Fair Play (All's Fair Book 2) by Josh Lanyon Read Free Book Online

had probably been traveling about 150 miles per hour. Which was...225 feet per second? Long gone, unless it had been deflected by glancing off a bush or branch.
    “Wait,” Roland panted. “Wait. Listen. He hasn’t shot again.”
    That was the bad news, even if it seemed to Roland like good news.
    “Let me up.
Now
.” Elliot ruthlessly freed himself, ignoring Roland’s pained gasp as he finally let go. Elliot scoured the ground, looking for a suitable weapon, fingers raking through rotting berries and moldering leaves and turkey tail fungus. Something...anything... There was no handy branch, but he spotted a good-sized rock and grabbed it. Better than nothing. He scrambled up, panting, leaning against the tree trunk, listening tensely.
    Sweat trickled from his hairline. He wiped his eyes.
    “He’s stopped shooting,” Roland whispered, watching the road beyond.
    Elliot shook his head. One good thing, their attacker could not cross that road without them spotting him. For those eight feet of open air, he would be visible to them.
    Silence.
    Not a natural silence. A complete vacuum of sound. He waited for that betraying snap of twig or slide of stone or rustle of leaves.
    Where are you
,
you sonofabitch?
    He weighed the rock he held absently. Close range—hand-to-hand range—he might actually have a chance. Despite the liability of his bad knee, he still had some pretty good moves in his repertoire, as he knew from the occasional wrestling match with Tucker.
    He could not afford to think about Tucker. Could not afford to think that he might never see him again. He looked down at his father.
    Roland was listening too, his face grim and intent. His eyes rose to Elliot’s and Elliot shook his head again.
    No way would this psycho just walk away. He had to know he had them pinned down. He had to be waiting them out. Waiting for them to break cover.
    Elliot kept listening. This was a thick wooded area, and it was all but impossible to move without making noise.
    Insects.
    Birds.
    “There,” Roland said.
    Elliot followed Roland’s line of vision. He glimpsed what might have been the nock of a bow and then the top of a brown-gray hoodie moving through the brush on the other side of the road several yards ahead of them. Trying to cut them off before they could reach Blue Badger Farm?
    A rustle to the right. Elliot and Roland both whirled.
    A marmot stuck its brown head out of the brush, looked almost humanly startled, and retreated into its leafy bower once more.
    The untroubled laughter of women’s voices drifted from the road.
    Elliot swore and started forward, recognizing that it was already too late. Desperately, he looked for the shooter again. But there was no sign of anyone moving behind the wall of ferns across the road.
    Three women, young, fit, in bright exercise gear and visors, went striding past, talking a mile a minute.
    Elliot stopped. Had any harm been intended them, it would have already happened. They had either scared away the shooter or the shooter was holding off, waiting for them to pass out of range.
    In which case, now was their best, maybe their only chance. He motioned to Roland, Roland nodded, and they began to move the other way through the trees, back toward houses and safety.
    As he ushered his father along, Elliot phoned the Pierce County Sheriff Department and was reassured that help was on the way. Since PCSD flew two Cessna helicopters, that reassurance meant something, but the reality was, life and death could happen within the space of sixty seconds. If the shooter had not been spooked, he might be moving to cut them off right now.
    It would be taking a hell of a chance, but he had already taken a hell of a chance in coming here after Roland.
    Elliot and Roland kept pushing, moving fast, sticking to cover as much as possible, and at last they made it back to the cabin, out of breath, soaked in sweat, but without incident.
    Elliot heard the distant buzz of aircraft overhead as he led the