Chapter 10

Having all these people in his house was more than Ian bargained for when he suggested to Dave that he shoot Burned on his property. He was proud of his wife Leesa for being such a good sport about it, because if she'd done this to him, he wasn't so sure he could be so gracious. He hoped that things with Michael, Fiona, Sam and Jesse would wrap up soon. He missed the privacy he sometimes took for granted. One thing that made it less painful was that they got their room back after the trip to town, where he and Michael picked up air mattresses for everyone to sleep on who didn't already have a bed. Michael and Fiona took one, Sam and Jesse each had their own, and the cast members and Dave shared the bedrooms. When Ian returned to the master bedroom, he found Leesa sound asleep on her side. She was warm, snuggled down deep into the covers, and the scent of her body lotion was still strong. Like metal to a magnet, he was drawn to her, and he crawled under the comforter, spooned up against her backside, and slipped an arm around to hold her hand. She made a sound, turned her head and smiled at him in the moonlight streaming in through the curtains.

"I take it your watch went okay?"

"Yeah, nothing major. Just a bunch of kids partying out at the crash site. Otherwise, it was quiet." He nibbled on her earlobe. "But it was just enough to get the old adrenaline going. It was pretty cool."

She chuckled and turned to face him. "Guess you want me to help you burn off some of that energy, eh?"

"That would be nice. Yeah." He kissed her, and she melted into him.

Leesa always knew how to help him relax.

The sound of gunfire wasn't normally a cause for concern because it wasn't unusual to hear shots in the middle of the night. Whether it was hunters or neighbors practicing their shooting skills, guns were not foreign to the area. But this was closer and more intense than anything they'd ever heard before. The window shattered, and Ian and Leesa gasped. He quickly regained his composure.

"Get down on the floor! Get down!" She obeyed, and he rolled off his side of the bed, snatched the rifle that lay propped against the wall, and crawled to the window. Cold air rushed inside, but he wasn't chilled. A rush of adrenaline warmed Ian, but caution kept him from exposing himself to snipers. He hugged the wall near the window and positioned himself to get a view toward the clearing hoping to see the source of the shots. He caught a flicker of light from the barrel of an automatic weapon. A second later, it pierced the wood siding and cut through the wall, missing him by inches. Being left handed gave him a disadvantage, because the only way he had enough room to shoot was if he exposed himself momentarily to squeeze off a couple shots. The man on the lower ground saw him, raised his rifle, and Ian made himself as small a target as possible. Until that moment, his experience with firing weapons came from some training on set and time spent in some of Miami's finest gun ranges. He didn't like them, but in his job they were a necessary evil, so he had a tenuous relationship with firearms. Now everything was on the line. Could he do what needed to be done to protect his home, his wife, and his friends...that was the real question.

He pressed the trigger in a smooth motion and anticipated the kick-back as the gun fired. He missed the guy on the first shot and muttered a curse. The second one hit him in the shoulder, and he went down hard. But he had little time to celebrate, because another shooter came from the southwest and grazed his upper arm with a shot.

"Ian! Get down!" Leesa knelt behind the safety of the mattress, but she peeked over the top when she heard the bullet streak past him.

"I'm fine, honey. Stay down!" He fired a few rounds at the target, but he or she was already gone. "Where'd they go?"

He jumped back as a hand appeared and curled over the window sill. Instinctively, he aimed the butt of his rifle for the knuckles and put all his force into it. A satisfying crack confirmed that he did some damage. But the guy would not let go. So he did it again and the second time the man fell two stories, hit the deck rail, and bounced down to the hill below. From his vantage point, Ian couldn't tell if the guy was dead or just unconscious. He wasn't going to stand around and wait.

As he came around the bed, Ian picked up Leesa's robe and tossed it to her. "Put this on. We're getting out of here." He threw his weapon on the bed long enough to put on a pair of jeans and drag his arms into the shirt he discarded earlier, then he picked up the gun, grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door.

"Wait! Be careful opening that," she advised.

Ian nodded. He listened carefully. There was a lot of commotion on the other side, but it sounded like it was far away. "Okay, let's move." He opened the door a sliver, just to see if it was clear. The hallway was empty. "Sounds like everything's happening downstairs."

"Sounds like I'm going to have a lot of housework in the morning," Leesa joked. Leave it to her to be in the middle of a crisis and come up with something witty. That was one of the things he loved about her.

"Stay behind me."

"Be careful."

"I'll try, believe me."

They moved to the stairs and stepped down to the point where Ian could see the living room. Two bodies lay on the floor, and for a moment, he was thankful that they didn't have wall to wall carpeting. "Lees...you better wait here. Stay out of sight."

"Ian, I think it's time to let Michael, Fiona and the others take care of this. This is their fight, not yours."

He turned a shocked expression toward her. "Leesa, I can't let them down. Would you let our friends get slaughtered just to save our skin? And do you really think they're going to stop with just them?"

Leesa shook her head. "I'm sorry...this is not what I signed up for when you and Dave came up with this crazy idea to shoot here."

"I know. But hopefully this'll all be over soon."

"It will be, once we have Michael Westen and his little band."

Leesa and Ian looked up a few steps to see a tall, thin man coming down to meet them with a menacing looking pistol in his hand. Ian pulled Leesa behind himself and she held onto his shoulders tightly. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"If you want to live, you'll stop asking stupid questions." The man spoke with an Eastern European accent. He pushed the barrel into Ian's stomach just under his ribcage. "Now get moving, or I shoot both of you."

Someone grabbed Ian's rifle and ripped it out of his grip so violently, a piece of the stock cut his hands. He clenched them against the pain, turned, and pressed his hands into Leesa's shoulders to keep her in front of himself as they descended the stairs. He contemplated coming up with a plan to disarm the guy, but he was no expert in self defense, and the gun was against his back in a place where maximum damage would result if it went off. He would bleed out before an ambulance could even get close to their residence. As they walked through the living room, he glanced at the bodies. They weren't people he knew. How many more were outside, alive versus dead? Where were his friends? And how many of the good guys were left? They approached the French doors. They stood open and several of the panes were broken. As they neared the exit, Ian made note of the situation, calculating where he could make a move. Leesa passed the threshold and he pushed her with enough force that she tripped across the deck and ran into the railing. She grabbed hold and stopped her momentum.

At the same time, Ian pretended to trip on the weatherstripping. His captor reacted in surprise, but Ian was faster. He leaned down, picked up a shard of glass, and came up facing him. Before he knew what happened, Ian jabbed the glass into the man's neck. The gun went off as the shock registered on his face and he fell back into the house. Ian's breath hung thick in the cold air as he leaned against the door frame and watched the life drain out of the man.

"Who was he?"

"I-I don't know. Where are Michael...Fi..." He found it increasingly difficult to get his breath.

"Oh no! Ian!" Leesa grabbed and held him as he slowly collapsed onto the deck. She pressed her hand against his side. "You've been shot! Somebody help us! Help!" With each syllable, her voice rose in panic. Feet came running and the deck shook. Leesa screamed.

"Hey, hey, it's okay!" Michael reassured her with a gentle hand on her arm. "What happened?"

"He-he's been shot, Michael."

"No worries, Mikey. Just a...a flesh wound," Ian gasped and winced as Michael touched his side.

"It may be, but it's a hell of a wound, Ian." Michael regarded Leesa. She was in more shock than Ian, and the only way to snap her out of it was to get her on a task. "Leesa, I want you to do me a favor. Go inside and get anything you have that we can use to stop the bleeding, okay?"

"O-okay," she stuttered and shivered as she got to her feet.

"I'll help you," Fiona said as she led her by the elbow around the dead man and into the house.

"Nice work, by the way," Michael praised as he pressed against the wound. "You know, this really is just a flesh wound. Sometimes they bleed enough to make them look worse than they are."

"It may seem like nothing but it...it really hurts."

"It will."

"Where are the others?"

By this time, all the gunfire had died down. Footsteps came up the deck stairs and stopped short of the scene.

"Oh crap, what happened to him," Sam asked as he came forward and knelt on one knee near the two men.

"Got shot taking that guy down," Ian answered and nudged his chin toward the prone body.

"Looks like he got the worse end of the deal," Sam replied and cocked a grin. "Good job, Ian. You did Sam Axe proud."

"I didn't do it for my character. I was just trying to save our butts."

"Half the time, that's all it is, buddy." He patted Ian's shoulder.

While Michael and Sam tended to Ian, the other men took out the bodies and laid them on the cold ground in the valley. They helped Ian inside and sat him on the couch where Leesa held onto him tightly and wouldn't let go.

"It's not that bad, baby," Ian reassured her. "I'll be good as new in no time."

"Not that anybody cares, but this is going to set our shooting schedule back another week, at least."

"Nonsense! I've worked with injuries before, I'll do it again."

"This is not some pulled muscle, Ian. You should go to the hospital!"

"Yeah, Dave, how do you think that one's gonna play there? The cops'll be all over this place in five minutes, and Mike and his friends will have a whole lot of explaining to do. Uh uh, not gonna happen."

"Thank you, Ian." Michael regarded him with a smile that said his respect for the man just grew. "We'll have this cleaned up in no time and we'll be out of your hair, and you can go back to shooting the show."

"But Ian..."

Sam butted in. "Don't worry about Ian. We'll have him patched up good as new." He grasped Ian's arm and helped him stand. "Let's go upstairs and get this cleaned up, and I promise you'll barely feel a thing!"