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She laughed softly at the shouting and expletives behind her. With the road a straightaway, she hit the gas and accelerated the Porsche full out, the needle hitting one hundred and eighty miles per hour.
She glanced at Easy and got her incredulous look. There was admiration, irritation, and exasperation. Then Easy said loudly, “Hoo-yah!”
Behind them, they could see the arrival of the local cops. That should keep Creepy McCreep Ramos busy for a bit while they moseyed down the road and she got her ass out of this godforsaken country.
They drove for thirty minutes covering more miles in Bubbles than they could ever have hoped to cover in Oscar the Rusty Grouch. Even with her being temperamental, Bubbles was lighter than air and that pickup had been as heavy as lead. In the end, Oscar had almost killed them both.
Jack noticed that the area they were driving in was getting foggy with a gray-white mist that wrapped the trees to either side of them and obscured a lot of the road.
Easy had been watching the rearview for almost the whole time. “Babe, we’ve got company.”
She looked back and saw the chopper approaching. Okay, so she could move fast in Bubbles, she couldn’t outrun a chopper and they were rapidly heading toward E on the gas gauge.
Before she could find a good place to pull over so they could lose themselves in the thick forest, something exploded from the chopper.
“Missile,” Easy screamed, but it was too late. The road exploded ahead of her, the ground erupting into a fireball as dirt, rocks, and asphalt rained down on the Boxster. Two of her tires blew, nearly tearing the metal hubs in half and sending the machine ass up and forward. Bubbles started to roll and there was no controlling the vehicle as it careened off the road and down an embankment, disappearing into a thick, curling mist and coming to a crashing halt.
* * *
Shark wantedto kill Ramos with his bare hands as he watched the hot pink Porsche flip and disappear from view. He slammed on the brakes of the Lexus, the car skidding to a stop on the edge of the ravine. He and Juan looked at each other with pained expressions as they climbed out. If Easy and Choos had survived, they would be in imminent danger. He had no way of knowing how badly they could have been injured and there was no way he was going to fail his brother. The chopper set down and Ramos slipped out of the open door.
He was red-faced and it was clear he was pissed at the pilots. His reasons for wanting Jack alive were as twisted as the reasons he wanted Easy dead. He strode forward, but there was no seeing anything in the thick, clouded mist. He gestured to Garcia and Tovar, Juan and Shark, and two other men.
“Find that fucking woman and kill that fucking man.Vamanos!” Ramos screamed. He was raging and it didn’t bode well for either of the people Shark was sworn to protect and save.
With Garcia and Tovar in the mix, it was going to get dicey in there. He whispered to Juan. “Keep an eye on the murder twins, and if we can take them out, we will.”
Juan smiled with relish. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
* * *
Ramos wasn’t goingto let her get away from him again. She was an unpredictable bitch, and he was tired of chasing her. He wanted her with a dark lust that drove him night and day. With the six men flanking him, he slid down the embankment on the sides of his boots. A few hundred yards in, the pink menace of a car was upside down, flames eating the exterior, already bubbling the paint. But the sheer humidity of the cloud forest extinguished it before it really got going. His men advanced, rifle muzzles sweeping back and forth in close combat grids. One forward, one covering.
At the bottom of the ravine, Ramos kicked logs and leaves, and when he crossed the creek and climbed the other side, breathing hard, he looked back. His dark gaze skipped over the land. They had to still be here and motioned wildly for his men to keep looking. He needed her alive. His panic at the memory of those fucking pilots firing that missile to stop the woman made his rage climb again. He was going to kill them both.
After a couple more minutes, he glanced at his men, the mist so thick he could only make out some of their outlines. They shook their heads, and Ramos motioned for them to continue.
He wasn’t leaving here without something. Even if it was a body. Thirty minutes more without success, Ramos stepped back, calling out a warning only seconds before he swept the gully with bullets.
* * *
Easy dughis fingers into the ground to keep from flinching as the bullets ripped through the deep ground cover, his ears vibrating with his clipped words to Jack.Get out and hide.
His body reeled from the impact and hard roll down to the creek. His bones vibrated, even as the Porsche’s interior cushioned a lot of the collision of underbrush and earth against the exterior of the vehicle.
Trained to ignore and override, he absorbed the rush of blood as it drove spikes of pain through muscle and cuts as they made themselves known. Warm water ran over his boots. He forced his breathing to slow, gaining enough control to think. He had no idea where Jack was.
He heard footsteps move from his position, and he opened his eyes, squinting through the pain. Above him, men crashed all around, but there was nothing but white in his vision.
Thank God for the mist.
He heard a squeal of tires and realized that the troop truck had arrived. That would give Ramos more men to search, but he had an ace in the hole—two aces actually. Shark and Juan were also here. They had been in the Lexus. He’d seen it as Jack blew his mind and did that bootlegger turn with the kind of precision that took him and his brothers’ hours of training to perfect. He couldn’t help but be impressed with the way she’d handled that car, the danger, and the stress of out-maneuvering Ramos and his out-for-blood wolves.
He raised his head and saw silhouetted a swarm of men walking the gully and creek.
His gaze swept the area in a quick search, but the mist was just too thick; it wasn’t only thwarting Ramos’s vision, but Easy’s too.
Please be okay,he thought. Thinking how devastating it would be to lose her before he even got the chance to know her. She was his mission, but she was more than that now. She was everything to him.
