Brave New Love by Paula Guran Page B

stuff?” Dwight took his eyes off us and lowered the gun like I’d been waiting for him to do. I
launched myself at his legs, a two-hundred-twenty-pound dodgeball. Heard a crack as his left knee bent backward. Then a loud shot from his gun—but only one before I had my knife at his
throat.
    “Eennngh!” he whined. Knee must have hurt, but my blade poking against the underside of his chin kept his mouth shut.
    I nodded at Aim and she relieved him of his gun. Claude had run off—I heard him thrashing through the bushes in the direction of the road. “Be right back, Lo.” Aim was fine, as
I’d predicted, thinking straight and acting cool. She stalked after her prey calm and careful, gun at the ready.
    I rocked back on my haunches, easing off Dwight’s ribs a bit. That leg had to be fractured. Problema. How was I supposed to deal with him, wounded like this? Maybe I shouldn’t have
hit him so hard. Not as if I could take him to a hospital. I felt him sucking in his breath, winding up for a scream, and sank my full weight on his chest again.
    “Lo! You gotta come here!” Aim yelled from the road.
    Come there? What? “Why? You can’t handle—You didn’t let him get his truck back, did—”
    “Just come!” She sounded pissed.
    Dwight wasn’t going anywhere on his own any time soon, but just in case I tugged off his belt and boots and trousers and took away the rest of his weapons: a razor poking through a piece
of wood, a folding knife with half the blade of mine, and a long leather bag filled with something heavier than sand. I only hurt him a little stripping off the jeans.
    I got to my feet and looked down a second, wondering if I should shoot the man and get his misery over with. Even after years of leading salvage runs, I didn’t have it in me, though.
    I loaded dude’s junk and Aim’s spilled-out tools in the rolly and dragged it along behind me into the bushes. When he saw I was leaving him he started hollering for help, like it
might come. That worried me. I hurried out to Aim. Had Claude somehow armed himself?
    Claude was nowhere in sight. Aim stood by the truck—our truck, now. She had the door open, staring inside. The gun—our gun, now—hung loose in one hand and the other stretched
inside. “Come on,” she said, not to me. “It’s okay.” She hauled her hand back with a kid attached: white with brown hair, like his brothers. They must have been his
brothers—I got closer and saw he had that same squintiness going on.“Look,” I said, “leave him here and climb in. If they got any back-up—”
    Boom!
    Shotguns make a hecka loud noise. Pellets and gravel went pinging off the road. Scared me so much I swung the rolly up into the truck bed by myself. Then I shoved Aim through the door and jumped
in after her. Turned the ignition—they had left the key in it—and backed out of there fast as I could rev. Maybe forty feet along, I swung around and switched to second gear. I hit
third by the time we made the bridge, jouncing over pits in the asphalt. Some sections were awful low—leaky pontoons. Next storm would sink the whole thing, Aim had said. I told myself if the
thing held up on the dudes’ ride over here it was gonna be fine for us heading back.
    I looked to my right. Aim had pushed the kid ahead of her so he was huddled against the far door. I braked. “Okay, here you go.” But he made no move to leave. “What’s the
matter, you think I’ll shoot? Go on, we won’t hurt you.”
    “He’s shaking,” Aim reported. “Bad. I think he’s freaking out.”
    “Well, that’s great. Open the door for him yourself then, and let’s go.”
    “No.”
    I sighed. Aim had this stubbornness no one would suspect unless they spent a long time with her. “Listen, Aim, it was genius to keep him till I drove out of shooting range,
but—”
    “We can’t just dump him off alone.”
    “He’s not alone; his brothers are right behind us!”
    “One of ’em with a broken