Blue Fire

Book 2: Victoria Emerson Thriller

by John Gilstrap

Genres: Political Thrillers; Thrillers; Military Thrillers

Synopsis

John Gilstrap, the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Jonathan Grave novels, continues his acclaimed Victoria Emerson thriller series with Blue Fire. In the wake of a global conflict that has devastated America, one
woman must lead—and protect—a community of survivors determined to rebuild all they have lost …
They call it Hell Day—a world war that lasted less than twenty-four hours. Nations unleashed weapons that destroyed more than a century’s worth of technology. Electrical grids cannot generate power. Communications and computers cannot
run. And the remnants of the U. S. government cannot be depended upon. Those who survived must live as their ancestors did, off a land ruled by the whims of nature.
One-time congressional representative Victoria Emerson has become the new leader of the small town of Ortho, West Virginia. She has been struggling to provide food and shelter for the town’s inhabitants, while coping with desperate
refugees. An autumn morning’s calm is shattered when her teenage son sounds the alarm with the cry “Blue Fire”—the code phrase for imminent danger.
A band of National Guardsmen intends to take Ortho and its resources for themselves. They have enough soldiers and firepower to eliminate anyone who dares to stop them. But Victoria swore an oath to defend and protect her people,
and she isn’t about to surrender. It’s time to tap into the traditional American values of courage, ingenuity, and determination—and fight fire with fire.

Release date: February 22, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 512

Sample

Hell Day + 67

VICTORIA EMERSON HOPED THAT HER SURPRISE DIDN’T show as Althea Mountbank entered Maggie’s Place and approached. “This a good time?” Althea asked.

Victoria rose from her chair and the square table that served as her desk in what used to be the dining room of Maggie’s Place, a tavern that had been converted to an ersatz town hall in the aftermath of the eight-hour nuclear war that changed everything.

“Now is fine,” Victoria said. From the name alone, she had not been expecting someone quite so young and attractive. “Please, have a seat.”

Althea chose to sit at Victoria’s nine o’clock, rather than taking the seat that would have placed her back to the door. Victoria noted it, but from the young lady’s demeanor, she was not concerned.

“Mr. Barnett told me to come in and talk to you.”

“I know,” Victoria said. “Ben told me to expect you.”

“Are you, like, the mayor or something?” Althea asked.

“Not the mayor, no. Nobody elected me to anything, but somehow, every time the music stops, I’m the only one willing to take the chair.” Victoria shifted in her seat and crossed her legs. “Tell me something about yourself.”

Althea started to lean back into her chair but abandoned the effort halfway. She looked nervous, and Victoria wanted to know why. “What would you like to know?”

“Anything,” Victoria said. “As we try to rebuild something that will look something like a real society, and more people flood into Ortho, I think it’s important that we all get to know each other. We don’t have to become besties, but there’s a lot of fear and loneliness out there. Start with where you’re from and what you did before the war.”

Althea cleared her throat and shifted again. “I’m from up near Appleton,” she said. “I was a music teacher. Which is why I’m here.”

“Did you come to Ortho alone? Do you have family?”

Althea cast her eyes down. “No children. My husband was killed in the days after the war.”

“May I ask what happened to him?”

“It was the gangs,” Althea said. “In the weeks right after the war, during the panic, it seemed that everybody was shooting everybody else.”

Victoria waited for more.

Althea grew uncomfortable. “That’s it.”

“Tell me the circumstances surrounding your husband’s death.”

“Circumstances?”

Victoria hiked her shoulders and held out her hands. “How did it happen? Was he trying to defend you? The house?”

Althea’s gaze shifted to the floor.

Victoria pressed harder. “Or was he maybe threatening someone else who defended themselves?”

“We were hungry,” Althea said.

“Everybody was hungry,” Victoria said. “Did he kill?”

Althea’s head snapped up and her eyes were hot. “What difference does that make? He’s dead himself now.”

“Where were you when he was killed? Were you with him?”

Althea lost some of her attitude. “I tried to stop him.”

“What was your husband’s name?” Victoria asked. “Jamie. He was a good man, I swear he was.”

“How many people did Jamie kill?”

Althea shook her head aggressively. “No one. I swear.”

“Okay, then how many people did he threaten?”

The eye contact disconnected again. “He was just trying to provide for his family.”

“By stealing from other families.” Victoria took a deep noisy breath. “Look at me, Althea.”

The young teacher rocked her gaze up to meet Victoria’s.

“We can’t allow that.” Victoria kept her tone even. “You need to understand that here in Ortho, we expect people to earn what they have.”

“That’s what I want to do.”

“Here in Ortho,” Victoria continued, as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “we punish thieves severely. You can tell a thief from the rest of the community by the T that’s been carved in their foreheads. Men, women, children, it doesn’t matter. You need to understand that.”

“But I didn’t steal anything,” Althea said.

“I don’t care about the past, Althea. But I do care about the future. I’m sure you noticed the burned structures down the street in Shanty Town?”

Althea nodded.

“Do you know who set those fires?” Victoria asked.

“No.”

“They came from up your way. From Appleton. They attacked Ortho.” Victoria leaned into her side of the table and made sure she had Althea’s full attention when she said, “Every one of those attackers are dead. Those who survived were tried and executed.”

“But I’ve heard people call this place Eden,” Althea said. She seemed genuinely confused.

“Perhaps it’s because we still believe in justice here,” Victoria explained. “Ben Barnett gave you your first week’s rations and supplies, right?”

Althea bobbed her head. She seemed grateful to be talking about something else. “And he explained about the currency system here.” In Ortho, ammunition doubled as money. It had inherent value—unlike the green pieces of paper that had meant so much before Hell Day. “Thing is, I don’t have a gun.”

“Nor will you before you prove yourself to be trustworthy. What committee did you choose to participate in?”

“Education,” Althea said. “That’s why we’re talking, as I understand it.”

“That’s one of the reasons,” Victoria confirmed. “You want to teach music lessons as a means to support yourself.”

“Exactly. Is that a problem?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Victoria said. “But I think you might want to think it through. Winter is marching straight at us. You’ll have a tent for shelter until your cabin is built—and it will only be built with you as one of the construction workers. You’ve got provisions for a week. Maybe two if you don’t mind being hungry, but after that, you’re on your own.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that in the short term, you might want to focus on the committees that the town will pay you to be a part of. Those include the construction committee and the security committee, but without a firearm, the security slot doesn’t do much for you. Or for Ortho.”

“I don’t know anything about construction,” Althea said.

“Most newcomers don’t,” Victoria said with a smile.

Althea seemed more confused than ever.

“You’re going to have to get your hands dirty, Althea. You’re going to have to perform physical labor before you can fulfill your entrepreneurial urges.”

The young teacher wanted to say something, but it seemed that the words wouldn’t come.

Victoria stood, ending the meeting. “Of course, you can always choose to move on down the road, leaving those provisions here, of course.”

The front door opened, revealing the familiar silhouette of Joe McCrea, the Army major who had endured every second of Victoria’s Hell Day nightmare. “Excuse me, Vicky,” he said. “There’s something you’ve got to attend to here.” An M4 rifle hung from its sling across his chest. Pretty much everyone who was old enough to carry a weapon did so as a form of citizen militia—which had proven its worth more than once.

“We’re finished here,” Victoria said. She offered a handshake. “Welcome to Ortho.”

Althea hesitated, then accepted the gesture.

“Remember everything we talked about,” Victoria said. “On reflection in the coming hours and days, if there’s any element of what you discussed with me that you wish to backtrack on or change, I invite you to do so.” She tightened her grip just enough to make sure the young teacher was listening. “Just do it before I hear from others that you lied to me.”

A bit of color drained from Althea’s cheeks. “I-I didn’t lie.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.” Victoria let go of her hand and watched as she pressed past Mc-Crea to walk back outside.

“The hell was that?” McCrea asked.

“I’m seventy percent sure that she was part of the gangs in Appleton,” Victoria said.

“And?”

“And I told her that the past was the past. That last part was a not-so-subtle warning that witnesses to her past are likely here.” Victoria walked toward the door. “What’s so urgent outside?”

“Stay where you are,” McCrea said. “I’ll bring him in.”

Victoria didn’t like these kinds of buildups to a surprise.

Thirty seconds later, McCrea returned with an emaciated young man in a tattered uniform that looked like a product from a war long in the past. “Vicky,” McCrea said, “allow me to introduce you to Jerry Cameron.”

Victoria wondered if this guy was going to live till morning. He looked awful. She offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you. And please sit down.” She looked to McCrea. “Get him something to eat, please.”

“On it already,” McCrea said. “I asked Joey Abbott to get him some food and drink.”

“I don’t have time for a meal, ma’am,” Cameron said. “You’re Mrs. Emerson, right?”

“Victoria. Yes. Now sit. We’re not talking until your butt is in a chair.”

Cameron seemed annoyed, but he sat in the chair that Althea Mountbank had just vacated. “Congresswoman Victoria Emerson?”

“Not anymore. It’s just Victoria now.” She and Mc-Crea both took chairs at the same table. “Vicky, if you prefer.”

“Yes, ma’am, but you were—”

“Yes, what is this about?” Victoria had a bad feeling. A glance at McCrea’s body language didn’t make her feel any better.

“Okay, ma’am,” the young man said. “Well, here’s the thing. . .” Then he seemed to get lost inside his head.

“Sometimes it’s easier if you just spit out the words,” Victoria said with a soft smile.

“Yes, ma’am. As your friend said, my name is Jerry Cameron. I used to work at the Annex. A bunker that was used to house—”

Victoria’s gut tumbled. “I’m familiar with the Annex, Jerry. The Government Relocation Center.” Located about one hundred miles east of Ortho, the Annex was an elaborate bunker complex built into the bedrock, beneath the lavish vacation resort that called itself Hilltop Manor. It was to that very facility that Army Major Joseph McCrea and First Sergeant Paul Copley had been escorting Victoria on the night before Hell Day. She had refused to enter, however, when the managers of the place—Cameron’s coworkers, apparently— wouldn’t allow her children to accompany her.

“Why do you look like you’re going to have a heart attack?” Victoria asked. Even as the words left her throat, she knew she didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Well, ma’am, here’s the thing. The president of the United States and the leadership of the House and Senate have all been arrested and charged with treason. The president has ordered me to find you and ask if you would preside over the trial.”

His words seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air. She understood what he was saying, but the meaning seemed impossible.

“Wait,” she said. “What?”

“There was an uprising around the Annex. Around the whole hotel complex. A lot of people were killed.”

Victoria asked, “So, were you with the security firm that oversaw the Annex?”

“Yes, ma’am. Solara. Most of us didn’t make it. The civilians up there are furious that the government took care of itself but ignored the people. They’re looking for blood.”

Victoria tried to make the pieces fit in her head. “You said that the president was in custody?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “The president is at a different facility. She would not be at the Annex.”

Cameron looked hurt. “I’m not lying, ma’am.” Then his face showed an aha moment. “Oh, I get it. I see the confusion. President Blanton and Vice President Jenkins were both killed in the attacks. The office slipped to the Speaker of the House.”

“Penn Glendale?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Cameron shrugged out of his backpack and reached into a side pocket. He extracted an envelope and handed it to Victoria. “The president asked me to give this to you. He asked for you personally.”

McCrea spoke up. “Are you telling us that the government of the United States has been overthrown?”

The question seemed to startle the young man. “I guess so, yes. Roger Parsons has charged Mr. Glendale with treason. Like I said, they’ve charged everybody with treason.”

“And Parsons is the leader of the uprising?” Victoria asked.

“Right.”

“I’m confused,” McCrea said. “You said that the president sent you, yet this Parsons guy is in charge?”

“Yes, sir. The president himself asked me. I don’t think Parsons knows that he did it, though.”

“How long have you been on the road?” Victoria asked.

“Eight days, ma’am. It was a long ride. A tough ride, too. It’s brutal out there.”

“Brutal how?” McCrea asked.

“Gangs. Warlords, really. Lots of suffering. Lots of awfulness.”

“How close to here?” Victoria asked. “To Ortho?”

“Quite a ways,” Cameron said. “Five, maybe seven miles.”

“What are they doing?” Victoria asked. “Are they organized? Are they on the march?”

Cameron laughed. “I didn’t see much about them that was organized. They just kind of wander around. I don’t know what they’re thinking. I tried to get through them as fast as I could.”

“Did you walk all the way from Hilltop?” McCrea asked.

“No sir, I have a horse. He’s grazing in the field across the street.”

The door to Maggie’s Place opened and Joey Abbott stepped in from the cold, balancing a plate of food in his right hand. The ever-present AR-15 was slung behind his back. “Here’s some scrambled eggs and venison sausage,” he said as he walked in. He handed the plate to Cameron. “You look like you could use this.” The proprietor of Joey’s Pawn Shop in the years before Hell Day, Joey had stepped up to be one of the town’s leaders.

As Cameron dug into the food, McCrea asked, “Do you have any reason to believe that there’ll actually be a trial, or are they just going to hang the president from a tree?”

“Holy shit!” Joey exclaimed. “What president? Our president?”

Victoria took thirty seconds to catch Joey up.

“I don’t know one way or the other,” Cameron said. “All I know is that everybody was arrested, and the president asked me to come and get you.”

“How does he even know I’m here?”

“I don’t have an answer for that, ma’am,” Cameron said. “It’s probably because everyone knows you’re here.”

Victoria looked to McCrea for clarity but got a shrug instead.

“A lot of the people I passed on the way here from Hilltop said they were on their way to Eden,” Cameron said.

“That’s here?” Victoria asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Turns out you can kill electronics and email, but the rumor mill survives Armageddon.”

It was too much. Victoria stood and prepared to leave. “Thank you, Mr. Cameron,” Victoria said. “I’ll have an answer for you in the next day or two.”

Cameron stood, too. “Um, ma’am? We don’t have a day or two. Roger Parsons is a scary dude. He’s champing at the bit to hang the lot of them.”

“I’ll give you my decision in a day or two,” Victoria repeated. “Take your time eating in here. Do you need a place to shelter for the night?”

“No, ma’am. With you or without you, I need to get back to Hilltop.”

“Why?” McCrea asked.

Cameron sat back down and addressed his plate. “You were an Army officer, right?”

“Major,” McCrea said.

“If you’d left a bunch of your comrades in danger, wouldn’t you want to get back to them?”

McCrea knitted his brow, looked at Victoria, and then put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Yes, I would,” he said. “But do you and me both the favor of resting for the rest of the day and we’ll find shelter for you. Start fresh tomorrow. If we end up going, we’ll want you along. Any extra hands we can get.”

“Not to mention the extra gun,” Joey said.

Cameron finished the remaining eggs and sausage with a single scoop of his fork. “I guess I gave you a lot to think about,” he mumbled around the mouthful. “I can stay for a night, but then I’ve got to get back.” He stood.

Victoria said, “If you go around the corner to the next building, you’ll find Ben Barnett. He’s a big man, can’t miss him. He’ll find a place for you to stay tonight.”

“I’m serious about leaving first thing,” Cameron said.

“I understand,” she said, and they shook hands.

As he exited, Victoria sat back down and opened the letter. “Joey, could you find George Simmons and ask him to join us?”

“What about your boys?” McCrea asked.

“Yeah, them, too.”

Within fifteen minutes, Victoria’s family had all gathered in the main room of Maggie’s Place. Adam was the oldest at eighteen, and his girlfriend, Emma, was pregnant, though not yet showing. At sixteen, Caleb had grown two inches in the past two months.

He spent his days helping Doc Rory Stevenson work on patients and learning cowboy medicine as a trade. Luke would turn fifteen soon, and his work in Lavinia Sloan’s blacksmith shop had broadened his shoulders and blackened his hands without darkening his outlook. Just like his father had been, Luke was an un-apologetic optimist in all things. Thanks to a lifetime of training, all her boys were expert marksmen.

First Sergeant Paul Copley was there, too, along with George Simmons and Joey Simmons. George, like Joey, was a lifelong resident of Ortho and its environs, and through them, Victoria avoided some of the social landmines that were so common in small towns. They knew the personalities, and friendships. More importantly, they knew the lifelong enmities that existed between some.

The letter was real. There was no forging the elaborate scrawl that was Penn Glendale’s handwriting. Written on the reverse side of the stationery for the House of Representatives, on which the logo on the front had been marked out with heavy black ink, the letter explained much of what young Mr. Cameron had told her. Penn’s was a personal plea for assistance.

As she read the letter aloud, her voice choked at the concluding paragraphs.

“Vicky, I ask you to do this thing—to preside over our trial—not to avoid punishment or to evade responsibility for the mess that the war has wrought. I ask so that some semblance of sanity might reign over this last gasp of government as we once knew it.

“If my colleagues and I are to be executed, let it be done mercifully and in a lawful manner. Decades from now, long after the government has fallen, the United States of America will remain as a population of citizens who are striving to thrive in the wilderness, much as our ancestors did. What succeeds the present must be built upon principles of freedom and the rule of law.

“I believe that you are uniquely suited to the task of leading the way. No matter what you choose to do, know that I am grateful for your consideration, and stand in admiration of what you have achieved while so many have foundered.

“Your obedient servant, Pennington

Glendale, President of the United States of America.”

Victoria folded the letter and wiped her eyes with her palms.

“So, it’s all gone,” Joey Abbott said, his voice barely a whisper. “The government is gone.”

“How the hell did everything go so wrong?” George Simmons wondered aloud.

“The government is not gone,” Victoria said. Under the circumstances, the strength of her voice surprised her. “We are the government. The people are the government. All that’s gone are the trappings of power.”

“And electricity,” Luke said, drawing a laugh.

George stood, but it took some effort. He’d said something about pulling a muscle during last week’s fight with the Appleton gang. “You gotta go,” he said.

Victoria waited for the rest.

“We’ve got this,” he said. “We’ve got Ortho. You put the train on the tracks, and we’ll keep it moving.”

“Hilltop’s a dangerous place, from what I hear,” Paul Copley said.

Joey laughed. “Not as dangerous as Vicky.”

“Mrs. Emerson,” George said, “you got something special. We’ve talked about it before. You walk into a situation and things get fixed. I don’t get it, but we’ve all seen it happen. You gotta go fix a bigger train. If we need you, we’ll send for you. And you know you’ve always got a home here.”

“I don’t know,” Victoria said. This wasn’t what she wanted. She’d finally found a place to settle. That place was here. Her family was finally together again. She had a grandchild on the way. How could she leave that? She said, “What are the chances that they haven’t already been executed? Young Mr. Cameron seemed to think—”

“You have to go, Vicky,” McCrea said. “How can you not go?”

Adam and Emma stood together, hand-in-hand. “You do what you want, Mom, but Emma and I like the idea of sleeping in a big hotel. We’re gonna go to Hilltop.” He looked to his brothers. “What do you say, guys?”

“There’s a chance I get a real bed?” Caleb leapt to his feet. “Hell yes.”

Luke stood. “I’m in.”

Victoria gaped. This was miles away from what she’d expected.

McCrea said, “I can’t speak for First Sergeant Copley, but my job is to be your security detail, Mrs. Emerson. You stay, I’ll stay. But it’s long trip for your kids to do it all alone.”

“Since when did you stop speaking for me?” Copley said.

Words wouldn’t form in Victoria’s head. Who the hell was she to stand in judgment of the president of the United States? For treason!

McCrea reached for her hand. “C’mon, Vick,” he said. “You’ve got duty to do.”

Hell Day + 34

VICTORIA EMERSON HEARD THE URGENCY IN THE TONE BEFORE SHE understood the words. She pivoted toward the back door as she rose from the table that she’d transformed into a makeshift desk in what used to be a diner called Maggie’s Place. Since the days immediately following the war, Maggie’s had served as an ersatz city hall. Victoria’s knees scooted her chair across the wooden floor as she stood.

“What on earth is that?” asked Ellie Stewart. They’d been meeting about the status of the clothing bank, now that the air had begun to smell like winter.

“Whatever it is, it sounds important.” Victoria opened the door.

A horse approached at a full gallop. Its rider—her fourteen-year-old son, Luke—hung tight to the saddle horn with his left hand, while he slapped the reins with his right. Never having sat a horse until a few weeks ago, he’d taken to it well, but he was pushing the beast way too hard on the asphalt roadway.

“Blue fire!” he yelled. “Coming down the river! Blue fire! Coming down the river!”

Victoria’s heart doubled its rate.

“Is he shouting blue fire?” Ellie asked, standing. Everyone understood blue fire to be the code phrase for the highest level of alert. It meant imminent danger from deadly forces, whether man-made or from natural causes.

Victoria didn’t answer. Instead, she reached back inside the door and grabbed the M4 rifle that was never more than a few feet away from her. It was a sad fact about feral, terrified humans that violence came more instinctively than kindness. That was a lesson hard learned in the first days after Hell Day—after the war.

Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she adjusted the pistol that always rested on her hip to make room for the stock, and stepped the rest of the way outside. She waved, trying to get Luke’s attention, but he was focused on spreading the word of imminent peril. She shivered against the chill of the autumn air and jogged around the side of the building toward the intersection of Mountain Road and Kanawha Road, the spot that had evolved, by silent consensus, to be the social and governmental center here in Ortho, West Virginia.

This unincorporated little burgh had never had its own town government, instead taking leadership from a county whose real leaders had evaporated, either killed in the attacks and their aftermath, or just choosing to flee. Those who remained had survived the unspeakable destruction of Hell Day—the eight-hour conflict that left the world in ruins—but all the technology and conveniences of the twenty-first century were gone. Even the previous century was beyond reach. Electricity was a memory, and without it little else worked. Most of the homes that existed on Hell Day had propane in the tanks buried in their backyards, and as long as pressure remained, the gas could flow. But the clock was clicking down on that, too.

Equipment that utilized microcircuitry, or was even moderately computerized, had been transformed by electromagnetic pulse into paperweights and doorstops. A few ancient cars still worked, but without electricity to power pumps, it was a daunting challenge to raise gasoline from underground tanks, where it languished unused.

As she hurried toward the square, Victoria looked across the street and caught the eye of Army Major Joe McCrea, who returned a look of dread. He had not made the progress he’d been hoping for on the construction of barricades to provide some level of protection from miscreants and marauders. The town still reeled from the attack from the Grubbs gang, just a few weeks before.

Rifle in hand, McCrea jogged to intersect Victoria’s path to the square. She slowed, but only slightly.

“This better not be a mistake,” McCrea said, making a broad gesture to the dozens of people flooding the square. “That would be a bad way to start.”

The emergency response protocol was new to everyone. Most agreed that swift action was key to mitigating any emergency, and they’d voted overwhelmingly to arm themselves while outside their homes. Those with access to long guns—in this part of the world, that meant just about everyone—agreed to keep them close at all times.

McCrea’s biggest fear about the new protocol, which he’d voiced only to Victoria, was overreaction and alarm fatigue. People had different opinions of what emergencies looked like, and if miscalculations resulted in a series of false alarms, especially in the early days, the system would quickly fall apart.

The fact that Luke Emerson was the first Paul Revere to trigger the alert protocol made it even more important that the emergency be real. Victoria had risen to leadership in Ortho by default rather than by election, and while her support remained strong among the original residents of the town, the daily flood of newcomers placing demands on the community’s already-limited resources were forcing her to make decisions that were increasingly unpopular.

“He’s a smart boy,” Victoria said, even though the past weeks had all but obliterated his prewar boyishness.

Luke continued his gallop in a wide loop down Kanawha Road, then left on Charleston Street, where he disappeared and reemerged from Fourth Street. As seconds passed, the shrill squeal of whistles billowed like a cloud of noise as residents reacted to Luke’s warnings. Another critical element of the emergency plan included the distribution of a recently-discovered cache of coaches’ whistles from the basement of Ortho Hardware, so that selected residents could spread the news of danger even farther. Whoever heard the whistle—the sound of which traveled many times farther than the sound of shouting—was instructed to blow their own whistle as they hurried toward either their designated rally stations or the town square.

Victoria felt embarrassed that her whistle remained dangling from its chain behind her flannel shirt. As she ran the last few yards to the square, she fished it out and gave it a sustained blow, adding her own noise to everyone else’s.

By the time Luke pulled his horse to a halt at the square, nearly thirty people had assembled, and more were rushing in.

Victoria stepped forward and raised her hands. In the distance from behind, she heard a familiar voice shouting, “Wait! We’re almost there!”

She turned to see her sixteen-year-old son, Caleb, sprinting toward them as best he could, his M4 carbine slapping against his unbuttoned coat. He’d taken a bullet through his butt cheek during the dustup with Jeffrey Grubbs and his gang and still moved with an awkward gait. Rory Stevenson, the town’s only doctor and Caleb’s nominal boss, kept up, step for step.

Victoria knew they’d be next to her by the time Luke got to the point. “What’s going on?”

Luke struggled to catch his breath as he leaned over his saddle horn. “People in boats,” he said. “Lots of them. All with guns. They’re coming this way.”

“What does a lot mean?” McCrea asked.

“I didn’t count,” Luke replied with an adolescent flash of duh. “Maybe fifty?”

“How many boats?” Victoria asked.

“I didn’t count those, either. Ten, maybe?”

George Simmons, once the owner of Simmons Gas and Goodies, stepped forward. “Were the boats under power?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t hear any motor noise. I think they were riding the current.”

“W. . .