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Chapter 20
Teag was already winded. Adrenaline coursed through his bloodstream, giving him an extra burst of energy, but it couldn’t mask the fact that his lung was damaged and his body severely weakened. Still, he pushed forward.
Maria led them toward the yard next door. He followed, sweating and wheezing.
“We need to find someplace to hide and call for help,” Maria said, leading him around the side of the house. He heard the concern in her voice. She didn’t think he would make it very far. She wasn’t wrong, but he knew they’d be sitting ducks if they tried to stop. This guy was too deadly, too determined. He wouldn’t give up the chase.
Maria stopped and ducked behind a pair of garbage cans next to the side of the house, and then tugged Teag down beside her. He gasped, fighting to pull in enough air. His chest felt like someone had stuck a serrated knife straight through it.
He leaned against the rough wooden shingles of the house, trying to remember how to breathe correctly. Maria poked her head around the corner and pulled back quickly.
“I don’t see him, but we need to keep moving. Find a better place to hide,” she said, sounding winded but not nearly in the state he was in.
Just a few feet from them, an old Buick sat parked in the driveway.
“Maria,” he gasped. “The car.”
Although they were hidden in the shadows of the house, and it was the middle of the night, there was enough ambient light from the neighborhood that Teag could see Maria’s confused expression.
“Let me see if the door is unlocked.”
She stared at him for the space of a heartbeat, but then gave him a small nod and moved to cover him. He crept to the vehicle and yanked on the handle.
“Locked. Damn it. Can you break it?”
Without missing a beat or wasting time questioning him, Maria stood, used the handle of her gun, and broke the driver’s-side window. The sound of shattering glass pierced the silence of the night. Teag didn’t need any encouragement to move quickly.
He reached through the shattered window, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. It took him less than thirty seconds to remove the plastic cover on the steering column and access the ignition wires. Stripping them of their plastic coating was more of a challenge.
“Do you have the keys to the van?”
Maria fished around in her cargo pants pocket and tossed them to Teag. He used the jagged edge to scrape away the coating. When the wires were bare, he touched the correct ones together and the engine turned over. He sat in the driver’s seat, hand on the gear shift.
“Get in,” he rasped.
The moment Maria moved out from the protection of the driver’s-side door, Teag heard the pop of the gunshot.
“Fuck!” she yelled, ducking back.
“Come on!” Teag tugged her by the sweatshirt, essentially throwing her over his lap. She heaved her body into the car, squirming her way to the passenger side. As soon as her legs cleared the door, he slammed it shut and threw the car into gear.
The tires screeched as he pulled out of the driveway and gunned it. He kept his head as low as possible, crouching over the dash, barely able to see the street ahead of him, but more worried about getting his head blown off if he stuck it up any farther. Maria had now curled herself into the corner of the passenger seat, also crouched low but with her gun ready.
The rear windshield shattered, and Maria swore. They barreled toward an intersection, and Teag plowed through it, then made a sharp right turn without slowing. The ass-end of the car fishtailed, but he brought it under control quickly.
His heart thudded in his chest, and he white-knuckled the steering wheel but didn’t let up on the accelerator until he’d put several blocks between them and the not-so-safe house. After he’d raced through another couple of intersections and made a few random turns, he finally felt like he could slow down.
“Where’d you learn to drive like that, Mario Andretti? Or better yet, where’d you learn to jack a car like that?” Maria asked. Although there was amusement and curiosity in her voice, it was higher in pitch and laced with something that sounded an awful lot like pain.
Teag glanced over to find her clutching her left upper arm, blood seeping between her fingers.
“Shit! How bad is it?” he asked.
“Just a flesh wound,” she joked. But when he threw her another glance, her face was pinched with pain and loose tendrils of hair stuck to her forehead with sweat.
“Don’t bullshit me, Maria. Do we need to go to a hospital?”
“If we do, we’re as good as dead. I’ll be okay. Seriously,” she said.
