The driver, grey-faced and grunting with the effort, was dragging himself across the floor. He left a sickening trail of blood, as though a mortally wounded garden snail had crawled across the carpets. Jenna fired above the man’s head, driving the gunman in the doorway back into the corridor again, away from the open door. Then the driver was close enough. He kicked the door shut with his feet, hooked an ankle around a chair and gave a grunting heave, dragged it in front of the door. Then collapsed with a desperate groan.
Jenna lunged over the top of the bed, scrambled across the floor on hands and knees to avoid the bullets punching through the wooden door at head height, and managed to snap shut the lock. Then she grunted and heaved and shoved an entire bureau across the door, toppling it to form a makeshift barricade. The door secured, Jenna dragged the driver’s coat aside. What she found left her shaking and swearing under her breath. She didn’t have time, dammit . . . but she couldn’t just let the man lie there and bleed to death, could she? It was all Jenna’s fault the man had been shot at all. She stripped a coverlet off the bed, managed to tear it into enough strips and pieces to form a tight compress. She had to yank off her gentleman’s gloves to tie knots in the makeshift bandages.
“What in hell’s going on, Catlin?” the driver gasped out, breathing shallowly against the pain.
“Long story,” Jenna gasped. “And I’m really sorry you got dragged into it.” She ran a distracted hand through her cropped and Macassar-oiled hair, felt the blood on her hands, wiped them on the remnants of the coverlet. A pause in the shooting outside indicated the gunman’s need to change magazines or maybe even guns, temporarily stopping him from turning the solid wooden door into a block of swiss cheese. Jenna bit one lip, then scrambled across the floor on hands and knees. “Look, I can’t do much for you. I’ve got to get the hell out of here. I’m really sorry.” She handed the driver a pistol scavenged from the dead gunman. Then Jenna retrieved the Remington she’d emptied at their attackers and wished there was time to reload it, but the gun was so slow and difficult to load, she just shoved it into the waistband of her trousers beside the partially loaded one.