He’d gotten free. That clicked into place just as he grabbed the detonator that fell from the man’s hand. “Colt! You idiot!”

It took a moment and then she realized. Ranger thought it might be a dead man’s switch.

“Get down, Range!” Colt yelled, and she spotted him in the loft walkway above the great room.

And that’s when a shot whizzed past Ranger’s head.

The other captor. He’d come running from where he’d positioned himself in the back entryway. She’d heard shooting earlier, and now she knew why.

Ranger dove at her and threw them both onto the floor, his entire body covering hers.

She lay cocooned inside his embrace as more shots rang out.

From her vantage point, she spotted Colt, on his knees now, firing down at the other attacker.

“Stay down,” Ranger said.

Sure, no problem—

He rolled away, toward the sofa, and she couldn’t help but marvel as somehow in his hand a weapon materialized.

His father’s two-barrel rifle.

For a second, she saw it all. Colt, on the railing, trying to get a shot at the man who crouched behind the island. And then Ranger, who had scooped up the rifle, rolled again, and rose with the gun at his shoulder, even with the counter.

He fired.

A howl sounded from behind the island, and then Ranger was on his feet, running over to grab the attacker. He dragged him, shouting and swearing, out from behind the bar, kicked the gun from his hand, and sent his fist into his face.

The man lay quiet, bleeding.

Ranger stood up. With blood on his face, his father’s gun in his hands, the sun backlit behind him in the picture window, he looked like some kind of apocalyptic warrior.

And her heart just hurt.

He was born to be a SEAL.

“Is that all of them?” Colt said from the top of the stairs.

“I think so,” Ranger said, and then footsteps barreled down the stairs. In a second Dodge was standing over his father, easing the bloody pillow from his wound.

Barry groaned. “Range said it just nicked my ribs, but it hurts like a son of a gun.”

Meanwhile, Colt had come downstairs.

“We need a tourniquet on his leg,” Ranger said, still standing over the man. “If we want him to talk, we’ll need him alive.”

“Use my bathrobe belt,” Noemi said as she sat up.

“Honey, stay right there,” Ranger said even as Colt pulled her belt out of the loops.

Colt knelt in front of the man, tied the belt around his leg, then used a wooden spoon to crank it tight. The man came to life with a shout.

“Stay down and you might live through this,” he growled.

Colt got up, went to a drawer in the kitchen, and came back with an extension cord. He pushed the man over and tied his hands.