RACHEL!
“I’m on it!” Briggs assures me.
I didn’t realize I’d said anything out loud. The streetcar is picking up speed fast. I need to jump!
“Hold your fucking horses!” Briggs’s voice breaks through my thoughts.
That’s when I see the Camaro he’s driving speeding towards the side of the streetcar.
“Bryan?” Patti’s tone is stressed. He doesn’t answer.
Briggs gets up tight, so close to the streetcar I’m sure they’ll exchange paint.
“Jump, damn it!” he urges.
I balance on the roof of the lurching streetcar, watching the blacktop below me race by with sickening speed. I take three steps back, and then run forward to get maximum velocity.
For a moment I’m airborne.
“You ever pull a stunt like that again I’ll kill you myself!” That’s Chief’s voice in my head. He’d said that the first time I jumped off a moving vehicle—when I was fourteen. I thought I was badass, but Chief just wanted to whip my ass!
My body makes full contact with the top of the Camaro.
“You on, for Christ’s sake?” Briggs barks at me.
“Yeah, I’m fucking on!”
“Grip something!” Briggs shouts as we fishtail right onto Iberville Street.
There is fucking nothing to grip! I think, then find that Briggs rolled the windows down. Relieved, I fold my fingers under the topside of the door’s window frame. I tuck my chin beneath my shoulder until the vehicle straightens out. When I lift my face, I see the Escalade right in front of us.
Briggs’s tone is almost desperate. “911, there’s a shooter in the French Quarter at the Toulouse Station! We need an ambulance and police immediately!”
“Briggs?”
“Concentrate, Axman!” he demands of me.
I have a sickening feeling that Bryan is down.
Bullets careen past my head and skim over the steel roof I’m draped against.
Too close.
The next shot shatters the windshield.
“Briggs!”
“I’m good.”
I can’t fire back, I’d risk hitting Farrington.
“Get me closer!”
“Got ya, boss.” Briggs pulls directly behind the Escalade, bumper to bumper.
With my Glock in hand, I run down across the Camaro’s hood and vault myself onto the roof of the Escalade. With a death grip on the ski rack, I swing my torso over to the side and smash in the driver’s window with the handle of the Glock.
“We’ve got a white Escalade tail, and since it’s smacking into my rear end, I’m guessing he’s swinging for Miguel’s team.”
The Escalade I’m holding onto veers onto Tulane Street and into oncoming traffic. Cars swerve off the side of the road while drivers lay on their horns.
“They’re headed to I-10,” Briggs deduces. “Incoming!”
Before I can figure out what incoming means, the Camaro smashes into the Escalade just as hot lead rips through the metal roof about two inches from me.
“Fuck!” we both curse simultaneously.
Briggs isn’t liking getting pushed around, and I definitely don’t like bullets two inches away from my body!
Briggs warns, “If we let them on I-10 your safety quotient is going to drop fast.”
He’s right, a lot of people could get hurt.
I hang from my right arm and leg over the side of the roof and shoot with my left hand. The driver slumps over as the passenger lunges for control of the wheel.
Then a shot rings over my head.
Peering over the side of the Escalade, I discover Officer Douchebag acquired a motorcycle and is now in hot pursuit. He lifts his pistol for another round of target practice.
I leap, twisting my body onto the Escalade’s hood. Not a position I want to stay in—I’m completely exposed to the guy on the other side of the windshield.
Fuck it. I clip the passenger in the shoulder. He recoils fast from the steering wheel and clutches at his arm.
Farrington screams a warning from the back seat.
Another shot zips past me—it would have been through me, but that’s when the Escalade begins its flip. It pitches wildly, and the left tires catch air as the vehicle careens over onto its side. I hold on as long as I can before I’m thrown into the grass on the side of the onramp to I-10. The air is knocked hard from my chest and it takes me a moment to recover. Briggs brings the Camaro alongside of me like a shield, brakes and slides out the passenger door as the cartel crew riddles the side of the vehicle with ammo.
We both listen, dicks to the dirt and guns drawn at the ready, as the tires of the Camaro are popped and the air whistles free.