“So he can watch me blow your face off before I take him out,” Lawrence answered with a sly grin. “We were going to have to do something about him ASAP, anyway. Once he got involved I knew he’d be a huge pain in my ass.”
“No, why do any of this? You and your friends were all going to get a share of the gas. We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that everyone will get by. It won’t be easy, but if we stick together we can all survive this.” She tried to sound merely bewildered, not angry, not threatening in any way.
She had just lied. Not everyone would survive. Even in the before world, with electricity and modern medicine and conveniences, not everyone survived. Now their existence was much more precarious.
But Ben was a survivor. In any halfway even fight, she’d put her money on him. Lawrence thought his guys had won, but she didn’t. Ben was on his way, she knew it. If she could just stall Lawrence long enough . . .
Dietrich laughed. “Your pissy little five-gallon limit of gasoline was going to work magic? We need more gasoline than you were going to give us. We need to be able to make short trips into other areas, and we’d like to be able to get home again.”
“Trips?” Raids, more likely.
He made a mocking half dip of his head. “Some of us need more than canned beans. My wife, Zoe, she needs her pills. She’s a nervous wreck without them. There’s a basement weed farm in Maryville I’d like to visit. And who knows what kind of stash some of the folks right here in Wears Valley have? With all the trauma and stress, why, we can make a small fortune in the weed business, and there’s a fortune in meth—but I needed that gas, and you fucked up everything. Why couldn’t you have stayed your ass at home, instead of sitting in the store in the dark? Now I’ll have to go from house to house to get it. Some people are going to get hurt, and it’s all your fault, but you’re just a bump in the road. I’m going to get through this mess and come out the other side a rich man.”
“But people will die—”
“Not my problem.” He’d reached Carol’s bedroom door, and glanced over his shoulder into the room. What did he see, what was going on in there? Was Meredith still holding the vase? Carol would still be in bed, and frantic, because they would all have heard what Dietrich had said. What was Olivia doing? Olivia was the wild card, and she’d been involved in the gunfight at the store. She might try to jump Dietrich from behind. But, thank God, after looking inside the bedroom Dietrich began edging away again, back toward where Sela stood in the middle of the room.
“Jeremy,” he said, grinning at Sela, “take care of the ladies in the bedroom.”
Jeremy steered well clear of Sela as he circled around, walked to the door, and looked into Carol’s room. “You mean, tie ’em up?”
“No, that is not what I mean,” Lawrence said sharply. “When you stage a coup you wipe out the previous administration. Take care of it.”
“But—”
“Gut ’em or shoot ’em. Your choice.”
Horror filled her at his words. Jeremy paled, and it wasn’t her imagination. She knew nothing about him other than he was Lawrence’s brother, and she wouldn’t have known that much if not for Ted. Was he the kind of man who would do as his brother ordered, no matter what?
She had to do something, anything. She tensed, nothing on her mind except blindly rushing Lawrence and taking her chances with that rifle. If she could distract both men for just a little while, not even a minute, maybe the others could escape, maybe they could barricade the door—anything.
Jeremy let his arm drop to his side. He was still holding his rifle, but he wasn’t aiming it at anyone. “I’m not killing a bunch of old women and a kid.”
Lawrence erupted in fury, spinning toward his brother. “Damn it, you always were a pussy. I’ll do it myself!”
Planning required calculation, and she didn’t have time for that. She simply leaped, driven by desperation. She tackled Lawrence from behind, driving her shoulder into his hips. He staggered but didn’t go down; she grabbed at his legs and jerked, lost her own balance, and sprawled hard on the floor. Her face was nauseatingly close to the blood-splattered boots. He stumbled again, recovered again, and still didn’t fall. She grabbed one of his ankles and jerked, then drew her legs up and kicked as hard as she could, catching him behind the knee.
He grunted and stumbled forward again, but the son of a bitch still didn’t go down. Sobbing, desperate, she tried to scramble to her feet.
Lawrence turned around and pushed her, hard; she landed on her back, the breath knocked out of her. He kicked her in the side, on the thigh, cursing at her with each blow. The pain was excruciating, paralyzing. Dimly she thought she should fight through it, but at the moment all she could do was curl up and cover her head with her arms.
Jeremy backed away from the bedroom door, hands up in a way that indicated he wasn’t getting involved. Over Lawrence’s shoulder Sela glimpsed a blur of movement. Meredith rushed forward with the vase in her hand, while Barb—Barb!—was swinging one of Carol’s crutches. Olivia had the other one.
Sela rolled away, somehow finding the strength, desperately hoping Lawrence’s attention would stay on her and he wouldn’t notice the poorly armed women. She came to a stop against the couch and could go no farther. Lawrence came toward her like a demon, his expression twisted with rage. She closed her eyes, waiting for the gunshot that would end her, or another savage kick. Maybe she hadn’t been able to save herself, but maybe the others could make it out, somehow. Ben. His name echoed in her mind.
The sound of the blast was deafening.
She didn’t feel anything. What—?
She opened one eye and saw Lawrence in a boneless, awkward heap a couple of yards away. Weakly she struggled to her knees, not understanding and wanting nothing more than to get away while she could. Then there was a blur of movement and Ben dropped down to wrap his arms around her, hugging her tightly to him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice raw and close, so wonderfully close.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” she said numbly, still dazed and not with the program at all.
“Are you hurt?”
“He was going to kill us all, Carol and Olivia and—”
“Are you hurt?” Ben bellowed.
She blinked, looked up into those blazing, beautiful green eyes. “No.” That was a lie. Her side was on fire where Lawrence had kicked her, and her leg was numb. She expected that would change any minute now, and she’d really miss the numbness. But she wasn’t dead, she wasn’t shot, and both of those were big pluses.
He helped her to her feet, never letting go. That was fine with her, because her leg wouldn’t hold her weight right now. She had no intention of letting go of him anytime soon, anyway.
Lawrence was definitely dead, half of his face missing. Sela turned her face into Ben’s shoulder, sickened by the sight. Jeremy stood to one side, disarmed, pale, his focus on the rifle Trey held on him, rather than on the raised vase and wooden crutches that were also threatening him.
“Lawrence told Jeremy to kill the others, but he wouldn’t do it,” she said into Ben’s shirt, afraid they were going to execute Jeremy on the spot. Maybe they should; she didn’t know what else he’d done, if Darren was injured or dead, if Harley, who’d been at the front door when Lawrence had arrived, was alive or dead. All she knew was that if Jeremy had done as his brother ordered, Ben and Trey wouldn’t have arrived in time to save anyone.