail lights on, the engine running, the back wheels still spinning. The impact had torn a gaping hole large enough for Ortega’s remaining men to storm through.  On the plus side, the holes they’d dug for booby traps seemed to have slowed the truck’s momentum enough to prevent it from doing far more damage.

Dale holstered his pistol and came up with the shotgun. Sandy and Duke were on his six as they stayed low and headed through the hole and into the darkened confines of the house.

Dale’s eyes struggled to adjust. They’d left a bright, sunny world and entered a darkened hellscape. The whiff of gasoline and cordite was strong. So too was the noise, weapons of every caliber rattling off in every direction. With the windows and doors all boarded up, it was difficult to see more than five feet in front of you. To their right, near the kitchen, Dale could hear the sound of men crying out in pain. A voice from the darkness called to him.

“El Ventrílocuo, is that you?”

“Yes,” Dale replied and opened fire. The light from the exploding end of his barrel lit the terrified thug’s face before he was thrown back by the blast. Dale racked the shotgun, following the sound of gunfire. Two more cartel members were working their way up the staircase by the kitchen. They turned right as Dale and Sandy fired. Both men froze in a strange tableau of death before slumping forward. Climbing the stairs, Dale called out so they wouldn’t get shot by their own side.

“Watch out,” a voice that might have been Brooke’s shouted back.

A gunman stepped out from one of the bedrooms with an AR-15 and managed to get a shot off before Dale fed his chest some buckshot. The rifle flew from the man’s hands. When Dale reached the top of the stairs he spotted two cartel members jumping from the window in his bedroom.

Dale headed back into the hallway to help clear the rest of the second floor. “I’m coming through,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”

Zach emerged from one of the bedrooms, aiming a pistol. He lowered it when he was certain it was Dale. “They had us pinned down,” he explained with noticeable frustration.

“It’s not over yet,” Dale chided his brother-in-law. “There may be more of them.” He peered into the guest bedroom which faced onto the road and saw Dannyboy lying on the floor with a bloodstained pillowcase wrapped around his head. Next to him was Walter, struggling to draw in shallow breaths. Ann was tending to both Dannyboy and Walter. Nicole was kneeling next to her, sobbing.

Dale swore.

“He was one of the first to get hit,” Zach told him, referring to Walter. “Crazy old man thinks he’s Rambo or something.”

“Will he be okay?”

Zach shrugged. “Hey, I’m no doctor, I just play one on TV.”

More shots from outside.

He thought about Brooke and Colton. “Is everyone else accounted for?” Dale asked.

From a bedroom at the other end of the hall they both emerged, looking exhausted and shell-shocked.

“Where’s Shane?” Dale asked. But the blank expressions on everyone’s faces told him nobody knew.

“He was positioned in your room. Spent most of his time complaining,” Zack said. “Things were going well until the whole house shook. After that everything just went haywire.”

Dale, Zach, Sandy and Duke ran to where Shane had been shooting, stepping over the dead body at the doorway. There they found Dale’s room was empty. Scooping up the cartel member’s AR, Dale went to the window and began scanning outside. A shot zinged over his head and he took cover. But he’d seen enough. In the distance, the cartel were loading the wounded and beginning to retreat. Bodies lay strewn around the small part of the property he could see, but in all of that carnage, Shane was nowhere to be found.

The next few minutes were spent sweeping the interior of the house to ensure all the cartel members were either dead or gone. Once that was done, Dale ordered sentries to cover every approach while he, Zach and Duke searched for Shane. Ducking through the large hole in the wall, Dale moved to reach into the pickup to turn off the ignition when he saw a body slumped over the passenger seat. The windshield above the wheel was cracked and stained with blood where the driver’s head must have struck upon impact.

“Serves you right,” Dale said, killing the engine with a flick of his wrist. Three more bodies lay on the front lawn, their feet stuck in traps, their torsos riddled with bullet holes. Others were visible on the driveway, cut down as the first wave had been beaten back. It must have been an especially brutal assault, especially for those facing Walter’s aged, but experienced hands.

An eerie silence descended over the whole area, leaving Dale with a strange and saddened mix of emotions. He was relieved that, bloody and battered, they hadn’t been completely overrun and at the same time devastated that his brother was missing and his mentor critically injured. It was a high price to pay, but he couldn’t be more proud.

Zach returned from the rear of the property.

“Any sign of him?” Dale asked, holding tight to the last threads of hope.

Zach shook his head. “He just up and vanished.”

“I doubt that very much,” Dale replied. “They got him, which might be why they were in such a hurry to pull back.”

“You thinking they’re gonna use him as a bargaining chip?”

“In some ways I hope so,” Dale replied. “Because the alternative is that he’s already dead.”

A shout from inside the house sent them scurrying inside. Brooke was in the kitchen, holding the remains of a bloodstained calendar. It looked as though a wounded cartel member had ripped it off the wall and run a bloody hand across the front. But the closer Dale looked, the more those bloody streaks began to take on the appearance of letters and words.

You have one hour to leave or he’s dead.

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“H
e’s being held hostage,” Dale told the others, holding up the bloody calendar as proof. They were gathered upstairs to figure out what to do next.

Still kneeling in prayer beside her wounded father, Nicole dissolved into tears. Ann rubbed her back reassuringly and tried to tell her it would be all right.

Zach stuffed the pistol into the seat of his pants. “Can’t say I’m Shane’s biggest fan, but seems to me we’re wasting time squawking like a bunch of mother hens when we should be mounting a rescue operation.”

“That’s exactly what Sheriff Gaines and Mayor Reid will be expecting,” Dale shot back.

Zach was surprised by his quick answer. “How do you figure?”

Colton, who had been staring out the window, keeping watch, turned to his father. “They kidnapped Sandy a few days back. Dale, Shane and I had to go rescue her.”

Zach eyed Sandy up and down. “Kidnapped? Honey, you don’t look like a kid to me.”

Sandy ignored him.

Dale felt his hands tighten into fists. “This isn’t helping. Colton’s right. They knew if they took one of us, we’d be tempted to mount another rescue. For all we know, this was part of their plan. If they failed to kill us, then they would grab someone and use that person as leverage.”

“If we stay and do nothing, then Shane dies,” Zach said, making no bones about how he felt. “He’s your brother, man.”

“I get that,” Dale said, not liking Zach’s tone. “But if half of us leave to try to rescue Shane, we may be leaving ourselves overly exposed, especially with a giant hole punched into the front of the house. Even at full strength we were barely able to hold them off.”

“There must be at least ten bodies out there,” Zach said pointedly. “Many of the others who got away won’t be fighting anytime soon.”

Dale crossed his arms over his chest. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m telling you we have an advantage and we should not let it go to waste.”

“What about the sheriff and his deputies?” Colton threw in, shrinking when he saw the look of displeasure in his father’s face.

“Colton’s right,” Dale said, pacing back and forth and running his fingers through his hair. “We may be playing right into their hands. Running straight into a trap.”

“I vote we do what they say,” Nicole moaned, struggling to get the words out.

Even Ann was surprised by that. “But where will we go? What will we do for food and shelter?”

“We can go back to our old place,” Nicole told her, rising to her feet. “I’ll start getting my things together.”

“No one’s going anywhere,” Dale told her. “You left your house for a reason, Nicole.” Dale stopped and drew in a deep breath. “Listen, I get that our emotions are running high. I want Shane back just as much as the rest of you, but putting everyone at risk over one person’s safety isn’t a smart move. If your father were conscious, I’m sure he’d be the first to agree with me.”

Nicole stood, frozen with disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re being so cold,” she hissed. “It’s fine for you to condemn my husband to death. Would you be sitting back if it was Brooke’s life on the line?”

The sting of her words made Dale physically recoil. The emotional part of him wanted to tell her to keep quiet, that she was making a difficult situation even worse, but another part of him realized she did have a point. What if Brooke had been in Shane’s place? Would he be mulling over the most practical options? Or would he already be out the door, his Mossberg and Remington by his side with Duke riding shotgun? Frightening as it was to even contemplate such a scenario, Dale was thankful she hadn’t been the one taken.

Then on the heels of that thought came something worse. What if she had been the real target? The one person who Sheriff Gaines knew possessed the power to short-circuit Dale’s ability to think straight and do what was best for the group. The possibility was far too frightening to contemplate and far too plausible to ignore.

While the two most obvious choices would only place them in greater danger, there was a third option they hadn’t yet considered.

Dale cleared his throat and began telling them what was on his mind. “Maybe it’s time we reach out and give them what they want.”

Brooke’s eyes grew wide. “Hey, I’ve been preaching diplomacy since all of this began, but you said if we gave these guys a single drop they wouldn’t stop until they had it all.”

“I did,” Dale admitted. “And trust me, this isn’t what I want. But we’re not in a position to choose between good and bad options. We’re at a fork in the road and every path leads somewhere bad. I’m just trying to figure out which one will keep the rest of us alive.”

“So what do we do?” Sandy asked.

“We draft a note and begin negotiations,” Dale said. “Like two punch-drunk heavyweights, both sides have been bruised and battered. If we’re going to ever get decent terms, it may be now.”

“I’d like to write it,” Brooke offered, her eyes already staring off into empty space as she considered the words she would use.

“Okay. I’ll go over it when you’re done,” Dale said. “But first we’ll need to make sure Shane’s still alive.” Nicole’s features crumpled at the very suggestion before Dale went on. “Only after will we offer a set amount of water each week.”

“You’re making a mistake trying to negotiate with these animals,” Zach told him. “I know the way these cartel types think. I’ve done time with them. In their minds, diplomacy is no different than admitting weakness and if there’s one thing they hate, it’s weakness.”

“That may be,” Dale replied. “But we won’t be negotiating with
them
. We’ll be talking with Sheriff Gaines and Mayor Reid. Ortega and his drug-dealing associates don’t belong in this country, let alone in this community, and I intend to send them packing the moment I get the chance.”

Sandy checked her watch. “Then we better hurry. There isn’t much time.”

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W
hile Brooke worked frantically on a draft of the letter for Sheriff Gaines and Mayor Reid, Dale and most of the others began clearing away the dead.

Ann and Nicole stayed upstairs with Walter and Dannyboy. The old man was having a difficult time breathing. The women were doing everything they could to keep him alive. They’d stopped the bleeding, but they suspected he’d suffered a collapsed lung when the bullet had torn through the right side of his chest. He would have to be monitored and seen by a doctor if at all possible.

Dale’s first order of business was to back the cartel’s pickup out from the house and park it over near the pumphouse.

With weapons slung over their shoulders, Dale and Sandy then began carrying the dead from inside the house, laying them in piles. Zach and Colton worked around back doing the same. It was grim and depressing work and not the first time they’d been in a position to stack up the dead like so much cordwood. Dale was starting to feel like an undertaker. He’d be lying if he didn’t admit a few of them were still clinging to life, but that wasn’t anything a well-placed bullet couldn’t fix.

In thirty minutes from now, they would be expected to vacate the property. And with every second that ticked away, the pressure to save his brother’s life was mounting. He could feel it churning his insides, working his gut in an uncomfortable, almost sickening way. Still, he felt it was best not to let on what an agonizing decision it had been. In spite of the differences between him and his brother, Shane was blood and deserved every reasonable action to ensure his safety. The real question was, how could any responsible person jeopardize the safety of those in his charge for a single life? It was a conundrum that had likely challenged folks throughout history.