The Cursed

He never had a chance to make a move.

 

The car behind them sped up and rammed them at eighty miles an hour.

 

Logan fought to regain control of their car as it leaped forward and began to spin.

 

 

 

 

 

10

 

Hannah had never been so grateful that, even in the backseat of a car, she automatically put on a seat belt. It was Florida state law, but not everyone obeyed, especially in the backseat. Even so, she could never have imagined anything as horrible as the uncontrolled motion of the car and the horrendous sound of metal screeching against metal. The soar and spin of the out-of-control vehicle made bright lights appear before her eyes—lights created by her blinding fear. She didn’t see her life rush by behind her eyes in those seconds; instead, she felt an agony of dread. She was thrown against Dallas as the car smashed into the median, and just before the air bags sprang to life, she felt his hand grip hers.

 

She gasped for breath as the car came to a stop, amazed that she was in one piece, that the pressure of the air bag hadn’t crushed her. They were alive! They’d made it.

 

She heard Dallas cursing as, somehow, he quickly cut away the remnants of the air bags. He must have been carrying a knife. She wasn’t sure why it was so urgent that they rid themselves of the air bags so quickly. Then she knew.

 

It wasn’t over.

 

The man who had hit them was still out there.

 

“Everyone all right?” Dallas called out quickly.

 

“Yes,” everyone answered in unison

 

“Down! Get down and stay down!” Dallas told Hannah.

 

He didn’t need to ask twice. Shaking, she hunkered low. She could hear steam coming from the front of the car and, peeking, realized they were slammed against the guardrail. Another violent impact would end them. Her door was crammed against the barrier.

 

“He’s coming back at us!” she heard Logan shout.

 

“Stop!” Dallas roared, shoving his way out of the wrecked car to stand beside Logan on the road.

 

Hannah braced herself and peered out above the seat. The car was coming back toward them.

 

She heard a gunshot, then another and another. Each one seemed to rip through her, and she jerked in rhythm to the sounds.

 

“It’s all right,” Kelsey said, and Hannah realized that her cousin had her weapon out and steadied on the dash as she aimed at their attackers through the open driver’s door. “They got the car.”

 

Got the car?

 

She looked closer and realized what Kelsey meant. Dallas and Logan had shot out the tires of the car that had hit them. She watched as it skidded and crashed into the guardrail ahead of them.

 

“Who the hell is that?” Kelsey whispered intently.

 

Hannah saw the driver’s side door of the big sedan that had struck them opening. A man emerged. He looked about forty, she thought, and he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap.

 

And carrying something that looked like a very big gun.

 

It was her turn to scream “Get down!” at the two men outside the car.

 

“Drop it!” Dallas or Logan—or maybe both of them—shouted.

 

The man fired but, perhaps dazed by the crash, only hit the headlight of the rental car. She watched Dallas’s gun go off. The other man squealed in pain—and drew a second gun from his waistband.

 

The two agents fired again.

 

This time the man went down. For a moment, the air seemed impossibly still. Time seemed to stop. Then it started up again, and she realized she could smell gas. She caught Kelsey’s shoulder and said, “Out!”

 

Kelsey must have smelled the gas, as well, because she scooted across to the driver’s side door as Hannah crawled out of the back.

 

Dallas and Logan were walking toward the fallen man when Hannah shoved Dallas in the back with a single explanatory word. “Gas!”

 

They all ran toward the corpse. She realized cars were close behind them now and turned to run in the other direction to warn them. Waving her hands wildly, she tried to stop them from passing. Then she felt herself being lifted off the ground—not by an explosion but by Dallas. He fell to the pavement with her, taking the brunt of the impact. Two seconds later a car whizzed by, speeding when it shouldn’t have been speeding, seeing her too late.

 

The rental car suddenly exploded. The bridge shook as if there had been an earthquake. Flames leaped to the sky. The car that had nearly clipped her crashed into their attacker’s ruined vehicle and added to the chaos.

 

Time seemed to go crazy in a cacophony of smell and sound. Fire on the air, shouts and reverberations, heat from the flames...

 

As Hannah returned to the here and now she realized that Dallas was lying above her. He had rolled to use his body as a shield against the rain of debris.

 

Protect and serve. The man certainly had it down pat.

 

He rose, drawing her to her feet. “You okay?” he asked anxiously, and as soon as she nodded, he caught her hand.

 

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