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.