Well, she’d be mad.

She stood up and she heard the thump again. She really needed to stop watching murder mysteries this late.

But too bad, she already had.

It was the wind, which could get crazy during storms, and that was all it was.

Except then the next thump was accompanied by a groan.

She looked across the space at her bright blue front door and saw she hadn’t turned the lock. She stood there frozen. Should she jump for the dead bolt?

She would if her feet worked.

But the ranch was full of people who lived and worked here and it was possible someone had gotten displaced during the storm and...

The front door swung wide-open and there was a man standing there. A tall, broad man with a long black coat and black cowboy hat. Hs eyes were dark, glittering in the light, and his jaw was unshaven with dark stubble covering it.

An outlaw.

The man took two steps into the room, then stumbled down onto the floor.

CHAPTER TWO

WELL, HE WAS in the shit now.

He really was.

He’d thought he’d left Jake and all his bullshit behind years earlier, but he supposed his brother was right. In the end you couldn’t escape family. They were blood. And they’d think nothing of spilling that blood in an aim to protect themselves.

Clayton added that last part himself. As he bled onto a stranger’s carpet.

He’d managed to shake Jake about a mile or so down the road, and he’d ditched his car in a secluded overhang of foliage and gone it on foot, into the woods.

He had reason to be in these woods anyway.

He and his brother had grown up over in Copper Ridge, but Jake had left a long time ago and moved to a ranch farther east. But Clayton had made a hideaway here, and he’d been careful to make sure there was no paper trail and that his brother didn’t have any idea.

But it had been a mistake. The bullet had only grazed his side, but he was bleeding like hell and he was starting to feel light-headed. He was disoriented, and he had not found his way to the place he’d needed to get. He’d had no idea where in hell he was at all. Every step he took, he bled more. He needed to sit and put pressure on the damn thing, but with his brother actively trying to kill him...

Yeah, that made it hard.

He hoped Jake would think he’d kept on driving. In the end, Clayton had known he was running out of time, and continuing to run wouldn’t work.

So he’d figured he’d hunker down, and hope Jake wouldn’t expect that. Hope Jake figured Clayton was too scared to do anything but run.

Sadly for Jake, Clayton wasn’t a six-year-old boy anymore who could be bullied into running drugs or guns in his backpack.

He wasn’t afraid.

Well, not in the general sense, but this whole bleeding-out thing was an experience he wasn’t looking to repeat. Then, it may not be an issue if he succeeded in bleeding all the way out.