“Ungh,” I said, rolling over and landing a knee, painfully, on the tile floor. Terminator was on all fours, and, not being one to waste a lot of opportunities for cheap shots, I drilled him in the jaw and he slammed into the base of the griddle. “Jerk off,” I grunted, getting to my feet and aiming a kick at his lower back. I hit him, he grunted, but he was tense—
He was preparing himself to be beaten on the ground. Bad sign. Take it from one who’d adopted that same posture every now and again. If someone was preparing their body in that way, a counterattack was coming.
And I just didn’t have time for that. We’d been brawling for a few minutes—well, I’d been getting my ass handed to me for a few minutes before this reversal of fortune—and that meant there had been plenty of time for someone, probably Mike! my waiter, to call the cops.
This being not to my advantage and maybe to his, instead of delivering another blow, I leapt the counter and grabbed a barely-conscious Eilish by the collar, dragging her to her feet. “Come on,” I said, to her and to Cassidy, who was standing back all wide-eyed and ineffectual, waiting for somebody to tell her uber-smart-but-useless-in-a-fight skinny ass what to do. “Move!”
I ushered them both out the door in a hurry, mourning the loss of my chance for a waffle. I half walked, half dragged Eilish, who was barely conscious and moaning at the physical harm done unto her, out the door and into the parking lot as someone came skidding to a stop inches in front of us.
Harry. Driving the damned car.
I threw the back door open and tossed Eilish in as Cassidy skittered around the other side. Then, with a look back over my shoulder at the Terminator, who was rising to his feet behind the counter inside, I hopped in the passenger seat and Harry floored the accelerator. The SUV took off with a roar, and we skidded onto the street and straight onto the entry ramp to I-65 north about a half second later, causing some semi driver to lay on his horn in full-fury pissedness as he came to a stop with a hearty ROOOOOOOOOOOAR of his engine brakes.
I looked back in time to see the Terminator come leaping out the hole in the window that he’d made with Eilish’s barstool. He hit the pavement running and disappeared as we moved down the onramp far enough that the slope of the earth obscured him from my sight.
All I could do was hope that we made it out of there before he could get to his vehicle and begin an honest pursuit. But for the moment I sat there, breathing in, my aching side, back—hell, everything—crying out at me, as we rolled onto Interstate 65 and Harry accelerated up to 80.
I did not stop looking back for many miles.
18.
“Shit, what if that guy has a car?” Cassidy was the first to ask the question I’d been ignoring for the last five minutes as we boogied up the freeway at high speed, the speedometer needle buried against the right side of the instrument. Harry was keeping very careful control of the vehicle, sliding in and out of traffic brilliantly.
“Oh, he does,” Harry said, breaking his silence. He lifted a hand and something dangled from within his fingers. “Where do you think I got these spark plugs?” He shot me a grin.
I just stared at him. “Wait … you sabotaged his car?”
“Damned right I did,” he said.
I thought about it for a second, then my voice went frosty as I watched Harry stiffen, subtly. “You knew he was going to bushwhack us before you stopped at that Waffle House, didn’t you?”
Harry just sort of shrugged, and I hit him on the shoulder. Not too hard, but enough that he cringed, and suddenly I knew why he’d tensed a moment earlier. He’d been anticipating the hit.
“Yeah, okay, I knew,” Harry said.
“How?” I asked. “Who is he?”
Harry shook his head, not looking at me. “Don’t know. But he’s tied up in this whole thing somehow, so this was a necessary meeting and also …” he seemed to be deciding how best to say it, “… your best chance for survival.”
I hit him again, and he grimaced. “Dammit, Nealon … sometimes, I swear … associating with you definitely brings its own sort of pitfalls. Pain being one of them.”
“I haven’t mangled you beyond repair yet, Graves,” I said, which was about the most charitable thing I could manage after he’d just copped to walking me into the worst beatdown I’d experienced … in three months. “Count your blessings given what I just went through in that Waffle House.” I seethed in silence for a moment. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“Me?” Graves kept his eyes on the road for once. “I’m just the driver.”
“The driver who can see into the damned future and just walked me into an ambush. Try again.”
“I told you—this guy was going to cross your path regardless. I just tried to engineer it so—”
“A warning would have been nice!” I hammered Harry’s arm. “‘Hey, Sienna, this stop isn’t so much about waffles as it a chance for you to get your skull beaten in by some superpowered goon with the personality of a freaking android’!” I thumped him again and again on the bicep, and he just took it.
“My arm’s gone completely numb,” Harry said, shaking it out as soon as I delivered the last blow. “I hope you’re happy.”
“I was happy on the beach in Florida,” I said, crossing my arms in front of me to keep from physically abusing Harry any worse than I’d already done. I could have broken bones and done so much worse, but I kept a lid on it.
“Bullshit,” Harry threw back at me, a little angry, probably from the pain.
I chewed on that one, gritting my teeth. “Fine,” I said at last, “I wasn’t happy happy. But I had scotch, and I was safe, and—”
“Yeah, you were living the high life in your little dog run,” Harry said, now more animated than I’d yet seen him. “Make sure you don’t go any farther than your shock collar comfort zone would allow. And keep diving into that bottle, Nealon, eventually when you hit the bottom maybe you’ll find an answer to how pathetic your life has become.”
“I already have an answer for that, Harry,” I shot back, “I’m on the run from the frigging law, and I got my ass beat and my powers stolen by some ginger with a mad-on for me. I’m entitled to sit back and tip a few—”
“Bull. Shit.” Harry thumped the wheel and the car shook as he took us slightly over the bumps at the side of the road, then got us right back on the straight and narrow. He turned to me with blazing eyes. “You can sit and drink and feel sorry for yourself all you want, but don’t turn around and tell me that it’s because you were happy wallowing.”
I wanted to hit him again, but I didn’t, because I wasn’t sure I could restrain myself from using lethal force. Hell, I didn’t even know what lethal force was for me anymore, without Wolfe strength.
“Looks like I missed some good times,” Eilish said woozily from the back seat.
“I didn’t ask for you to come along and become my cryptic asshole shaman spirit guide,” I said, trying to ignore the distraction.
“Well, I needed your help, so—here we are, anyway,” Harry said. “All part of the service.”