Two gunmen remained.

  The unconscious man lay sprawled across the concrete floor like a sack of wet laundry. Blood seeped through the threads in the back of his ski mask where my pistol had struck him. I pulled my eyes away, shuddering.

  He’s dead, Thorn whispered in my thoughts.

  I tried to deny it, say I’d just knocked him out.

  You think he survived such a blow? Thorn insisted. Look at him. He had a mother, just like you. Maybe a sister too. Maybe even a wife and children who will weep when they hear that you murdered him.

  Lloyd chambered a round in the shotgun with a quiet, deliberate click. The sound was almost gentle, despite the macabre nature of the moment.

  Above us, a floorboard creaked. Sawdust fell from the low rafters as someone walked across the kitchen.

  Lloyd leaned close to my ear. His whisper was so quiet I felt it more than heard it. “Carol and the kids are upstairs.”

  The kids.

  It was strange to me to think of Derek and Katie as kids, but I realized that to him, even if he lived to be a hundred and they into their eighties, they would still be kids in his eyes.

  I nodded.

  My pulse beat like a drum solo. I was sure the intruders could hear it through the ceiling. My fingers had begun to tremble again, just like they had the night I killed my father.

  Lloyd gestured toward the cellar stairs.

  I understood. If the intruders came looking for the man I’d knocked out, they would descend those steps. The narrow passage would turn them into easy targets, even with my shaking hands.

  But if we waited too long, they might kill their hostages.

  Analysis paralysis had been my bane once before. My hesitation and inability to make a decision had allowed Mark to violate my sister so long ago and get away with it.

  No more.

  I’d spill the blood of a thousand wicked men if it meant I could protect those I cared about and prevent something like that from ever happening again.

  I swallowed hard and leaned close to Lloyd. “Kitchen,” I breathed.

  His eyes searched my face in the dim light. For a moment I thought he might forbid it. Order me to stay put.

  Instead, he gave the smallest nod.

  We moved with the softest steps.

  The cellar stairs creaked under our weight despite every effort to move silently. At the top, Lloyd paused beside the open doorway and listened.

  Voices drifted through the house.

  “…safe’s down there.”

  “Old man’s lying. He ain’t got no silver!”

  Katie’s voice cut in, fierce and defiant. “They’ll catch you eventually, and when they do, they’ll shoot to kill, send you all straight to Hell!”

  A sharp smack echoed.

  My stomach turned to ice, my blood to fire.

  Lloyd’s knuckles whitened around the shotgun.

  That was enough.

  He dashed up the last few steps, rushing into the room with the shotgun poised to strike.

  Everything happened at once.

  The man standing in the kitchen spun toward us, raising a pistol.

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  Lloyd fired first.

  The shotgun roared. The blast shattered cabinet doors and hurled the intruder backward across the linoleum. He collapsed in a spray of splintered wood and glass.

  Carol, tied to the kitchen chair, screamed and shrunk into herself as much as her bonds would allow.

  For a moment, silence hung in the air.

  Then the third man shouted from the living room.

  Gunfire exploded through the wall.

  Drywall burst apart beside my head. I threw myself to the floor as fragments rained down.

  “Get down!” Lloyd roared.

  Too late.

  The intruder charged into the kitchen doorway, rifle raised.

  I saw his eyes through the ski mask, and were it not for his height I would swear they were my father’s eyes. Cold. Certain. Murderous in intent. It was like he’d returned to finish what he’d attempted to do that fateful night.

  My pistol rose almost by itself. Beckoned by hate and survival, I squeezed the trigger.

  The shot cracked through the kitchen.

  The man staggered.

  A dark bloom spread across his chest. He wasn’t dead yet, but I knew I’d killed him. One more life taken. I could only pray that the lives I saved would even the score.

  He fired blindly as he fell.

  The rifle barked once.

  Something struck my side like a sledgehammer.

  For a second I didn’t understand what had happened.

  Then my legs collapsed.

  The floor rushed up to meet me.

  Pain flooded through my ribs, hot and crushing, as if someone had poured molten iron into my chest. I gasped for breath but the air refused to come.

  Lloyd shouted my name.

  “Alex!”

  The intruder collapsed beside the doorway, unmoving.

  The house fell silent again.

  Except for the screaming.

  Carol.

  Katie.

  Derek.

  Lloyd dropped the shotgun and knelt beside me. His hands pressed against my side.

  They came away red.

  “That son of a—” he muttered, voice breaking.

  “Oh, God! Alex!” cried Carol.

  I tried to speak but the words dissolved into a wet cough. Breathing felt like dragging shards of glass through my lungs.

  “Stay with me,” Lloyd said. “You hear me? Stay with me.”

  My vision had begun to dim around the edges.

  “Call 911,” Lloyd barked, rising from my side to unbind his family.

  Everything went blurry as tears filled my eyes.

  In the confusion, I heard Katie’s voice. “What happened?”

  “He saved us,” Derek said.

  Lloyd’s callused hand pressed harder against my wound.

  “Bullet went clean through, I think,” he muttered. “Lung maybe.”

  My ears rang. Their voices drifted further away from me. A world apart from where I lay.

  I was tired. So very tired. Tired of running. Tired of fighting. Tired of hiding and pretending.

  Maybe Thorn had been right. Maybe violence was the only language the world understood. Maybe the wicked would always prevail over the good. Maybe the evil in me canceled out the evil in the gunmen, and this was my reward for what I was.

  But another thought followed close behind, spoken in a gentle voice that sounded at once familiar and yet so strange.

  You helped them.

  The ranch.

  The work.

  The quiet evenings after sunset.

  For the first time in my life, I had felt something like peace here.

  I recalled their smiling faces. The laughter as they shared jokes. Katie asking if I wanted to kiss her and understanding when I said I couldn’t. It was beautiful. Like some sort of Heaven on Earth that I didn’t want to leave.

  I realized for the first time in years that I didn’t want to die.

  Not yet.

  Derek knelt beside me.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Alex,” he said, though the trembling in his voice betrayed him. He spoke as if to a man already gone.

  “Helicopter’s coming,” Carol added somewhere behind him. “They said they’re sending Flight for Life.”

  My lungs burned.

  Darkness crept closer.

  Lloyd squeezed my shoulder.

  “You did good, son,” he said quietly.

  Son.

  To have someone who saw me as a son and coupled it with praise. Such a thing was new. Exciting. Wonderful. For once, I had a father figure who loved me. Who didn’t spend his days wishing I was either dead or had never come to be in the first place. Who didn’t see me as someone to be victimized, but as someone to be praised and comforted.

  I tried to smile.

  Face death like a man! My father’s voice spoke in my head.

  I am, I responded. You didn’t.

  The world tilted.

  Sound faded.

  The last thing I saw before everything went black was the kitchen ceiling spinning slowly above me and Lloyd’s bloodstained hands refusing to let me go. If the last thing I saw before I died was to be someone who loved me, I was fine with it. I could approach God and say that regardless of His final judgment, I was glad that he’d allowed me that one joy before I reached the end.