I scream—not anything specific, just a sound—and Dakota fires from the side window twice and then three more times and Hartley moves through the kitchen toward me.
Diesel breaks from somewhere out of view and lunges. Hartley fires once and Diesel drops.
I can see his shoulder from under the table. He's not moving.
Hartley's boots come around the side of the table.
Then the back door of the kitchen explodes open behind him.
A bigger sound than Hartley's boots. Bigger than anything in the kitchen.
Thunder.
He comes through the back door at a full run with his sidearm out and his hat gone, and his eyes go to me on the floor with Nash and then to Hartley standing over us, and Thunder doesn't slow down.
He hits Hartley from behind like a freight train hitting a fence post.
They go down on the kitchen floor four feet from where Nash and I are pressed against the table.
Thunder is bigger. Thunder lands on top.
Hartley's pistol arm is pinned, but his other hand has a knife in it that he comes up with from somewhere and Thunder is grabbing for it.
The two of them are rolling on the kitchen floor, and I'm watching from under the table with my son's mouth pressed into my palm and I can't move.
The knife clatters across the floor.
Thunder has Hartley pinned now. His forearm is across Hartley's throat. Hartley's free hand is scrambling at his belt.
There's another pistol at Hartley's belt.
His hand finds it before my mouth opens to scream.
Hartley fires up from the floor.
Thunder makes a sound I'll never forget for the rest of my life.
The bullet goes into him at an angle from below.
Thunder collapses on top of Hartley like the bones have come out of his body.
Hartley pushes the big man off him and stands up.
There's blood on Hartley's shirt that isn't his. His left arm hangs the wrong way at his shoulder from Marlena's shot. He's breathing hard. The shoulder is bleeding through his jacket.
His eyes find Thunder on the kitchen floor—curled around himself with both hands pressed against his lower abdomen and his hip and the blood coming through his fingers fast—and then me under the table, and then Nash.
He bends down and reaches under the table.
I fight him. I claw at his face and his arms and his good shoulder. Nash is screaming now and Hartley puts his good hand around the back of Nash's collar and he pulls.
Nash comes out from under the table.
I come with him.
Hartley brings his pistol around and points it at my chest from a foot away.
He's breathing hard but his hand is steady. "Mrs. Cross. Let him go. Or I put a hole in you that your fiancé gets to look at when he comes home."