Page 25 of Double Shot
“Why are you driving like an absolute madman?” Grant asked, exasperated.
“Because they have a helicopter, and there’s a chance we might be chased,” Lach said, hurling the car through another turn, and then another. I took the opportunity to wrap Sadie in my arms. Was this a hallucination, likeThe Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge? Had Kaijin finally succeeded in killing me? Had my heart stopped, was this mad rescue and flight from the stone prison the delusional response of my brain starving for oxygen? If it was, there was no reason to not steer into the skid.
I inhaled the scent of her hair, and it was somewhere between internalizing an orgasm and doing a line of coke. That I knew what some of that was, was beside the point, and just her being there was infinitely better than either of those other things. I kissed her forehead, and then her lips, and for a long moment, nothing else existed.
I could have wept with joy.
I didn’t, though. Maybe it was still the sense of disbelief, maybe the fact that I was still riding that adrenaline high and hadn’t come down yet. Fuck, it could be that I was just goddamn dehydrated and didn’t have the moisture to spare. The engine roared and there was the distant sound of traffic. We had left the country roads and had joined the A9.
The A9?
The A51 would take us to Marseille, or north into the south of France.
The A9 didn’t go anywhere but…
“My dude,” Grant asked, looking over at Lach. “Are we going to Monaco?”
“Yes, yes we are,” he said, his eyes darting from the road ahead of us to the mirrors. “And we have a tail.”
“Oh shit, that’s bad,” Grant said, turning and looking through the back window. I looked too and saw it – a trio of cars in hot pursuit – a pair of doughty Renault sedans, and a much-abused Citroen hatchback. The Merc we were driving had a more powerful engine, and a better driver, but these assholes lived here, and while Lach was executing corners with precision, this was his first time seeing most of them. They lived here and could probably drive most of these roads in a wine-soaked stupor.
“They won’t try anything, this is a major road,” Grant said.
The first fusillade of gunfire peppered the arse of the sedan, shattering the back window and causing Grant and Sadie to both scream; Grant in fear, Sadie in anger.
“Shoot at them,” Lach said, grabbing Grant by the collar of his shirt.
“I don’t know anything about real guns man, I only do this shit online!” He had a note of rising panic in his voice.
“Give it to me,” Sadie barked, and snatched the FAMAS from him. She turned in a fluid motion and dropped the barrel through the shattered back window and drew a bead on the lead car, one of the Renaults.
Nothing happened.
“Safety’s on, love,” I told her. She saw it, shouted a foul word, clicked it and then put half of the clip into the A9, the trunk of the Merc, and the Renault that was closing in on us. The Renault jagged hard to the left, slammed into the concrete median, and ground to a hard stop, sparks and a cloud of steam and smoke boiling up from it.
She screamed something inarticulate at them, lost in the roar of the engine and noise filling the car in the absence of the back glass.
“Easy, that’s full auto, and that was a lot of ammo,” I cautioned.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m not losing you again because I was worried about having ammo for later,” she said, and it was almost like hearing Lach speak through her mouth.
The two surviving pursuit cars were upset by the loss of one of their own, the Renault falling back being caught in the snarl and panic of traffic, and the Citroen falling back from sheer intimidation. The driver and company regained their courage and began closing on the Merc again, which was no small task. The German car had a lot more power than theirs did.
When they got close, Sadie would fire a few bursts from the rifle. It was almost surreal seeing that. The stock jammed in her shoulder, and each time the muzzle blazed fire, I could see the shock pass through her, making her flesh ripple. It was almost hypnotic.
It was also insane.
There was no reason that Kyle should have her here. Not here where she was using a rifle to shoot at chase cars while he hammered down like he was challenging the lap time at Le Sarthe. Hell, I shouldn’t have been sitting next to her while she was shooting. She should have been taking cover behind me, while I provided covering fire.
“Poppet.” I looked at her, her hair waving in a fierce mane around her head. She fired a last burst and then the rifle was empty.
“Got any reloads for this thing?” she asked.
“It’s not safe,” I said.
“No shit?” She made an open-handed gesture. “Give me another mag if you’ve got one.” I grabbed the spare I had and wished that I had more of them. I handed it to her, and I could feel a nugget of anger starting to glow. I couldn’t believe he had brought her. She unloaded another burst and sent the lead pursuit car skittering away from our bumper. I thought that she had missed, but soon steam was boiling out from under the car, she had holed the radiator.
“How’s it going back there, Shady?” Lach half-shouted.
