Dusk had turned fully into night, and my muzzle flash lit the parking lot in staccato bursts.
Joshua Blakely swivelled instantly in my direction, then rolled toward the sidewalk of the motel and tried to find cover in the doorway of a room. As the echoes of my gun's reports died, I heard muffled screams inside the room, and saw the corner of the curtain drop as the occupants scrambled away from the window.
Joshua didn't linger. Bent double, he scurried back toward the cover of his truck, embedded in my motel room's window.
I couldn't risk shooting toward the occupied units, and I knew that as soon as Joshua reached cover, he'd return fire. I was now out in the middle of the parking space, so I turned and ran for the best cover: the open door of the manager's unit.
I just made it, diving in the open door as a bullet gouged into the doorframe behind me.
The manager lay just inside the door. A moist red spot extended across his Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt from a puncture in the left side of his belly. His eyes were half-open but senseless, his skin waxy, his breathing shallow. He'd dragged himself back out of the doorway before succumbing to shock and losing consciousness.
His double-barreled shotgun lay beside his open hand. I broke it and ejected the empty shell. The other was rock salt, as I'd thought. I glanced quickly around the small living room of his unit, but there was no box of shells sitting anywhere convenient.
I lay on my belly and glanced out the door.
Joshua was nowhere to be seen.
From where he was, he could easily duck back into Weston's room, find the air conditioner ripped out of the room's back window, and follow them out into the darkness behind the motel.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
I fired at the truck, breaking out the driver's side window, hoping to draw his attention back to me. There was no return fire.
I grabbed the shotgun, hopped to my feet and ran through the living room to the door of the back bedroom. I wanted to help the manager, but I assumed that someone in one of the units had already dialed 9-1-1. And if I delayed any longer, there might be two more dead bodies to Joshua Blakely's credit.
As I'd hoped, the manager's bedroom was slightly larger than that of the standard units, with a little more space for permanent living. That meant there was a second window, beside the one that was occupied by the air conditioner, and I didn't have to worry about lugging the machinery out of the way.
I threw the catch on the lower pane, shoved it up, knocked the screen outward with the butt of the shotgun, and dove through.
The grass was long beneath the window and caught me softly as I rolled and came up in a crouch, my gun braced on my forearm.
The long grass extended from the back of the motel about twenty yards until turning into untended trees, just far enough to keep the fire marshal happy. A rutted dirt lane ran parallel to the back of the building and looped around to the front of the building on either end.
Several units down, Joshua was just extracting his leg from the window of Weston's room.
I fired the 9mm once to get his attention.
He dropped into the grass, bobbed his head like a seal, and fired back. Then he dropped out of sight.
I watched closely. By the light coming from the motel window, I saw the long grass wave as Joshua crawled toward the dirt track. I was a distraction, not the quarry. He was still after Weston.
I fired twice at the dirt track to dissuade him, then clicked on an empty chamber. I dropped the shotgun and quickly changed clips on the 9mm.
We sat in the long grass opposite each other, waiting.
Joshua's gun barked again, but not at me. The motel room window shattered and light inside went out; he had shot out the light fixture. I couldn't even see the grass that hid him now.
I could see his moving muzzle flash, though, as he fired three more times toward me. I flattened into the grass.
A pause. Did he need to reload too?
I sealcrawled as fast as I could toward the dirt lane. When I got there, I tried to see if he was doing the same, but the shadows hid everything completely at that end.
And then, above the rasp of my breath and the thudding of my pulse in my temples, I finally heard what I was waiting for:
Sirens.
I sprang up and started running toward Joshua's position, visibility be damned. I wanted Joshua nailed down before he vanished again, evading the police and possibly killing more people before trying for Weston again.
Joshua gained his feet and dashed straight back for the woods.
I pumped the shotgun as I ran and fired from the hip.
Distance and the darkness were against me. I saw him stumble as at least some of the rock salt reached him, but he didn't slow.
I tossed the shotgun and fired three times into the darkness, but I was firing blind. He had vanished into the inky blackness under the trees.
I realized that the motel lights were making a tempting target of my silhouette and dropped back to the dirt on the access lane.
The sirens reached the front of the building. At least two police cars. Another siren was following, this one an ambulance.
Hunched over, I crept around the side of the motel, watching my back in case Joshua popped back out for one last shot at me.
There was a Honda parked in front of the last unit on this end, and it gave me good cover as I snuck a look at the situation out there.
There were three cars, not two, and each held two deputies. I must have been looking at most of the sheriff's department. Weston and Sammy had also made it back around to the front, and both had their hands on their heads. I couldn't hear, but I could see that Sammy was having a very animated conversation with two deputies who had their revolvers trained on the center of his chest.
The ambulance arrived, and the deputies pointed it toward the manager's unit. Two paramedics went in with their kits.
It didn't take too long before they snapped cuffs on Sammy's wrists and maneuvered him into the back of a car as if he were a bull given to charging unpredictably. Then they cuffed Weston and stowed him in the back of the other car. Lights flashing but sirens off, they turned out of the parking lot. The remaining two deputies started taking pictures and talking to the occupants of the other units, who stood in their doorways shaking, pointing wildly around as they told their stories.
I watched from my vantage point until I saw the paramedics wheel out the manager on a stretcher, one holding an IV above him. That was some small relief. You don't give plasma to a dead man.
Weston and Sammy were in a more mixed situation. Weston was ostensibly safer in police custody, but trying to explain the story to law enforcement at the point would add eighty-seven levels of bureaucratic involvement, and the sheriff would probably had a humongous chip on his shoulder over my and Sammy's actions to this point.
Not to mention the fact that Joshua Blakely was still very much at large.
