Chapter 14 - The Current Takes Its Due
A shot rang out, flat and sharp against the thunder, but the bullet did not strike Clara. Thomas lunged from the shadow of the cabin steps, tackling Vance around the waist as the gun fired into the dark air. Both men crashed into the mud, rolling toward the churning edge of the flooded creek.
Sarah ran forward, screaming her brother’s name, but the two men were locked in a desperate, violent tangle of limbs. Vance swung his heavy fist into Thomas’s injured shoulder, breaking the hold, his revolver coming up to press against Thomas’s throat.
"I should have finished you eight years ago, Tommy," Vance snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger.
A sharp, deafening blast shattered the night from behind them.
Vance’s body jerked violently, the revolver slipping from his fingers into the black mud. He collapsed backward into the shallow water at the creek's edge, staring in absolute disbelief at the high bank above.
Standing by the idling patrol truck, holding the heavy pump-action shotgun with trembling hands, was Ruth. The eight-year-old child had retrieved Cole’s weapon from the back of the tractor, her small fingers barely able to reach the trigger, her shoulder bruised purple from the massive recoil that had knocked her flat onto the mud.
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Vance coughed, a terrible gurgle of blood rising in his throat, and the fast-moving brown water of the creek caught his heavy canvas jacket. Before anyone could move, the current pulled him out into the deep channel, dragging him under the swirling logs and the dark, violent foam of the flooded culvert. He disappeared beneath the surface without another sound.
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