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