“It’s not about the seeing. It’s about the shooting.” I rapped as the driver’s side mirror was torn away by a bullet. “Keep your ass down.” I wasn’t about to let it get shot off, not on his first full day of freedom. Ducking low behind the dash, I felt frantically for the gun under my seat. “How the fuck did they find us?” I muttered to myself. It certainly hadn’t been by a trail of cookie crumbs. Sugar-shark Michael would’ve taken care of any one of those, no matter how small.
The windshield shattered into gummy green safety glass. It showered over my shoulders and rained down on the brim of my hat. Straightening, I rested my hand on molded black plastic that had long lost the new car smell and pulled the trigger of my 9mm. One of the men spun around, his white shirt blooming crimson on the right side of his chest—lipstick red, but it wasn’t the kind of kiss anyone would welcome. Jamming the gas pedal flat to the floor, I tried to take the car up past the truck. I saw the lips of the obvious leader, in all things including couture, move as he spoke into the mouthpiece of a slim headset similar to those worn by SWAT. The truck immediately swerved and cut me off.
Swearing, I tried the other side. Most of the cars around us had braked or halted altogether at the gunfire, but I still managed to send one oblivious driver yammering on his cell phone spinning out of control into the median. As the truck began a move to counter mine, I rethought my plan. “Hang on, Misha,” I gritted as I twisted the wheel and the car into a one-eighty.
“Not really necessary,” came the exasperated response. He was packed down there tightly enough that it was unlikely anything less than the Jaws of Life would pry him free. Beneath the irritation I heard the same dread that had first surfaced in the van. He might not be afraid of me, but Michael was afraid of someone. Sooner or later, I would find out why. When I killed that child-stealing, malevolent son of a bitch, I wanted to know each and every reason to equal each and every time I pulled the trigger.
Dodging haphazardly stopped cars with white-faced, gaping drivers, I stuck mainly to the emergency lane as I sent us speeding the wrong way up the interstate. Once or twice I had to detour into the main lanes if some shaking motorist was already hogging the side strip of gravel. Behind, the semi had stopped and the four men who were still mobile had jumped out onto the asphalt. Either they had a car that had been pacing them or they would commandeer the nearest one at gunpoint. I wanted to be at the last exit we’d passed before that mystery was solved. Barely two miles away, I began to run into moving traffic just as we reached it. If I had thought I could have made it across the median, I would’ve made the attempt, but the chances of getting bogged down in stagnant water and thick mud that grew reedy swamp grass was high. This was a low-slung machine we were traveling in, not an SUV. Political correctness—it’ll get you killed every time.
In a blare of horns and metal scraping metal I grazed a light green Volkswagen and sped onto the off ramp. Narrowly escaping being crushed by a gasoline tanker, we bounced off a guardrail, skidded, and managed to get on the right side of the road. A quick look in the mirror showed a white Ford following the same perilous path, but with less success. Colliding with the front cab of the tanker, the white hood crumpled and a tire smoked from the friction, but the car kept coming. The bastards had commandeered their own car and were determined. Let them be—their resolve wasn’t a drop in the deep blue compared to mine.
Looking left, then right, I made a split-second decision that had Hog Heaven barbecue patrons running for cover. Engine growling, the car jumped the parking lot curb and spun wildly in the crushed-clamshell stretch behind the seafood restaurant next door. Next to that was a gas station with a tiny alley framed by the back of the cinder-block building and undergrowth-choked trees. As we barreled through it, I caught a glimpse between buildings of the Ford rushing down the street toward the barbecue joint.
“Can I get up now?” Michael asked patiently with glass glittering in wind-tousled hair. Other than the look in his eyes when he’d first seen the man from the van minutes ago, he was as abnormally calm as if we were simply making a run to the grocery store. Maybe that class had followed the one on acting . . . calm in the face of certain death. Bring a number two pencil.
“No,” I answered instantly. “Keep the balls of steel out of sight.”