“There!” she cried to Hawk.
He took aim. A cloud inched over the moon. Hawk fired and fired again.
His bullets, like the others, ricocheted in the night.
Yet, against that sound, Shawna was certain that she heard another. Pounding. A pounding against the earth.
She stood carefully, gripping Hawk’s arm. “Someone is coming.”
Someone was coming…
Friend or foe?
Three horses thundered into the graveyard.
Guns blazed.
One horse reared directly in front of the vault as its rider—easily recognizable to Shawna—fired off a gun from its back toward the mysterious cowled figures who had been firing at the group in the tomb.
Shawna gasped, falling back where Skylar was crouched down by her husband’s feet.
“It’s Brother Damian!”
“My god, is he going to help us or kill us?” Skylar demanded.
“Help us—I think,” Shawna said.
“He’s not alone,” Alistair warned quickly.
“Aye, there are two more riders with him. I don’t know either,” Shawna said.
Gunfire sounded, then ceased entirely. The riders went galloping over stones and angels alike in pursuit of the cloaked figures.
Skylar called out to Hawk, “What’s happening?”
“Rescue,” he said flatly.
“I’d say quite in the nick of time,” Alistair murmured.
“But what is going on, Hawk?” Shawna asked.
“Our rescuers have gone in search of our attackers. I think we’re safe to stand now.”
The riders returned. Evidently, the cloaked figures had managed to disappear into the darkness afforded as the moon once again made a fickle disappearance behind a cloud.
“None of them!” a voice muttered with furious disgust. “Every last one of them managed to disappear right into thin air!”
The horses with their three riders came to a halt in front of the McCloud vault.
Brother Damian was off his horse, hurrying up the steps toward them, moving furiously and swiftly for such an old man. He was quickly followed by a slim little man with a face so ugly it was endearing. Behind him came a very tall, straight, lithe but well-muscled man, wearing a railway frock coat over blue denim breeches and white cotton shirt, a plumed slouch hat sitting at a rakish angle atop his head.
Shawna tensed, wondering what designs this trio might have upon them. She gritted down on her teeth and studied the curious Brother Damian, yet she was startled from her observations when Hawk murmured a pleased, “Sloan! I will be damned. Sloan!”
Hawk strode from the vault, laughing as he embraced the tall, lithe newcomer with ebony dark hair, sharp handsome features, and mahogany eyes.
Shawna stared in stunned amazement at the two. Her nightmares had entered into the realm of life tonight. She’d dreamed of savages arriving en masse to do her in for her part in the “death” of David Douglas.
All this fellow needed was a bow and arrow.