Chapter Seventeen #2
At least it was metal. It couldn’t be locked from the inside, but it was more protection, more—
Then she caught sight of movement to the side, and saw a couple of dark figures pushing at her Honda. The shooter at the pickup
truck on the left had been drawing their attention away from what the others were doing. Fiercely she swung the barrel around
and fired again.
The morons! Didn’t they know the entire valley would soon be awake, and heading this way? Their only chance for success had
been to get in and out without anyone noticing, and that opportunity was gone.
They were not getting her gasoline, not a single ounce of it.
She fired again, shattering what was left of a window. Oh no! What if she hit her own vehicle? She paused a split second,
then mentally shrugged and pulled the trigger one more time. If she didn’t hold these raiders off, would they overwhelm her and Olivia, kill them so there were no witnesses? Even if she ended up riddling the Honda with
holes, she couldn’t let the men gain access to the underground tanks.
In the darkness behind the ring of vehicles, she saw a flash of light, there and gone in a split second. Then another. More
vehicles? Or was it a trick of the moonlight, combined with wishful thinking?
She didn’t have time to decide. In her peripheral vision she caught movement on the left. Olivia must have seen the same thing,
because they both fired.
Outside, someone shouted, the sound urgent but she couldn’t make out the words over the ringing in her ears. The indistinct
figures began running in several directions; numbly she watched them opening doors and diving into the vehicles, then the
cars and trucks all seemed to be moving at once as they scattered like jackrabbits being chased by hounds. In less than half
a minute, the parking lot was empty.
“They left,” she said blankly, her voice loud.
“What?” Olivia asked just as loudly.
“They left!”
Side by side, they stood looking through the shattered windows. The pale, colorless moonlight glittered on the broken glass
as if on water. And here and there the darkness was punctured by headlights heading their way; finally, finally, people were
coming to help—or at least to see what was happening, and that amounted to the same thing.
Carefully she laid her rifle on the counter, then took Olivia’s rifle and placed it beside hers. She wrapped her arms around
the girl and held her tight, felt her shaking but that was okay because Sela was shaking just as hard.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, still talking too loudly.
“No. You?”
“I don’t think so. No.” She continued to hold on tight. Maybe she had a few minor cuts, but her thick winter coat had protected
her from a lot. Cuts didn’t seem important when compared to expecting to be shot.
“We did it,” Olivia said, her voice thin but touched with pride. “We scared them off.”
“We did.” Technically the approaching vehicles had done the scaring, but Sela wasn’t in the mood to be technical.
“Girls rule, boys drool,” Olivia said, and then she burst into tears.
Sela comforted her as best she could while getting them both outside. She yawned, trying to ease the ringing in her ears,
and released Olivia long enough to press hard on both her ears, which seemed to help some. The .22s hadn’t been that loud,
but the other rifles had been a different matter. The cold air was sharp with the smell of burnt gunpowder, and a light haze
of smoke seemed to hang in the air.
A vehicle was coming down the road toward them, and Sela stepped forward so she could be seen in the sweep of the headlights,
waving her arms. The truck stopped and Mike Kilgore ran forward. “I heard shooting,” he said urgently.
“Some men tried to steal the gas.” Sela sucked in a breath, because everything that had happened during the past . . . fifteen
minutes—maybe?—seemed so unreal she could barely put it into words. “Olivia and I were keeping watch, in the store. We have
our .22s.”
Gaping, he stared at the damage he could see behind her, and Olivia fiercely wiping her eyes.
“They shot at you?”
Considering the store had every window shot out, Sela thought the question was unnecessary. She didn’t answer, because more
vehicles were coming toward them. One, bigger than the others, was driving on the wrong side of the road and passing everyone
else, not that it mattered which lane anyone was in because they were all heading in the same direction—at least ten vehicles,
speeding their way. She moved toward Olivia, warily herding the girl back toward the store. The last thing she wanted was
for them to get run over now, after surviving a gunfight.
A gunfight!
The sense of unreality was overwhelming. She didn’t know whether to join Olivia in crying, or . . . sit down. Yes. She desperately
needed to sit down.
Why not? “My legs are shaky,” she told Olivia. “Let’s sit down.”
“Here?” Olivia blinked owlishly at her, and swiped her hand under her nose.
“Why not?”
They both sank down on the cold, dirty pavement, littered with grit, pieces of trash, and dead leaves that had blown across
the parking lot. Here and there spent brass casings shone dully in Mike’s headlights. Olivia leaned against her shoulder,
burrowing in like a child; Sela hugged her tight, thankful beyond words that they’d come through unscathed, though she couldn’t
say the same about her store.
The racing cavalcade of vehicles reached them and the big truck in the lead slid to a stop with screeching tires and Ben jumped
out before it had rocked back on its suspension. He held a big rifle in his hand, and he looked big and mean as he zeroed
in on her, sitting there on the ground. Backlit by the harsh light of all the headlights, he strode across the parking lot
toward her, his gaze so focused and intent that everyone else might as well have been invisible.
Energy shot through her and instantly she scrambled to her feet, momentarily unable to see anything other than him. Beside
her Olivia also stood, perhaps wondering at their jack-in-the-box movements, but she, too, stared at Ben, her eyes big.
He reached them, not touching her but standing so close that even on this cold night she could feel the blast field of his
heat—though perhaps that was her own reaction to his nearness, her body heating and responding. She couldn’t see the color
of his eyes but she could definitely see the savage fire in their expression. “You’re bleeding,” he said flatly.
“I am?” she asked, her tone bewildered.
Very lightly he touched a fingertip to her face, then dropped his hand as if the slight contact stung him.
“From the glass,” Olivia said helpfully. “When they shot out the windows.”
Ben said only one word: “Who?”
Sela swallowed. In that instant she knew beyond any doubt that if she could put a name to any of the men who had attacked
them, Ben would hunt them down and deal out his own version of due process. “I don’t know. There were six of them, as far
as I could tell, but no one I could recognize. They wore hoods pulled up, baseball caps . . . and it’s dark. Everything happened
fast.”
It hadn’t felt fast at the time. Every second had felt as if it were mired in molasses.
Beside her, Olivia shook her head. “I didn’t recognize anyone, either.” She turned to watch all the other belated rescuers
arrive, vehicle after vehicle pulling into the parking lot or onto the side of the road, while a few simply parked in the
road where they were; it wasn’t as if they had to worry about any through traffic.
“I’m thinking it was likely some of the meth heads from over Townsend way,” Mike said, joining them. “The word will have spread
that you have gas.”
With an effort Sela wrenched her attention away from Ben. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “That’s why I was here, in case
anyone tried anything. Not that it had to be meth heads. I imagine there are a lot of regular people who’d like to have as
much gas as they could get.”
Ben made a noise, rumbling low in his throat, that sounded suspiciously like a growl. She’d never before been around anyone
who she thought might be growling. Rather than be alarmed, she began getting warm again. It took all of her concentration
to remain standing where she was, rather than taking a step forward and simply resting against him, her head on his chest,
her arms around him.
More than anything, that was what she wanted to do.
“I have a first-aid kit in the truck,” he said, wheeling away to stride to his vehicle, and breaking the connective circle
that had surrounded them and kept everyone else at a distance. Mike watched him for a minute, his eyebrows lifted, then turned
back to Sela.
“Damn, I wish I’d gotten here sooner,” he said, abashed. “I’m sorry. And what the he—heck is Ben Jernigan doing here?” Nimbly
he changed hell to heck in deference to Olivia’s tender ears, completely ignoring the fact that a lot of teenagers swore like sailors and Sela was
sure Olivia did her share of swearing when she was with her friends. Nevertheless, Mike was an old-fashioned Southern guy,
and he held to his mode of behavior.
“I don’t know why he’s here right now,” Sela replied, “but I went to his house yesterday and asked him to give us some pointers on what the patrol should be doing,
and he agreed to come down this morning . . . is it morning yet?” She felt as if so many hours had passed, first in boredom
and then in terror, that it had to be close to dawn.
“Getting close to one o’clock,” Mike answered.
Was that all? She was aghast. Dawn was still hours away.
“Eastern standard, or daylight saving?” Olivia piped up, looking puzzled.
Mike stared at her, his mouth falling open. He gave Sela a helpless look. “I don’t know. What date is it? When does the time
change?”
The conversation was surreal. Sela felt as if the world had slid a little bit out of whack, or maybe this was just their reaction
to shock. “I don’t know.” And did it matter? They had nowhere to go, no planes to catch, no appointments to keep.