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“What does your gut say?”
To this, Leo looked even more conflicted, scrubbing his jaw.
“Call a possible threat in against Lockwood himself.”
“You think they’re going after him too?”
“If they want Ms. Payne and any information she might have—and they know that she’s been staying at the Lockwood estate instead of the cottage—they might be interested to find out if she shared any of that information with Mr. Lockwood.”
Oh my God.“You think Hunter’s in danger?”
Leo looked at me through the rearview mirror. “Don’t worry, Ms. Payne. It’s just a precaution. You’re safe now, and we’ll be taking you—”
The pop of a gunshot and high-pitched cracking of glass preceded the high-pitched squeal of our tires, just as the driver jerked and then dropped his hands from the wheel.
At that moment, time seemed to slow down to an almost standstill, my brain slowly registering the gruesome scene before me. The dashboard was splattered with blood, red drops dripping down the navigation screen as Leo’s head hung unnaturally to the side, his eye nothing more than a gory hole of blood and flesh.
The car accelerated, Leo’s foot evidently pressing harder against the gas pedal, as if his body had jerked when he’d been shot and then remained in that tense position. With the engine revving up higher, our sedan began to careen to the left.
“Shit!” Carl grabbed the steering wheel and tried to pull us back into our lane.
“Kick his leg off the gas!” Gabriel said.
“I can climb over.” I had the best angle, diagonal from the driver. I could climb over the center console, and since I was the smallest person in the car, I had the best chance of wiggling between him and the dashboard to kick his foot off the gas and press mine to the brake. But just as I grabbed my seat belt’s buckle, Gabriel placed his hand over mine.
“Keep your seat belt on.”
“I can’t get his foot off!” Carl screamed.
The metallic beast careened wildly through the urban maze of towering skyscrapers—the cityscape blurring into a dizzying whirl of high-rises as our car sped toward its inevitable catastrophe. At the intersection, a traffic light blinked its futile warning. Horns blared from other vehicles, their drivers slamming on their brakes in a desperate attempt to avoid the speeding missile.
Carl’s knuckles were white as he tried to control the car, but the car swerved violently from one lane to another, narrowly avoiding pedestrians who dived out of its path.
With each near miss, the car continued its rampage, forcing onlookers to scatter, their screams drowned out by the deafening roar of the engine. Teetering on the precipice of disaster, my throat clenched as I tightened my seat belt, bracing for impact as the car lunged into a busy intersection.
With one final, horrifying swerve, a guttural crunch sent my body into my seat belt like a bullet, and then aftershocks of bent metal and shattering glass mingled with gravity pulling my body in different directions.
It took me a few moments to get my bearings, immense pressure flooding my head as I dangled upside down in the wreckage. My ear was squealing a high-pitched note, broken glass scattered around me. Gabriel groaned to my left, reaching for his ankle holster, but Carl wasn’t so lucky. He lay half inside and half outside the vehicle, his body having burst through the windshield upon impact, his head wedged between the hood and the asphalt.
His skull reminded me of a broken egg that had fallen from its bird’s nest at the top of a tree—its goopy insides spilling out onto the pavement.
Shock consumed me, but I needed to snap out of it quickly if I had any chance to live. I couldn’t allow myself the seconds to assess this shock or ascertain my injuries.
Because walking toward us through the echoes of screams and car horns was a man holding a semiautomatic rifle. He was dressed in camouflage, as if entering a battle in the middle of a forest instead of an urban city of steel.
Gabriel grunted as his gun finally broke free from its holster.
I grabbed my seat belt and clicked the button, thumping to the roof of the vehicle. Shock was a good thing, masking pain with adrenaline.
The camouflaged man was only thirty feet away and closing, and behind him were two more men. Also holding guns.
People around the intersection ran with screams while in here, I quickly gauged my best shot at survival. I needed to run, but I also needed a weapon, and just in case I failed to escape, I needed my phone.
I glanced around, spotting it on the roof of the car, which was now the floor. I stretched my arm toward it, groaning and extending my fingers until my nail caught the lip of the case and pulled. Once. Twice. The third time, it shifted within my reach, so I grabbed it—a quickthank Godringing in my head—and shoved my cell phone into my pants to hide it.
Gabriel started firing off shots out of his smashed open window with apop-pop-pop-pop.
With bullets exploding around me, a flood of relief filled me when I spotted Leo’s ankle dangling within reach. I shifted closer, pulled up his pant leg over the holster, and unstrapped the gun—grabbing it tightly.
