Chapter 1 #2
“Let’s go!” I yell, grabbing Wren’s hand as I yank the side exit open and barrel into the yard.
Knowing there is no time to get to my SUV, wherever they stashed it, since the front yard is flooded with agents, I lead us straight to my sedan in the neighbor's drive, not twenty feet away.
And thanks to that house being set back slightly more than this one, we are mostly hidden from all the agents.
“Quickly, get in!” I press a button to open the trunk, knowing our bags won’t fit in the car with us, it will be tight enough as it is.
“I got her,” Dex says, scooping Wren up and running to the front passenger seat, sitting down, and pulling her into his lap. The other three cram into the tiny backseat as I jump behind the wheel, peeling out of the drive as fast as I can.
“They’re following!” Peter yells from the backseat, where he’s practically sitting sideways to fit back there with Jagger and Sly.
I slam my foot down on the gas, determined not to get caught now that we’re so close to getting away.
“You couldn’t have brought a bigger car for us?” Peter asks as I make a sharp left turn.
“I was planning on using my SUV. Where’d you park it, anyway? I didn’t see it out front.”
Everyone is silent, and I quickly glance at the three in the back in the rearview mirror. They all avoid looking at me.
“What did you do to my car?” I ask angrily.
“In our defense,” Sly says calmly, “We thought it was bugged. That we were being tracked through it.”
“Where. Is. It?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Did you happen to notice the minivan in front of the house?” Peter asks a little too casually.
It takes me all of two seconds to realize what he’s saying.
“You traded my SUV for that? Goddamn it!” I seethe, cranking the wheel hard to the right in hopes of losing our tail around the next turn. The sooner we can get away from my old colleagues, the sooner I can regroup and formulate the next steps of my plan.
But we aren’t gonna get far in a government-owned sedan.
“It’s not like we knew it was yours,” Dex says in defense from beside me, where Wren is perched in his lap, his arms wrapped a little too tightly around her for my preference. I narrow my eyes as my gaze flits back to the road. The sooner we can get a bigger vehicle, the better.
“Who the hell did you think it belonged to?” I fire back as I run an amber light, hoping to stop the feds. It doesn’t.
A large SUV suddenly charges out of the street to our right, heading straight for us. “Shit!” I hiss, laying my foot down and gunning the engine as fast as she’ll go.
“There’s at least six vehicles right on our tail,” Sylvester says, looking out the back window. “We need to lose them.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do here, Sylvester?” I ask, swerving around a slow car.
“He prefers to be called Sly,” Wren says softly from my side.
One glance at her innocent face, and I’m nodding in agreement. “Okay, Sly it is.” The small smile on her lips is enough to have me wanting to do anything to make her happy.
There’s a loud bang, and the car lurches forward when someone hits us from behind.
“Shit shit shit!” I make a sharp left, hoping to gain us a few extra seconds as I try to think of the best way to lose them.
“If we could get to one of the bags in the back, we could shoot at them,” Peter suggests.
“No,” I shake my head adamantly. “We might not be on their side, but we can’t kill any of them. They aren’t bad people.”
“If they try to take Wren from me, I won’t hesitate to pull the trigger,” Sly says with a voice that sounds way too damn calm for the threat he shares. I don’t answer, knowing I can't change his mind and unsure if I wouldn’t do the same thing.
I take another right turn, trying to remember which way to the highway.
If I can get them off my tail and make a break for the highway, I know it splits up ahead in three directions, and if they don’t see which way we go, we have a thirty-three percent chance of getting away.
Of course, they are likely to split up, but at least that reduces the number of vehicles chasing us.
Just ahead on my right, I see a large garbage truck reversing straight into the road. “Hold on!” I yell as I press my foot down as far as it will go and aim for the shrinking gap behind it.
“Oh fuck!” Peter yells. Dex twists his body slightly, moving Wren away from the side the truck might hit us on, as I focus my gaze on our only hope of escape.
I think I hear Wren scream, but it's hard to hear over the ringing in my ears as I speed through the gap.
The garbage truck scrapes along our back bumper as we fly out the other side.
I slam on the brakes, then make a right turn, followed by three more quick turns, then head for the highway entrance straight ahead.
“Woo!” Peter cheers, his fear a moment ago suddenly turning to excitement when he sees we lost them. For now.
“We’re not free of them yet,” I mumble. “Shit.” I curse, seeing a police cruiser ahead. I don’t think it’s spotted us as I’m not going as fast now, so I slow even more and turn into a parking garage on my right.
I move up to the second floor and find an empty space, right beside a brand new Yukon. It’s a large SUV, even bigger than my old one. I switch the car off and wait, looking back and forth to make sure we weren’t followed.
“Alright, everyone out. Dex, you watch Wren. Peter and Jagger, grab the bags. Sly, you watch for incoming threats.”
“And what are you gonna do?” Sly asks with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m gonna disable this SUV’s alarm system and reprogram it to my own keyfob.”
I quickly move over to the driver's door and pull out my small pouch of tools from my pocket.
“I didn’t know key fobs could be reprogrammed?” Peter says as he starts lifting bags out of the back of the car.
“They can’t,” I tell him with a grin. “By anyone but me, that is.” I press the magnetic patch against the door and pull up my decoder.
It’s a gadget I made out of a smartphone.
It allows me to do all sorts of tricks, like breaking into anything with a digital lock, switching off car or house alarms, and even reprogramming car key fobs.
My decoder beeps, and I pull open the door, then hit the unlock button. Standing up, I yell, “Dex! Get Wren secured in the back. Jagger and Peter, you can load the bags now.”
“I prefer Pete,” he says, and I file that away. Do none of them go by their full legal names?
“Alright, Pete, make sure the sedan is closed up and doesn’t draw any unwanted attention, then get in the back with Jagger.”
I start to climb into the driver’s seat, but a hard hand on my shoulder pulls me back.
I turn to see Sly watching me with what I can only describe as distrust. “I’m driving.
” He pulls me away from the door and climbs in.
I let him, because it doesn’t really matter if he drives, as long as he goes where I instruct.
And this might give me a chance to breathe for a second and come up with a plan.
I run around the side, and seeing Wren sitting in the back beside Dex, I smile, eager to hop up on her other side. But once again, I’m pulled back by Jagger this time. He points me to the front passenger seat, and I roll my eyes, but climb in as I know we have no time to waste.
Once the doors are shut, Sly slowly pulls out of the parking spot and garage as if we have all the time in the world—a wise move as it doesn’t draw any unwanted attention to us.
I direct him to the highway, and only after we’ve been safely moving for ten minutes without any sign of pursuit do I finally take the first real breath since this all started.
I glance over at Sly and the way his knuckles are white from his tight grip on the steering wheel. I think he’s worried about a tail until I realize he keeps glancing at me, not the rearview mirror.
“Really?” I ask with a huff, trying not to sound wounded. “After everything I’ve done for you all, and everything we just went through, you still don’t trust me?”
“What exactly have you done for us? Besides bringing the feds down on our doorstep?”
“I thought you were the smart one,” I say, shaking my head. He turns his narrowed eyes to me, and I can’t help but ask, "Haven't you put it all together yet?”