“Protect me from what?”
He didn’t answer. She was watching his face, and recognized the moment he had gathered himself enough to spring. The instant he drove that needle toward her neck, she swung the baton and caught him in the upper thigh.
The needle fell from his hand, but he was past feeling the pain. He charged in. When she tried to swing the baton again, he lowered his shoulder and pushed it away before she could gain any momentum.
An instant later, he’d head butted her in the stomach and shoved her to the ground. He fell on top of her, and from the corner of her eye she saw the needle, still glistening on the snow. She had to get it before he did.
Either that or her baton, now lying in the snow on the other side of her. She hadn’t had time to slip the loop over her wrist.
Damn, the snow was a bad surface, too soft. She couldn’t get enough leverage to push him over as he straddled her. As she fought, he wiggled upward, fending off her fists with his forearms until he knelt on both her arms.
Trapped. Completely trapped. And he was reaching for the needle now.
She closed her eyes, summoning reserves of strength she hadn’t needed for a long time. Digging her foot into the snow, she managed to roll. It wasn’t easy but it was enough to put him off balance.
Then a gunshot sounded clear and loud on the morning air.
Cade’s voice followed. “Get off her, Sweet, or you’ll be dead in the next five seconds.”
But something seemed to have blinded him and deadened him. He fought viciously, and DeeJay had to fight back. She knew Cade couldn’t get a clear bead on him while they were this close. The accuracy of a pistol was about six feet anyway.
She kept pushing and rolling, ignoring the way he pummeled at her arms. He was no trained fighter, but she was. She finally got enough leverage to hit him hard in the side of the head.
The blow stunned him. He went limp just long enough to let her scramble to her feet and grab her baton. Cade came running up and stood near him, pistol aimed.
“Backup is on the way,” he said.
“I need to get into that barn,” DeeJay said, struggling to keep her balance in the churned-up snow. “You heard it, too?”
He nodded. “I know what a barn owl sounds like. I heard a human cry of distress.”
The all-important words.
“Don’t let him near that needle.” She pointed. She gave one last look at Calvin, who was glaring furiously at her, then trotted to the nearest barn door.
What she found inside would remain with her forever.
* * *
Andrew had been carted off to the hospital in a helicopter, still alive but suffering from an undetermined drug cocktail. He was just coherent enough to say that Calvin had hurt him.
The entire Sweet ranch had turned into a beehive of activity, with crime-scene techs and more deputies than DeeJay would have believed the county had. The barn, yard and house were roped off to prevent contamination of the scenes.
Calvin himself sat in the cage of a patrol car, cuffed in the very plastic ties he preferred to use on his victims. DeeJay battled an urge to give him a bit of his own paralytic to see what it was like.