Nate by Delores Fossen

I’ll take out the uniform and then bring these two down for a chat.”
    Darcy watched in horror as the gunman took aim at Mel. She reacted completely out of instinct. She drew back her foot and rammed the thin heel of her right shoe into his shin. Nate reacted, too. He dived at the man, slamming right into him, and they both went to the ground. So did the man’s headset.
    “Run!” Nate told her.
    Darcy turned to do just that, but she stopped. Nate was literally in a life-and-death struggle with a much larger, hulking man, and she had to do something to help.
    But what?
    She glanced over her shoulder to see if Mel had noticed what was going on. The deputy hadn’t. Darcy started to yell out a warning to her, but again she stopped. If she yelled, heaven knew how many gunmen she’d alert, and the men inside the house might try to get away with the children.
    Or they might do something worse.
    Besides, Mason and the others were probably close to approaching the house now, and if she sounded the alarm, it could get one of them killed.
    Darcy looked around and spotted the rifle. She couldn’t risk firing a shot, but maybe she could use it. She grabbed the barrel and tried to use the rifle butt to hit the gunman.
    She failed.
    Nate and the man were rolling around, their bodies locked in the struggle, and if she were to hit Nate accidentally, then it could cost them the fight. And this was a fight they couldn’t lose.
    “What’s going on?” she heard someone ask over the headset.
    Her heart dropped again. It wouldn’t take long before the person on the other end of that transmitter realized something was wrong, and that might cause the boss to take some drastic measures.
    Nate must have realized that, as well, because she heard him curse, and he revved up his attempt to control the man’s gun. Both had fierce grips on the weapon, and the gunman was trying to aim it at Nate.
    Darcy kicked the guy again when she could reach his leg. And again. While Nate head-butted the man.
    The sound somehow tore through the noise of the struggle.
    It was a loud swish. As if someone had blown out a candle. But Darcy instinctively knew what it was. The gun had been fired, the sound of the bullet muffled through the silencer.
    “Nate!” she managed to say.
    Oh, mercy. Had he been hit?
    She dropped to her knees and latched on to Nate’s shoulder, to pull him away. There was blood. Lots of it. And a hoarse sob tore from her throat.
    “I’m okay,” Nate assured her. But he didn’t say it aloud. He mouthed it so that no one on the other end of that transmitter could hear him.
    But Darcy shook her head. He couldn’t be okay, not with that much blood on the front of his shirt.
    He repeated, “I’m okay.” Again, it was mouthed, not spoken. And he scrambled off the gunman, who was now lying limp and lifeless on the ground.
    Nate wrenched the gun from the man’s hands and put his mouth right against Darcy’s ear. “He pulled the trigger,” he let her know. “And missed me. He hit himself instead.”
    Her sob was replaced by relief, and she threw her arms around him. Nate was alive and unharmed. She couldn’t say a prayer of thanks fast enough.
    “We can’t stay here,” Nate insisted, his mouth still against her ear. He glanced at the headset next to the dead man.
    Darcy nodded. He was right. They couldn’t stay there because it wouldn’t be long before someone came to check on him. Nate and she had to be long gone by then.
    Nate kept the gun with the silencer in his right hand, and caught her arm with his left. He started to run, hauling her right along with him, and he headed in the direction that his brothers had taken.
    Darcy’s heart was already pounding from the fight, and her heels didn’t make it easy to race over the uneven terrain. But she couldn’t stop or give up. Not with her baby’s life at stake.
    She wanted to know where Nate was taking her, but she didn’t dare ask. The woods were thick, without much