“Yes I do. In my safe deposit box.”
“Number 8476?” Maude asked.
Natasha smiled. “You figured it out!”
“Your brother did,” Maude said just as they heard what sounded like gunfire erupting out front.
“What’s that?” Natasha asked.
Don, who was guarding the front door, rushed inside the house. “They just shot Wyatt,” he said anxiously. “They’re running around back for full penetration. Get them out of here, Boss, get them out now!”
Edmund began ushering Maude and Natasha toward the front door as Don ran toward the kitchen that led to the patio doors.
But gunfire erupted at the back patio doors as glass was shattered and Don had to pull back and then he began a shootout with the two men attempting to enter the back of the house.
Edmund rushed with Maude in his arms and Natasha beside them as they hurried out of the front door.
They ran to the Tahoe. Edmund’s heart dropped when he saw Wyatt slumped over the steering wheel. “Get in!” he ordered the ladies. “And get down,” he added as he frantically opened the front driver side door and checked where the bullet was lodged. When he saw that it was lodged in Wyatt’s arm, he felt better.
But the sound of bullets were echoing in their ears. The ladies were still in danger. That was why Edmund began attempting to move Wyatt over onto the front passenger seat so that he could get behind the wheel.
Although Natasha was down and covering her head, Maude helped Edmund move Wyatt over to the passenger seat. Without her help, it would have been like attempting to move dead weight.
Once they successfully moved him, Edmund hopped behind the wheel of the SUV and closed the door. He pressed the Start button then took off his belt and began wrapping it around Wyatt’s wounded arm to staunch the bleeding.
But when he finished, and he still didn’t leave, Natasha was impatient. “Let’s go, Eddie, what are you doing?”
“I’m not leaving, Don!”
“But they can kill us!”
“He’s not leaving, Don,” Maude insisted too. What was wrong with that woman?
But it wasn’t a long wait. Don came busting out of the front door running for his life, his gun waving as he ran.
“Move!” Maude said to Natasha, forcing her to move further over on the middle row as Don hopped into the backseat and Edmund slung the gear into reverse.
“I got one of them,” Don said. “There’s two more,” he added as Edmund began backing the SUV extremely fast out of that driveway.
The two gunmen ran out of Natasha’s house shooting as they ran. “Stay down!” Edmund yelled as they all got down and Don pressed down the window to return the gunfire.
“That means you, too, Maude,” Edmund insisted.
“She’s down geez, Eddie,” said Natasha. “You’re more worried about her than you are your own sister, you bastard!”
Don hit one of the men as Edmund backed up onto the street, slung the gear into Drive, and took off down the road. A big Ford Expedition sped up, stopped in front of Natasha’s house, and the unwounded gunman ran to the street, hopped in on the front passenger seat, and they took off after the Tahoe.
It was a race between tanks as both SUVs sped in and out of lanes, around slow-moving cars, as they made their way through the mildly busy streets of Dillon, Georgia. Edmunddidn’t know where he was going, just that he was getting as far away from their attackers as he could get.
Don and the gunman in the Expedition began exchanging gunfire again, but neither were hitting their target. The SUVs were traveling too fast.
But the Expedition proved faster, or their getaway driver was more expert than Edmund because their SUV pulled alongside his SUV and slammed into it in an excellent PIT maneuver. The Tahoe began spinning out and then losing traction as it sailed airborne across from one side of the street to the other side. Then it was offroad. It began coughing up dirt and small rocks as it hit rough terrain.
But the PIT caused the big Expedition to lose control and spin out too. Only it was spinning into oncoming traffic and was broadsided by two different vehicles. One vehicle hit the Expedition head on so violently that the Expedition exploded into a fireball of unsurvivable flames.
The Tahoe, still offroad, didn’t flip, but it crashed into a huge tree trunk. When it came to such an abrupt stop, everybody inside slammed forward.
The airbag had deployed, but Edmund fought it so that he could get to Maude. He hopped off of the driver seat and hurried onto the middle row.
