Lauren kept moving toward her child. Leah was halfway out of her chair. Lauren grabbed her daughter’s arm and shoved her sideways.

“Leah, run!!”

Hewitt hit her in the back and she sprawled across the harvest table, her breath leaving her in a huff as she landed on the gun strapped to her abdomen beneath her clothes. Arms swimming, legs kicking, she fought to get out from under half of Hewitt’s weight as he pinned her.

Pushing and pulling herself across the table, she fell to the floor on the other side, sending chairs toppling.

Rolling onto her back, Lauren tore at her shirt, pulling it up, reaching her other hand for the gun. The Walther’s sight snagged on the fabric of the panty. Frantic, she tugged and fumbled, just pulling the pistol free as Greg Hewitt came over the table.

He was on her before she could straighten her arm enough to shoot him. His body trapped her arm between them. Lauren pulled the trigger anyway, hoping to God the shot would go into him and not her.

The explosion burned them both as the hot gases escaping the chamber came in contact with clothing and skin. Even muffled by their bodies, the sound was loud and it startled Hewitt just enough that he pulled his upper body away from her.

Lauren clawed at his face with one hand as she moved her right arm and shoved the nose of the Walther into his solar plexus and tried to pull the trigger again. But the spent cartridge from the first shot had not been allowed to eject free of the chamber, and there was no second shot.

But Greg Hewitt didn’t know she’d pulled the trigger. He knew the muzzle of a .380 was jammed up against him and that the next shot would surely kill him. He went very still.

Their breathing was ragged and loud. The fleeting thought crossed Lauren’s mind that they had sounded like this after sex. She wanted to vomit.

“Get off me,” she said. “Slowly.”

He said nothing. His eyes were the eyes of a wolf—wary, watching, sharp for the next split second’s opportunity. Lauren held her left hand curved over the slide of the Walther so he couldn’t see the piece of brass that had caught on its way out of the chamber. She kept her gaze hard on his, afraid to so much as blink.

“Get off or the next one goes straight through your spinal cord, Greg.”

He moved in slow motion, lifting his weight from her, getting to his feet.

“Hands out at your sides,” Lauren ordered, her eyes on his, the gun still trained on him. Using just her abdominal muscles and raw determination, she managed to sit up. The pain along the edge of her rib cage was like fire where she had landed on the gun. She curled her legs beneath herself and got to her feet.