“Mam!”
“Get down on the floor, Jem, right now! Take Mandy!” One of the men from the house and the dumpy woman were moving again; she could hear them. And the second man from the house had disappeared into the dark outside the circle of light. “ERNIE!”
“But, Mam, somebody’s coming!”
Everyone froze for an instant, and the sound of an engine advancing down the farm track came clearly through the night. She turned and grabbed the door handle, jerking it open just as Ernie’s engine finally coughed into full-throated life. She hurled herself into the seat, her feet narrowly missing Jem’s head as he peered up from the footwell, eyes huge in the dim light.
“Let’s go, Ernie,” she said, very calmly under the circumstance. “Kids, you stay down there.”
A rifle butt struck the window near Ernie’s head, starring the glass, and he yelped but didn’t, God bless him, flood the engine again. Another blow and the glass broke in a cascade of glittering fragments. Brianna dropped her own gun and lunged across Ernie, reaching for the rifle. She got a hand on it, but the man holding it wrenched it free. Grabbing wildly, she scrabbled at the balaclava’d shape, and the woolly helmet came off in her hand, leaving the man beneath openmouthed with shock.
The spotlight went off, plunging the yard into darkness, and bright spots danced in front of her eyes. It popped back on again as the new vehicle roared into the yard, horn blaring. Brianna lifted herself out of Ernie’s lap, trying to see out through the windshield, then flung herself toward the other side of the truck.
It was an ordinary car, a dark-blue Fiat, looking like a toy as it circled the yard, horn blatting like a sow in heat.
“Friend, d’ye think?” Ernie asked, his voice strained but not panicked. “Or foe?”
“Friend,” she said, breathless, as the Fiat charged three of the intruders who were standing together: the unmasked rifle-wielder, the woman in the Barbour jacket, and whoever the guy who wasn’t Rob Cameron was. They scattered like cockroaches into the grass, and Ernie slammed a fist on the dash in exultation.
“That’ll show the buggers!”
Bree would have liked to stay and watch the rest of the show, but wherever Cameron was, he was undoubtedly too close.
“Go, Ernie!”
He went, with a terrible crunching and screeching of metal. The van lurched badly; the back axle must be damaged. She could only hope a wheel didn’t come off.
The blue Fiat was prowling the dooryard; it honked and flashed its lights at Ernie’s truck, and a hand waved from the driver’s window. Brianna stuck her head out cautiously and returned the wave, then dropped back into her seat, panting. Black spots were swimming in her field of vision and her hair stuck to her face, lank with sweat.
They limped down the lane in first gear, with a horrible grinding noise; from the sound of it, the back wheel well had caved in.
“Mam.” Jemmy stuck his head up over the edge of the seat like a prairie dog. “Can I come up now?”
“Sure.” She took a deep breath and helped Mandy scramble up after him. The little girl plastered herself at once to Brianna’s chest, whimpering.
“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered into Mandy’s hair, clinging to the solid small body as much as Mandy clung to her. “Everything will be fine.” She glanced down at Jem, riding between Ernie and herself. He was hunched into himself and shivering visibly in his checked wool jacket, even though it was warm in the cab. She reached out a hand and took him by the back of the neck, shaking him gently. “Okay there, pal?”
He nodded, but without saying anything. She folded her hand over his, clenched into a small fist on his knee, and held it tight—both in reassurance and to stop her own hand shaking.
Ernie cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry, Brianna,” he said gruffly. “I didna ken that—I mean, I thought it would be okay to bring the bairns back, and after yon Cameron came to the house and hit Fiona, I—” A trickle of sweat gleamed as it ran down behind his ear.
“He what?” After the events of the last hour, this news registered only as a blip on her personal seismograph, obscured by the bigger shock waves that were only now dying down. But she asked questions, and Jem began to come out of his own shell shock, telling about his part, gradually becoming indignant about Mrs. Kelleher and the police dispatcher. She felt a quiver in the pit of her stomach that wasn’t quite laughter but close enough.
“Don’t worry about it, Ernie.” She brushed off his renewed attempts at apology. Her voice rasped, her throat sore from shouting. “I’d have done the same, I expect. And we’d never have got away without you.” They’d never have been there without him in the first place, but he knew that as well as she did; no point in rubbing it in.
“Aye, mmphm.” He drove in silence for a moment, then remarked conversationally, looking in the rearview mirror, “Yon wee blue motor’s following us, ken.” His throat moved as he swallowed.
Brianna rubbed a hand over her face, then looked. Sure enough, the Fiat was trundling after them at a discreet distance.
Ernie coughed. “Ehm . . . where d’ye want to go, Bree? Only, I’m none sae sure we’ll make it all the way into the town. But there’s a petrol station with a garridge bay on the main road—if I was to stop there, they’d have a phone. Ye could call the polis while I deal wi’ the van.”
“Don’t call the polis, Mam,” Jemmy said, his nostrils flaring with disgust. “They’re no help.”