When a woman moves into the sleepy town, it rouses everyone's tongues to start wagging. She is strange and distant in her manner. Tia Frost is blissfully unaware of the townsfolk's discomfort with her. With Burt at her side, she wonders about the wo...
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"Maverick are your people coming?" Tia asked.
"They won't leave me to die here. If they aren't here now it's because they are fighting to get here."
The sounds upstairs matched the events on the screen, as they wrenched the shutter open. The sound of metal on metal set my teeth on edge. Finally, they had bent it enough to reveal the door. More men walked up they had military-style guns. I looked down at the rifle in my hands. This isn't going to cut it against those. Where the hell did they get those from?
One of them started shouldering the door. It gave way quickly and a flash on the screen mixed with the muffled sound of the gun going off above us.
Tia laid the guns out and lined up the ammo for easy loading near the bottom of the stairs as the gun went off. She flinched at the sound but didn't stop what she was doing. One of the others grabbed the man writhing in the doorway leaving a thick trail of blood as he dragged the man out of the way.
The rifle had got him in the leg when he had taken a step inside. The man was writhing and screaming as he was pulled away from the porch. "He's alive." I said.
Tia looked up at the monitor. "That will stall them, but not for long." She was still flat but had a slight waver in her voice now.
"Maybe long enough," I said pointing at the screen.
One man in a long coat stepped forward and spoke to the men at the door. They stepped back and the wounded man was picked up from where they had left him. The men started moving away from the house. They slipped into the darkness and less than a minute later police in full riot gear started surrounding the house.
"You need to tell them to stay out." Tia's voice finally had emotion in it, she was panicked.
"Janna you copy?"
The radio crackled and Janna came back. "Mac! What..."
"Tell the officers outside the house to stop. The house is trapped!" I watched them lining up at the door as I spoke.
The frontman took one step towards the door, then stopped holding his hand up to stall the others. The men at the door lowered their guns and stepped down from the porch.
"Done Mac. Are you alright?"
At that moment Tia fell to the ground. Her head bounced off the metal nailed to the stairs. Her body contorted and flailed. "I'm fine but we need an ambulance. Tia is fitting and everyone needs to stay out until I can disarm the traps."
I moved the guns away from her and tried to redirect her limbs to stop her from hurting herself.
"Mac the ambulance crew need information on Tia."
"She hit her head hard and I think she's bleeding. No more information at the moment." It felt like forever before she stopped fitting. I ran my hand over the back of her head. It came away bloody and my chest felt like it turned to stone. "She has a head wound. She's bleeding."
