CHAPTER TWENTY
FOUR MINUTES LATER Dan Brigman hit the front door of the county office with what felt like half the town behind him. He’d called 9-1-1 as he’d run to his car. Pearly answered on the third ring. He barely gave her time to say hello, yelling, “Get the fire department and an ambulance headed toward my office. Now!”
He’d dropped the phone in his shirt pocket and shot out of his drive. Sirens blaring, he’d hit ninety by the time he pulled onto the main road and didn’t slow down until he saw his office. As he ran up the steps, the fire truck that had only three blocks to travel was pulling up.
“Stay here,” he yelled at the firemen. “Don’t let anyone in until I give the order. We may be dealing with an active shooter.” Dan had no idea what he would face. Dakota had said “man down,” and Blade was the only man he had working.
“Will do, Sheriff,” Cap, a retired fire chief, who must have come from his home across the street, yelled from the crowd. “I’ll take care of things here.”
Dan stepped inside. The lobby was dark and still, as if holding its breath. Dan was relieved when he found nothing waiting for him in the entryway. Still, not a single one of his muscles relaxed.
He moved up the stairs, listening, alert.
On the third landing, Dan turned and unlocked the first door to the jail cells. The key turned. Good sign. The jail was locked up tight.
“Blade? Lucas?” No answer. “Blade!” Again, no answer.
Weapon in hand, he slowly unlocked the second door. One inch. Two inches.
The scene came into sight, into his comprehension, one slice at a time. Dan found exactly what he prayed he wouldn’t see.
Trouble.
His deputy was on the floor with blood everywhere. Lucas’s white shirt was also bloody, but from the way he was working on Blade, the prisoner wasn’t hurt. Blade’s shoulder holster was on the cell floor where the deputy slept, but his gun lay beside Lucas, within ready reach.
For a second Dan thought Lucas Reyes had shot Blade Hamilton, but that didn’t make sense. Why would he be fighting so hard to save him? How could a man behind bars shoot an armed federal agent?
There was no time to analyze. Dan went with his gut. He rushed to the landing and saw the two EMTs trying to fight their way around Cap. The retired fire chief was holding them back, waiting for Dan’s orders.
“Let them up, Cap, but no one else.”
“Will do.” Cap shoved them inside, yelling for them to pick up their feet and hurry.
As they stormed up the stairs, carrying what looked like about a hundred pounds of gear, Dan ordered Cap to clear a path. “We got a man down. Call in a bird.”
“Already have,” Cap shouted. “Just in case you needed it.”
Dan rushed back to the jail and knelt beside Lucas. “Is he breathing?”
“He is,” Lucas answered. “He’s been shot twice. I tied off the arm, but I can’t stop the bleeding on his side.”
Dan took a breath and tried to reason. Two men locked in a room. One gun. One man shot. This might be the dumbest question he’d ever asked but Dan looked directly at Lucas and said, “Who shot him?”
“I don’t know. He went to get his phone. I asked him to stop by my truck and pick up mine. I thought I heard two shots. A few minutes later when he ran back in, he’d been shot.” Lucas leaned back as the medics moved in.
Lucas stared at Dan with tears in his eyes. “They must have thought he was me. He had my clothes on. We’re about the same size. He’d pulled the hood up because of the rain. I... I...” Lucas pulled himself together as if testifying. “The bullets were meant for me.”
“We don’t know that,” Dan said, unsure if he was trying to convince himself or Lucas.
The medics laid their hands over Lucas’s and replaced pressure on Blade’s wounds as Lucas slid his bloody fingers away.
Dan linked his arm under Lucas’s shoulder and helped him up. The lawyer was badly shaken. They moved to the cot that would have been Blade’s bed for the night. Lucas took a few deep breaths, as if there weren’t enough air in the room to fill his lungs.
“It’s my fault, Sheriff. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been so close when the barns burned. If I hadn’t been one of the first there. They wouldn’t have thought I saw something. Knew something.”
“Who is ‘they,’ Lucas?”
“Reid’s new men. They saw me there. In the firelight I saw worry in their eyes and I looked back silently shaking my head like I knew they’d set the fires. Like I might have some evidence. That’s why I encouraged my dad and mom to leave. I knew there would be trouble, but not this. I thought one of the thugs would just break and come forward when they couldn’t get to me.”
Dan knew Lucas was rattling. Somehow, Lucas felt this shooting was his fault.
He thought he was doing the right thing.
“I loaned him my clothes. I didn’t think.” Lucas’s eyes turned liquid with pain. “Don’t you see? It’s my fault. Whoever shot Blade thought he was me. I was bluffing that I had information on the chance of breaking their line. I thought if they could get to me they might try to frighten me off.”
Dan patted Lucas on the shoulder, knowing that he didn’t feel any comfort. “This is not on you, son. It’s not. You didn’t fire the shot.”
Lucas nodded and dropped his head into his bloody hands.
Dan rose and walked back to Blade. Lucas needed time to calm down.
A fireman was cutting the ugly brown jogging suit off as two men treated Blade.
Dan reached for the gun that was lying beside the special agent in a stream of blood. The barrel was cold. It hadn’t been fired. Dan carried the Glock back to the cot where Lucas sat. “Why’d you have the gun, Lucas?”
“I was afraid whoever shot him would come after us both. Finish him off and kill me. If you hadn’t yelled our names, if I hadn’t heard the sirens, I might have shot you.”
“But you didn’t. You did the right thing, Lucas. You protected him until you knew I was on the other side of that door.”
One of the EMTs looked up. “Steady vital signs. We’ll make sure he’s stable and then get him ready to transport.”
Dan hadn’t noticed that two more men had come in, carrying a board to move Blade. They all worked like a well-oiled machine, each with his own job, as if they were professionals and not volunteers who trained on their own time.
In what seemed like seconds, they were lifting him, tied to the board, into the air.
“How is he?” Dan asked.
Only one man glanced back as they began to move their patient. “Stable. He’ll be up and riding that hog by the time I get it rebuilt.”
“Take care of him, Lou,” Dan ordered.
“I will, Sheriff.” The mechanic smiled. “Like he was a vintage Harley.”
Slowly, the men carried Blade down the two flights. The helicopter was landing in the middle of the highway, stopping traffic in both directions.
Dan walked down beside Lucas and they watched from the shadows as the firemen handed Blade off to men and women in scrubs.
As the crowd observed the helicopter, Dan leaned next to Lucas and said, “How about we go somewhere and talk because we both know we’re not going back to that jail cell.”
“Where?” Lucas finally seemed to relax a bit.
“Somewhere safe.”
Lucas let out a sharp laugh. “I thought I was somewhere safe.”
“See that rust bucket of a Jeep? You can slip off the side of the porch and be in it before anyone sees you.”
“Tim’s Jeep?”
“You got a better idea?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll round him up and tell him to go home. Stay at his place. I can walk from my house to his after I get back from Lubbock. I need to talk to you, but I have to make sure Blade is okay first.”
“I don’t want to get Tim mixed up in this. It’s just a rumor that I know something and they’re after me.” He shook his head. “I even egged them on at the fire. Thought I was being smart.” Lucas looked up. “I’m an idiot, Sheriff.”
Dan patted his hand. “Never heard a lawyer admit that. You got a chance of being brilliant and don’t worry about getting Tim involved.”
“It’s dangerous. I see that now. I don’t want him hurt.”
“Are you kidding? Tim will love this kind of thing. He’s been hanging around this office for years, wanting to get involved. He’ll jump at the chance to help you and maybe fuel his own imagination. Who knows, we might make it into one of his books. Reid’s men will never guess you’re with him. I doubt anyone will even remember you two guys were once friends.”
“We still are,” Lucas said. “Or at least I hope we are.”
“If anyone is looking for you, they will try your three cousins and their families first. That’s your closest kin in the county after they learn your parents are gone.”
Lucas nodded. “All three live on farms so far from town they’ll see trouble coming and meet it armed. You’ll let them know I’m safe?
“I’ll call my brothers and sisters. Half the time I can’t find them, but I’ll leave a message for them to report anything strange.”
“I plan to tell everyone in town I transported you to a safe house. No one, and I mean no one, is to know where you are. Not until I figure out why someone wants you dead. They must be holding some kind of secret to be willing to shoot someone they think might know something. I got enough bodies showing up in my county. I don’t want another one.”
“Got it,” Lucas said as the engines of the helicopter roared and dust whirled in the air, blowing trash and tumbleweeds around like brown snow.
When the dust settled, Lucas had vanished, and Dan walked through the crowd, knowing that somewhere among the curious was one man who’d meant to be a killer tonight.