If I Should Die

THIRTEEN

Sean slammed the door. He handed Lucy the unsigned note as he scanned the horizon.

“We should get out of here,” Tim began. “He could be-”

“He’s gone. He gave us a warning.” Bastard.

Sean continued to assess the landscape. If the sniper was telling the truth, he intentionally tried not to hit them. But the shots came close enough to make him believe, at the time, that the shooter wanted them dead. Or maybe when he missed, he wanted Sean to think it had been planned. Either way, he was enraged.

“He was up in a damn tree,” Sean said, having a hard time reigning in his temper. “I don’t think he stayed around long enough to clean up his brass.”

He started down the logging road toward where the shots had been fired.

Tim followed. “You can’t go out there. He could still be around.”

“Dammit, Tim, he could have killed us!”

What Sean wanted to say was that the shooter could have killed Lucy. When he found out who it was, he’d pummel him. But his anger wasn’t going to help them here and now. He reined it in. “He’s gone. I’m sure of it,” Sean said with as much calm as he could summon from inside. “If there’s any evidence out there about who this bastard is, I’ll find it.” Lucy nodded at him. Sean was relieved that she understood. “Keep your eyes open, Luce.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll go with you,” Tim said. “Adam, stay with Lucy.”

Sean had identified the area where the shots originated. Heading that way, he noted three possible trees in the distance the sniper could have climbed, all the while scanning the area to make doubly sure he wasn’t wrong about the bastard’s departure.

If I wanted you dead …

First the tricky maneuver that led to his fall into the mine, then someone taking shots at him, now further threats. Sean had to find out if the vandalism was related to the shooter, because if it was that meant the dead girl was also connected.

The first tree Sean approached had a large, freshly broken branch near the ground. Sean looked up and noted several cracked branches.

“He shot at us five times,” he said. “I want the brass. There’s a good chance he didn’t wear gloves when he loaded.”

“I’m shutting down the resort,” Tim said.

Sean stared at him. “You’d give in to these scare tactics?”

“He could have killed you.”

“This is my battle now.”

Tim clenched his fists, showing a rare anger. “Like hell it is.”

“Dammit, Tim, he went after me. I’m not backing down, not until I find him.”

“I have to postpone the opening. I have a lunatic shooting at my guests.”

“We’re hardly guests.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s only three weeks until my first real guests arrive, and I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to one of them. If we stop these people before then, great, but I’m still not opening until it’s settled.”

Delaying the opening was exactly what both Henry and Jon Callahan had suggested the night before. Was the shooting to underscore this so-called suggestion? The vandalism had escalated from property damage to arson to attempted murder.

If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.

“Let’s find the brass first,” Sean said. “Then, I want you to meet with the Callahans. Jon Callahan told us last night that he wanted to talk to you about postponing the opening. Suspicious, don’t you think?”

“You can’t think that the Callahans are behind this-why?”

“I’ll find out. They want to play hardball-I invented the game.”

A chill ran through Sean’s body. How easy it was to fall back into his old life, an existence prone to lawbreaking and violence. His brother Duke had, as a condition of opening RCK East, made Sean promise he’d stay on the right side of the thin line.

“We can straddle the line, Sean, but we can’t cross it.”

His brother had cleaned up Sean’s background, but it wasn’t lost on Sean that Duke was more than willing to tap into Sean’s expertise and old network when necessary. It was only when Sean wanted to do it that Duke balked, fearing his brother would slip back into his old bad habits. Bad habits? That was an understatement.

Looking back toward the trucks, he extrapolated where the shooter had to have been situated, then walked behind the tree he suspected was ground zero. Scanning the ground, he circled outward. The bullet casings could have been ejected quite a distance, depending on the type of gun, the wind, and the angle of the shooter.

He found a casing about ten feet from the base of the tree, on the right side.

Pulling tweezers from one of Lucy’s evidence bags he’d grabbed when they’d returned to the truck, he used them to pick up the brass.

A.270-caliber Winchester round. Very common among hunting rifles, particularly for deer and other large game. Here in the Adirondacks probably every household had a rifle, and half of them fired.270 bullets.

But it wasn’t hunting season.

He dropped the casing into the bag.

Tim said, “I called Duke last night.”

Sean barely controlled his flash of anger. “You called my brother, why?”

“To fill him in on what is going on. I’ve known Duke nearly twenty years; I wanted his advice.”

Of all people-dammit, his brother? For years Sean had been working to get out from under Duke’s thumb, to run the East Coast branch of the California-based RCK without unnecessary interference and unwanted advice.

“And what did he say?” Sean asked, though what he wanted to ask was How did I screw up? Because no matter how much Duke said he trusted him, he had never truly stopped second-guessing his little brother’s decisions.

“He said he’d have done everything exactly as you’ve done. Also, that he’d tap into other contacts for the background checks your partner is running. He told me to have you call him if you needed anything.”

Sean swallowed uneasily. He hadn’t expected that.

“But,” Tim continued, “I’m not so sure about any of this anymore. How did anyone even know you and Lucy were at the mine?”

“That’s why we’re upping the ante,” Sean said, though he didn’t have a firm plan in place. He spotted another casing, three feet from the first. He put it in the bag.

“What’s your plan?” Tim asked.

“We’ll talk at the lodge. I have a few details to work out.”

Meaning he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the shooter to come after him.

It was time to go back to the Lock amp; Barrel, look everyone in the eye, and declare war.