The vehicle raced straight toward Maggie’s SUV before swerving sharply at the last second. Dust sprayed across the windshield as the truck roared past and skidded to a stop nearby. The driver’s door flew open. Boyd jumped out.
“Boyd, what are you doing?” Maggie asked, pushing her door open and standing.
Bianca stepped out of her side of the car, her heart thundering as she stared across the torn landscape. Ewan ducked out of the back and stood next to her. “Whose land is this?” she asked.
“It’s ours,” Maggie said automatically.
Boyd didn’t answer right away. His shoulders sagged and his chin dipped toward his chest. “I really wish you wouldn’t have come out here,” he murmured.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ewan said quickly.
“Yeah,” Bianca agreed, already reaching for her door.
“Sorry,” Boyd said quietly, pulling a gun from his jacket and pointing it at them. “But that’s not going to happen. All threeof you move.” He gestured with the gun toward the side of the clearing. “Now. This way.”
Bianca gulped and looked at Maggie.
Maggie frowned. “What are you doing, Boyd? Stealing from us?”
Boyd’s jaw tightened. “Just move.”
For a heartbeat nobody did.
Then Ewan exploded into motion. “Run!” he shouted. He slammed into Boyd, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest and knocking the gun arm sideways. A shot cracked through the clearing, echoing against the mountain as the two men crashed into the dirt.
Bianca grabbed her phone from her pocket and fumbled with a text to Adam, saying where they were. Did she have service? Did he? She threw the phone onto the floor of the car.
“Go,” Ewan yelled again, struggling with Boyd for the gun.
Another shot blasted through the air.
Ewan jerked violently as a bullet tore into him. Blood sprayed across the ground and his body twisted before collapsing heavily beside the churned dirt of the mining site. He gasped as blood spread fast beneath him.
Bianca screamed and ran toward him. “Ewan.” She crouched and pressed her hand against the wound in his chest.
Boyd staggered upright, breathing hard. The gun came up again, steady now as he pointed it straight at them. “Get moving.” He gestured toward a deep cut in the hillside where the machines had been tearing gravel from the earth, a wide ramp sloping down into the pit below.
CHAPTER 21
Bianca blinked back tears and tried to keep from sneezing from the dust all around. They had already helped Ewan down into the pit.
The excavation spread wide at the base of the cut, a rough bowl carved into the mountain where the earth had been torn away in layers. Tall dirt walls ringed the space, bands of soil and broken stone stacked like a cross-section of the hillside. Conveyor belts ran overhead, silent now, their rollers coated with powdered rock. Piles of crushed stone rose in uneven mounds around the idle machines.
Everything stood still.
No engines.
No workers.
Only the wind slipping across the rim of the pit and Ewan’s ragged breathing.
Bianca sat holding him to her side, trying to keep her hand over the wound in his upper chest. “What were you thinking?” she whispered, a tear tracking down her cheek. He was so brave.
Ewan blinked, his eyes unfocused. “Tried… to help.”
“You did,” Maggie said softly. “Just stay with us.”
Boyd stood several yards away with the gun still pointed at them. He had backed toward the base of the ramp that led up the side of the pit, placing himself where he could watch both the women and the slope above. The position gave him a clear line of sight up the incline and across the open ground. “Why the hell didn’t you just do what I asked?” he spat, his eyes wild.