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My gaze settled on a guy who was getting out of a big black Mercedes SUV, who was notable because of his size. He was immensely muscular, tall, broad-shouldered, and looked military, in his haircut and his bearing.
And he was moving purposefully. More so than a guy who just got out of a car at a rest stop should be moving, unless he had some serious bowel problem.
And he was muttering, wearing an earpiece, and breaking into a swift lope. The lope quickly turned into a flat out run. Someone was desperate for back-up.
Then it was a sure thing Kat was involved.
The big guy sprinted around the building. I jerked to a halt, killed the engine bolted from the car, leaving the door wide open. I took off running after him.
I could read the situation better once I cleared the building. The man was running ten yards ahead of me. Thirty yards ahead of him, a dark-clad woman with a ponytail was disappearing into the trees. I couldn’t see Kat at all. The branches swayed and snapped as the ponytailed woman forced her way in.
The guy was yelling into his mic. “…fast as I can, you dumb bitch! Use the tranq gun again, for fuck’s sake!”
I scooped up a rock I saw ahead of me, then put on a burst of speed to make up for the ground I’d lost. I was gaining on him. He was running hard, focused on the scene ahead of him. Not worried about anyone who might be behind him.
I flung the rock. It hit him between his shoulder blades, breaking his stride. He stumbled forward onto one knee, twisting around with a shout to look behind him.
I was ready, whipping a kick right up under his chin that laid him out flat on his back. I followed up with a kick to the side of his head, to make sure he was down. Then kicked the side of his knee, feeling the popping and snapping of tendon, bone. A guttural howl of pain.
Handled. I wished I could just shoot him, but I wanted to interrogate the shit out of him. As it was, he’d live, but he was going nowhere fast.
I picked up his gun, plucked the earpiece away from him and shoved it into my own ear as I took off toward the point where I’d seen the woman disappear into the trees, pulling out my own SIG P226. I was happy to kill Nicole, as long as I still had someone still alive to question.
“Maynard, come in! Where the fuck are you? Move your ass!” It was a shrill, breathless, furious woman’s voice.
Her trail wasn’t hard to follow. She’d left a swathe of broken branches, trampled foliage, pocks in the mud. I followed as fast as I could with my feet slip-sliding in loose earth. I cleared the rise and hurtled down a slope into a gully choked with thorns.
And the trail ended. I stood there, afraid to call out to Kat. She might hiding, and she was probably closer to the attacker than I was.
I leaned down, peering through the trees, searching, searching…and I saw a glimpse of her jacket. Our eyes met through the waving green. My heart thudded with excitement—
A branch snapped nearby. I spun around, and saw the ponytailed woman emerge from the foliage. Black hair drawn back, wisps disarranged, an angry flush staining her cheeks, mouth open from panting. Her dark eyes were wild with rage. She held a pistol.
She glanced toward where I had been peering, and her gun swung up, aiming at Kat.Pop. Pop. Pop.The crack of the gun was muffled by the silencer. I shot back at her, but she flung herself into the trees, and I lost sight of her.
I looked for Kat, but no longer saw her. I flung Maynard’s gun away and launched myself into the deep brambles in a panic. “Kat! Kat! Where are you?”
After a moment of wild flailing, I heard her low, careful voice. “Ethan?”
My heart stuttered to life as I thrashed through the thorns. “Kat! Are you shot?”
“I’m fine. Shhh.” Her head popped up, then disappeared again. “Dude,” she hissed. “Could you keep it down? We’ve got shooters on the loose, and we’re pinned down in a hole in the ground, in case you didn’t notice. So don’t yell.”
I started to laugh, or maybe I was crying as I waded toward her through waist high brambles. Kat was scratched and bleeding from the thorns, but she shot me a rueful grin as I approached. “I am very glad to see you, Ethan,” she said, her voice hushed.
I grabbed her, hugged her, breathlessly tight. “Fuck, you scared me,” I blurted.
“Aw. I’m touched by your concern.” She kissed me briskly, and patted my back. “Not to kill the mood or anything, but shut your trap, buddy. That hell-bitch chased me out here, and I made this snap decision to hide in a thorn bush. Pretty thin, as strategies go. Seems more like a trap than anything. Let’s get out of here. What do you say?”
I turned around and broke the biggest path I could for her with my heavy boots, kicking my way through. “Why did you run away?”
“I was just trying to protect you,” she said.
“The fuck?” I said, incredulous. “Protect me? What, by running off, completely unprotected, and drawing my enemies after you? That’s nuts!”
“That part was absolutely not planned,” she assured me. “I didn’t want to draw anything after me. I just wanted to spare you my own nasty baggage. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, I swear. It feels dumb now, but if you knew my enemies—”
“Well, you know mine, at this point,” I broke in. “I hope you paid attention.”
