Chapter 31
Eddy remained immobile, staring in confusion. Durrand stood just as still, eyes as steady as an osprey’s on the girl with the gun.
The little Latino behind Durrand laughed. “I have tried to raise them right, but times are hard, yes? And there is so much they want: American jeans, American music, American cars, although…” He glanced sadly at the Pinto. “This, it is a piece of shit. Still…” He shrugged. “We are thieves not automobile connoisseurs. Is that not so, girls?”
“Aléjese del coche,” Bianca said.
Eddy shifted her gaze to the elder daughter. The pistol she now sported was trained with deadly accuracy on Durrand.
“What did she say?” he intoned.
Eddy’s throat felt tight. “They seem to want the car.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Tell them we’ll give up our money and our bags if they’ll let us keep the Pinto.”
She almost argued; everything they needed was in those bags: their passports, their weapons, their medical supplies, but in a moment, she understood his line of thinking. Gabe Durrand might be more devious than she had realized. She nodded. The movement felt jerky. “Please don’t leave us stranded,” she said and shifted her attention to Claudio.
The little Latino raised his brows with interest.
Eddy swallowed and hurried on. “If you let us keep the car we won’t turn you in to the authorities. You can have our money and whatever’s in our bags.”
“Do you hear that, my daughters? They wish to keep that pile of shit. Why do you suppose?”
Bianca smiled. Noa chuckled.
“It’s not what you think,” Eddy hurried to add. “We don’t have anything valuable hidden in it or anything. We just…we don’t know our way around. We could die if left afoot. But we’ve got cash,” she said suddenly and jerked open the Pinto’s back door. A bullet pinged a few inches from her foot.
Eddy spun about with a shriek.
Noa smiled. “Make my day.” She said the words in Spanish, attesting to her familiarity with Hollywood if not with the English language.
“I’m sorry!” Eddy breathed and jerked her hands higher. The trio stared at her, unspeaking. The father, too, now held a gun in one short-fingered hand. Eddy swallowed her bile and wished she had shared Durrand’s cynicism early on. “We don’t have a lot of money. A thousand… Wait. No. Not quite. I paid for the hostel and—”
“Get the bag,” Claudio ordered.
Eddy nodded. Her legs felt stiff, her arms heavy. But she kept them above her head. “Can I…” She paused, swallowed. “Can I put my hands down?”
“Unless you can lift the bag out with your teeth,” he said and chuckled. “That would be amusing, would it not, if she—” he began, but in that instant she grabbed the SIG from the pocket of her pack and swung it toward the youngest girl.
His chuckle stopped abruptly. The world went silent. He had lost his jovial expression. “I knew Americans were silly bastards,” he said, “but I did not think they were suicidal.”
“Take out their old man first,” Durrand said. His tone was absolutely even, but Eddy didn’t bother to shift either her gaze or her aim to the man who covered her.
“I’m an expert marksman,” she said, gaze glued on the girl. If she wasn’t mistaken, she had heard honest pride in Claudio’s voice when he spoke of his youngest. “This is a SIG Sauer 1911. It’s got a muzzle velocity of 950 fps. I can put five rounds into Noa’s lovely forehead before you can squeeze off a single shot.”
“Edwards…” Durrand’s voice was low. “Take out the old man.”
“But you are outnumbered.” Claudio smiled. “And I am certain one of us can shoot you before you take out all of us. Although we have not had your wonderful American training, so perhaps you will not be dead. But…” The smile fell from his face. “It is possible you will wish you were.”
“Edwards—” Durrand said again but she was already pulling the trigger. Noa stumbled backward with a shriek of pain as Eddy dropped to one knee and fired again.
It was over in less than a second. Noa cradled her wounded hand against her chest. Blood seeped between Bianca’s spread fingers, dripping down her arm. Their father lay on the ground, moaning as he clasped his thigh in both hands.
The youngest girl snarled something and reached for her pistol with bloody fingers, but Eddy sent it skittering through the mud with an additional bullet.
“Get your father on his feet.” Her command was almost unrecognizable to her own ears.
The girls stared at her for an instant then seeming to realize their good fortune, hurried through the rain to retrieve their diminutive father.
“Now get the hell out of here,” Eddy ordered.
The trio struggled toward their pickup truck, Claudio hopping miserably between his daughters. In a matter of minutes, they were gone.
Gabe stared after them. “Didn’t they train you to go for the body shot?”
“What?” Eddy turned toward him. Her vision was bleary, her legs unsure.
He glanced at her. “Are you—” he began, but she jerked away, stumbled off a few steps then bent double and vomited silently onto the riverbank.