Page 4 of Perfect Vengeance

She leaped onto the front lawn and raced across the grass. The door she’d just flown out of hadn’t slammed shut behind her. That could mean only one thing.

He was gaining on her.

Gina pumped her legs until her calf and thigh muscles burned. At the corner of the complex, she hooked another left and bolted along the side of the building, heading down a dirt path.

She raced for the back alley that paralleled the complex. Mullet Street. Gina knew the preplanned escape route by heart. She’d run surveillance the week before and practiced an emergency extraction in her head a hundred times. This was the first time a job had gone bad and she’d actually had to put one of those plans into action.

At 3:00 a.m., the street was deserted. With no streetlights, she could barely see what was in front of her. It didn’t matter. She knew what was behind her.

He was.

With every stride and every breath, freezing air burned her lungs. She touched the microphone on her throat. “Kinsey,” she gasped. “I’m heading south on Mullet.” She veered right, practically plowing headfirst into a dumpster. “Trouble. Someone was inside. He’s on my six. I need emex.”

The tiny receiver crackled in her ear. “On my way.”

Heavy footsteps pounded behind her. For such a big man, he was faster than expected.

Headlights illuminated the empty road ahead. Behind her, the rented Dodge Charger roared. She couldn’t resist the urge to look over her shoulder. A dark figure loomed not ten feet away. She cut sharply across the alley to be closer to the passenger door when Kinsey picked her up. Her momentum was so great she crashed into the chain-link fence on the other side of the street.

The Charger tore down the alley, tires screeching as Kinsey braked next to where Gina clung to the fence. The back end of the car careened, and the acrid smell of burning rubber drifted to her nose.

She heard a muffled thump, then a resounding whack—the horrible sounds a car makes when it hits something. A body slid off the hood of the Charger and slumped to the ground.

Oh, crap.

Gina hunched over and planted her hands on her thighs. Sweat dripped down her forehead, and white puffy breaths billowed in front of her face.

The Charger’s doors flew open. Kinsey and Annabelle jumped out and bolted to the front of the car.

Margo rushed over to where Gina stood. Her teardrop-shaped eyes widened. “Are you all right?” Wisps of cropped hair stuck out from her hood, outlining her face in a blond halo.

“Fine,” she huffed, still hunched over and gasping. Every inhalation of chilly air made her throat feel as if it had a bad case of freezer burn.

Annabelle’s curly red locks bobbed in the light breeze. “I think you killed him,” she said in a quiet, worried voice. “I told you to slow down.”

Kinsey knelt beside the man who lay on his side, one arm outstretched on the pavement, the other tucked beneath him. She pulled off her glove and touched her fingers to either side of his neck, checking for a pulse and seemingly not finding one. In the glow of the headlights, Kinsey’s fuchsia pink nail polish contrasted against his pale flesh.

Gina’s stomach muscles clenched again and again as she fought the urge to throw up. Please don’t be dead. Manslaughter hadn’t been in the ops plan.

Her hands trembled as she dragged herself to the front of the car. As much as she wanted to scream, the last thing they needed was more noise and chaos to muddy things worse than they were already. Who was she kidding? They’d far surpassed chaos and were well on their way to FUBAR. Fucked up beyond all repair.

“Well?” Annabelle prompted, a mixture of anger and outright fear on her cherubic face.

“Don’t yell at me.” Kinsey swept her long box braids over her shoulder. “We don’t want to wake the neighborhood.”

“Wake the neighborhood?” Annabelle’s voice rose, a sure sign she was about to go ballistic. “You’re our getaway driver. You’re supposed to be as good as Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and you just ran over a guy.”

“It was an accident.” Gina clenched her hands to stop them from shaking. “Besides, it was either that or he’d have caught me.” She swiped the icy sweat from her brow with the palm of her hand. “Did you find a pulse?”

“He’s dead.” Annabelle waved her hand toward the slumped body. “We’re all dead.”

“Knock it off.” Kinsey stood to her full five foot ten and glared down at the petite woman. “You always were a terrible backseat driver. And for the record, it’s not my fault he didn’t stop. He had to have seen my headlights, and this car doesn’t exactly purr like a kitten. It roars.”

“This isn’t the time or the place to argue over what happened.” Margo, ever the voice of reason, inserted herself between the two women. She nodded to Annabelle. “Go over there and keep an eye out.”

With an audible huff, Annabelle stalked to the end of the alley where it intersected one of the secondary roads.

Margo crouched near the body. “There’s blood on his forehead.”