With no one in sight, she darted out and grabbed the gun. Glancing down, she saw a path of bloody footprints headed away from the marshal’s body in the direction of the adjoining dining room. Staying crouched behind the sofa, she scurried along until she could see into the room clearly.

Another marshal lay on the ground there. This one was face down with a quickly expanding pool of blood pouring from his neck and forming a puddle around his face and torso.

Jessie forced herself not to linger on the image as she followed the bloody footprints from that room into the sunroom, which led to the backyard pool. The sliding door was open and a slight breeze blew the hanging curtains inward, making them billow like low-hanging clouds.

She checked the room. It was empty so she moved over to the sliding door to peek outside. A suited body was visible, bobbing face down in the water, which was quickly turning a pinkish-red. That’s when she heard someone clear his throat behind her.

She whirled around, cocking the gun at the same time. Facing her at the far end of the room were both Bolton Crutchfield and her father, Xander Thurman, who looked shockingly good considering that only weeks ago, he’d been shot in the gut and the shoulder, likely fractured his skull, and jumped out a fourth-floor window. Both men were holding long hunting knives.

Her father smiled as he silently mouthed the word “Junebug,” his pet name for her as a child. Jessie lifted the gun and prepared to fire. As her finger began to squeeze the trigger, Crutchfield spoke.

“I promised that I’d be seeing you, Miss Jessie,” he said, his demeanor as placid as it had been when he spoke to her through the thick glass barrier of his cell.

His weeks of freedom hadn’t made him any less soft. At five foot eight and about 150 pounds, he was less physically formidable than Jessie. His pudgy face made him look a decade younger than his thirty-five years and his brown hair, parted neatly to the side, reminded her of the boys in the math club back at middle school. Only his steely brown eyes hinted at what he was truly capable of.

“It looks like you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd,” she said in a frustratingly shaky voice as she nodded at her father.

“That’s what I love about you, Miss Jessie,” Crutchfield said admiringly. “You never back down, even when you’re in a hopeless situation.”

“You may want to rethink that,” Jessie pointed out. “You’ve both brought knives to a gunfight.”

“So impish,” Crutchfield marveled, looking over at Thurman with appreciation.

Her father nodded, still silent. Then both men returned their attention to her. Simultaneously, their smiles disappeared.

“It’s time, Miss Jessie,” Crutchfield said as both men moved toward her in tandem.

She fired at her father first, three in the chest, before turning her attention to Crutchfield. Without hesitation, she pumped three bullets into his torso. The air was full of acrid smoke and the echo of her shots.