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“We won’t do anything that you wouldn’t do,” Garrison said to Julius with a wink, and headed with me to the doorway. Once it’d firmly closed behind us, he smiled wickedly down at me. “Now, Julius has done a lot of reckless things, so if you want to jump into something crazy before we go to the office, the option is still on the table.”
I let out a genuine laugh for the first time in what felt like forever and bumped shoulders with him. “I think we should wait until after if we want to do anything too wild.”
Garrison looked down at me as we started our walk, and when I met his eyes, I found unrestrained joy there. It was almost as if coming out here with me had cleared his mind, and now he gazed at me as if I were the most valuable thing he’d ever seen.
“Are we thinking skydiving, bungee jumping, maybe stealing a police car for a joyride?” he asked.
I threw a mock punch into his arm. “I don’t think that Julius has ever stolen a cop car.”
Garrison shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past him under the right circumstances.”
“I don’t think we have the right circumstances going for us right now,” I teased, and glanced toward the driveway. “Do you want to take the rental car? Or we could get an Uber if we don’t want the license plate caught on street cams in the area. It’d be a long walk.” I imagined it’d take at least an hour, although in my current state of frustration, I wasn’t sure I’d mind that much exercise.
Apparently, Garrison felt the same way. “I’m okay with walking a few miles if you are,” he said. “I’ve barely gotten much chance to stretch my legs in the past few days.”
“Other than arranging phantom farmyards and fighting for your life.”
He shrugged and smirked at me. “Yeah, other than those minor adventures.”
We turned the corner to walk past a couple of old industrial buildings, and the screech of tires made my head jerk around.
A van roared into view and skidded to a stop right next to the sidewalk. In the space of a heartbeat, three men in ski masks had leapt out, clamped their hands around Garrison, and hauled him into the back.
I leapt after him, my hand snagging on one guy’s shirt. The guy kicked back at me at the same time, and in my startled panic I didn’t dodge quite well enough. The heel to my gut sent me staggering to the side.
As I threw myself forward again, the van was already peeling away from the curb and racing away, the back doors clanging shut with Garrison behind them.
My body reacted on pure instinct. Some part of me believed that if I just pushed my legs fast enough, I’d be able to catch the van, even as the engine roared.
I sprinted after it faster than I’d ever run in my life, my feet pounding on the asphalt. A yell of rage lodged in my throat, but I couldn’t spare enough breath to let it out. My gaze darted over the few cars parked along the road, but if I stopped for long enough to break into one of them and hotwire it, I’d lose sight of the van and have no way of chasing after it. The license plate was covered, so I couldn’t even use that to believe I’d be able to track it down later.
So I kept running, propelling my body forward with all the strength I had in me. My hands darted to my hips. I hadn’t brought my gun for this excursion, but I did have my usual concealed knives. I’d started carrying two in light of recent events.
I drew out one and then the other and hurled them at the tires of the van, praying that I could hit one well enough to deflate a tire and force the vehicle to slow. But the driver must have noticed in the rearview mirror that I was up to something. The van swerved left and right on the wide road, and my knives clattered uselessly against the pavement.
Swallowing a curse, I raced onward, searching the ground for anything else I could use to try to stall the van in its tracks. As I passed the places where my knives had fallen, I scooped them up without breaking my stride. Then I veered toward the curb and grabbed a chunk of concrete that’d tumbled there.
In one last-ditch effort, I heaved the chunk at the van’s window. The vehicle swerved again at the last second, and the concrete only dinged the bumper. The van roared around the corner.
I dashed after it, sweat trickling down my back from the exertion. My legs were starting to feel numb from how hard I was pushing my muscles. I sped around the buildings onto the cross-street—
And found the van was gone. The engine sounded somewhere beyond my view, but it was dwindling too fast for me to catch up.
“Fuck!” I shouted at the sky, coasting to a stop.
I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed the rest of the crew—Blaze would be able to check traffic cams—Julius had contacts in the city. We’d figure this out.
Wouldn’t we?
As I hurried back to the house, my stomach knotted. What had the men in the van wanted with Garrison? Who had they even been? I had no idea if they were related to the attackers we’d faced in the city before, or our various earlier opponents in the crew’s hometown, or maybe they were some totally new force we hadn’t known about.
The look he’d given me a minute before the car pulled up—full of happiness and pride—reverberated through my mind. I swiped my hand across my face, but the gesture couldn’t shake my anguish.
They might be torturing him, even killing him, right now. While I loped along here unable to do anything about it. If I’d grabbed at him just a little sooner, reacted just a little faster—
I pushed my legs harder again. Any extra second could help Blaze find the van before it disappeared forever. I didn’t allow myself to consider the breathlessness or the exhaustion that wreaked havoc on my limbs. I just sprinted until the house came into sight.
I burst through the doorway, my breath so ragged it took me a few moments to gather myself enough to form words. “Garrison,” I gasped. “Some men grabbed him. Black van. Took a left on Meridian Street.”
