Carmen stood still, listening. It would be difficult to hear anything over the beating of her heart. Her mouth had gone completely dry and she felt sick to her stomach. This kind of thing didn't happen to real people. It only happened in the movies…and on the news.
Alex squeezed her hand and leaned down, whispering in her ear. "I heard something - maybe the children."
She held on to his hand as he quietly moved forward. She was afraid to hope. She hadn't heard anything. Why wouldn't the children come running to them? Were they injured?
A whimper broke the silence, followed by a hushing sound. Alex released her hand and stepped forward.
"Jonathan?" he called.
A sudden burst of motion was followed by a chorus of voices calling for Daddy. Within seconds they were surrounded by four children.
Carmen gathered as many of them into her arms as she could and hugged them. Tears of relief escaped her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She struggled to speak around the lump in her throat, and when she did, it didn't sound like her voice. "What happened?"
All of them started speaking at once. Alex hushed them. "One at a time - let Jonathan talk first."
Jonathan immediately began to fill them in with the hair-raising details.
"When it got close to noon and you hadn't returned, we started to worry. I was going to call someone, but my phone was almost dead, so I plugged it in and took the others for a short nature walk. That was when some men came in a van. I told the others to stay there and started back to the camper to see what they wanted. They walked up to the camper and opened it without even knocking. That was when I told the kids to hide over there in that arroyo." He pointed a finger at a point not visible behind him. "The men weren't in the camper long before they came out and ran to the van. A few minutes after they left, there was an explosion and the camper caught on fire." He shook his head. "We didn't know where you were or who we could trust, so we decided to wait in the arroyo until help arrived. We would have walked to that house we saw on the way here, but we didn't know who those men were."
Alex sighed. "Then they don't know any of you were here?"
Jonathan shook his head. "I don't think so. What happened to you?"
Alex explained without much detail about observing the drug deal, being captured and their escape. He lifted Destiny and Natalie into his arms.