Considering his eyes were still open and he hadn’t blinked, she figured he was dead or damned close.
She darted to his position and kicked his gun away from his hand. He didn’t move.
He’d been crouched near the tire as she had suspected. Looked as if he’d simply fallen over. Why had he bled so profusely?
She looked for the entry wound where she’d hit him, but it was difficult to see in the near darkness. Instead she looked for where the blood appeared to start on his clothing. Left thigh area.
Then she knew. There was an artery in that general area. She couldn’t remember what it was called or exactly where it was, but apparently she’d hit it.
And he’d bled to death before he’d realized how badly he was wounded.
Damned lucky for her.
“Get us out of here!”
Her gaze swung to the truck and the older boy’s face. He peered out the rear window now.
The two must have hunkered in the floor after the horn-blowing incident. Otherwise they could have seen the man lying on his side in the sand.
Gabrielle hurried to the driver’s side door and wrenched it open.
“Hurry, lady!” the older boy demanded. “He was meeting his friends. They’ll know something has gone wrong and head this way soon!”
“Give me a minute,” Gabrielle snapped. Ungrateful kid. Didn’t he realize she’d just saved his butt?
The boys’ hands were chained together. The end of the chain was also bound to the bottom of the front seat. No way he’d reached that horn with his hand. He must have done it with his foot. The console between the front bucket seats would have allowed for a reach like that.
“I’ll need the key,” she said as she picked through the stuff in the console. The key in the ignition was alone on its ring. Shooting the chain to break it might work in the movies but she wasn’t going to risk it under the circumstances.
“It’s in his pocket,” the older kid said. “Hurry!”
She rushed back to where the guy lay on the ground and crouched next to him. The gun had been in his right hand so that made him right-handed. The key would likely be in that pocket, which meant rolling him over.
Touching a dead guy ranked really low on her list of things to do in life. Unless it was Sloan, she amended. But the situation sorely limited her options.
Bracing one hand on his shoulder and the other on his hip, she rolled him onto his back. She shuddered but didn’t hesitate to pilfer through his right pocket. Her fingers encountered cool metal and then curled around a single key. She tugged it out of his tattered jeans and rushed back to the truck without allowing her gaze to linger on the dead guy.
“Hurry!” the older boy shouted.
She scowled at him, her fingers poised on the lock. “I’m doing the best I can. You wanna give it a rest?”
He scowled right back at her. The ingrate.
The chains fell away and she ushered them out of the truck’s back seat. “Get in my Jeep,” she ordered.
The older boy, who was at least a couple inches taller than her, glared down at her. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Before she could answer, the little boy slammed against his brother’s side and started to cry hard. He’d evidently gotten a look at the dead man on the ground and then launched himself at his older brother.
“Just shut up and let’s get out of here,” she snapped at the older boy who still glowered at her.
She stomped off in the direction of her Jeep. It wasn’t necessary to turn around and make sure they were following. She knew they were. She could hear the younger boy’s hiccuping sobs.
It was a shame the kid had to see the dead guy, but it couldn’t be helped.
When they’d loaded into her Jeep, the smaller boy in the back seat, she and the older one up front, she started the engine.
“Better head for the mountains,” the older one told her, his voice somewhat calmer now if not friendlier.
Gabrielle shoved the gearshift into first. “Why the mountains? Why not into town? To the police?”
Their gazes met across the narrow expanse of darkness that separated them in the Jeep’s cramped interior. She didn’t need to see his eyes well to recognize the intensity there, his voice told her all she needed to know.
“They’ll be coming from that direction. You don’t want to run into them. We need to hide. There’s only once place we can go where they won’t find us.”
“The mountains, right?” she said, wondering vaguely how the hell she’d gotten caught up in this insanity.
“I know a place where we’ll be safe. My father said if anything ever went wrong when he was away that we should go there.”
She let off the clutch and the Jeep shot forward. “I hope you know the way.” It wasn’t as though she was from around here. She hated to break that newsflash to him, but there was no point beating around the bush. If more of those bastards were headed this way, they had to make a definite decision on which way they were going and the kid wasn’t being exactly specific.
“I know the way,” he said, a kind of resigned determination in his voice. “You just drop us off at the foot of the mountain and let me borrow your gun and we’ll be fine.”
Yeah, right. “I don’t think so, pal.” Did he think she was stupid? She’d need this weapon to get back out of here. Maybe she should have taken the dead guy’s gun for backup, but she hadn’t thought of it until now.
“Then you can just drop us off and be on your way,” he snarled, but his hateful tone fell a little short. His voice quavered ever so slightly.
“I can do that,” she retorted, refusing to let the idea that he was probably scared to death get to her. The sooner they were out of her hair, the better she’d like it. She was no babysitter. She damned sure wasn’t going to see after kids who most likely belonged to her enemy. Not that the kids deserved to be hurt because their father was a murdering lowlife, but it wasn’t her place to do any more for them than she already had. She’d risked her life as it was.
The short journey was made in silence other than the soft sobbing in the back seat. The sound had lessened somewhat but not completely. Poor kid. He’d watched three people die today. It couldn’t be easy on him.
She glanced at the older boy. She couldn’t really see him that well with only the aid of the dim glow from the dash lights. His profile looked hard, his jaw determined. Instead of crying like his little brother, he’d opted to be angry. Not that she could blame him. She didn’t know who the first man to die was or what relationship he had with the boys, but she’d guess a caregiver of some sort.
Irritation twisted inside her. Here she was getting all worried about two kids who were no concern of hers. She had a goal to accomplish. She couldn’t let anything get in her way. Not now. She was too close.
“Stop here.”
She braked to a halt and resisted the impulse to ask for a please. Where were this kid’s manners?
He opened his door and got out, then offered his hand to his brother. When the younger boy had climbed out, the older one hesitated before closing the passenger door.
“Thank you,” he said. His lips trembled once before he bit them together, but she couldn’t have missed it.
As tough as he wanted to appear, he was shaken up pretty badly, as she’d suspected.
“No problem.” She looked out at the darkness. “You take care of yourselves now.”