“Frank’s more likely to talk to a Branson than a cop. If he’s still alive in there, I want you next to me when he sees us coming.”
“Right. Let’s do this.” I gripped my rifle.
“Hey, watch yourselves.” Cassidy clutched my wrist. “And don’t get shot again.”
I winked at her. “Don’t plan on it.”
Mitch and Cassidy moved off to the rocks on the eastern side. Sapphire watched them go, then turned to me.
“Stay one step behind me, and don’t go getting all trigger-happy. Bob and Frank are mine. Got it?”
“Got it.”
As we moved forward, loose stones crunched under our boots, no matter how careful we were. Sapphire stayed low, weapon up, eyes on every shadow. I stuck close behind her, covering her six.
A moan reached us as we got to the cave mouth.
Wet and horrible. The sound of a man who wasn’t going to last.
Sapphire held up one hand, and we froze, listening. The moan came again, weaker this time. But there was nothing else. No voices. No movement. No second man breathing.
She glanced at me. I nodded.
She moved forward, weapon raised, and I followed her into the cave.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust. The cave was bigger than I’d expected, with a high roof I couldn’t see in the gloom. A few shafts of sun cut down through cracks in the rock and caught the dust hanging in the air.
A bloody body lay just inside the entrance: Lyle Henderson.
He was on his back, both hands clutched to his stomach, blood soaking through his fingers and spreading in a black pool beneath him. His face was gray, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
“Jesus,” I breathed.
Sapphire ran to him and checked him for weapons with one hand while keeping her gun trained deeper into the cave. A rifle lay a foot from Lyle’s hip. She kicked it back behind her, well out of his reach.
As she watched the cave, I crouched beside Lyle. “Lyle, can you hear me?”
He moaned but didn’t answer.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Sapphire said. “Stay with me, Kayden.”
We moved deeper into the cave. Smells of bat shit and gun powder laced the air. Sapphire’s flashlight cut through the dim light and swept across the floor.
A rusted forty-gallon drum sat in the middle of the cave.
“Kayden.” Sapphire’s whisper was sharp. Her flashlight was on a shape on the ground twenty feet away.
Frank.
We raced toward him. He was face-down in a spreading pool of his own blood, one arm stretched out toward a shotgun that lay six feet away. His other hand was wrapped in filthy, blood-soaked cloths. He’d been shot in the shoulder and lower back, just below his belt. Dark, thick blood oozed from both wounds.
Sapphire kept one eye on the deepest section of the cave as she frisked him fast, careful of his bloody wounds. Her hand came out from under his hip with a revolver. She froze for a half-second, then turned it over in her palm.
She checked the cylinder. “Empty,” she said.
“It’s Bob’s,” Frank wheezed.
Sapphire dropped onto one knee so she could see his face. “Talk to me.”