Chapter 3
Keira automatically dropped to the ground.
Rogue dropped down over her, using his body to shield hers.
Gunfire erupted over their heads as the black SUV raced toward them. A man with an assault rifle leaned out the window on one side, firing in their direction.
“We have to move,” Rogue said. “Follow me. Now!” He rolled off her. Keeping his head and body as low as possible, he scrambled for the SUV.
Keira was right behind him, moving fast.
Rogue yanked open the passenger door. “Get in!” he yelled.
Rogue leaned around the SUV’s door and fired.
Keira jumped into the SUV and pulled herself across the console into the driver’s seat.
Rogue continued firing at the oncoming vehicle, covering for Keira as she settled behind the steering wheel and immediately started the engine. She rolled down her window and leaned out, firing at the gunman hanging out of the big SUV.
As soon as she was covering for him, Rogue threw himself into the passenger seat and lowered his window. He laid down cover fire while Keira shifted into gear and drove straight at the other vehicle, keeping low in her seat.
Bullets blasted through the windshield. Rogue felt something sting his right shoulder. He didn’t stop to look as he returned fire.
On course for a head-on collision, Keira held steady.
Rogue tensed beside her, bracing himself for impact.
At the last second, Keira jerked the steering wheel to the left, slammed her foot onto the accelerator and shot past the other vehicle and out from behind the building. Once on the street, she aimed for the highway heading west.
Rogue swiveled in his seat to look behind them.
Keira glanced in the rearview mirror.
The big SUV popped out from behind the diner and raced after them.
Once out on the open highway, Keira increased their speed, taking the rental over one hundred miles per hour, putting distance between them and the bigger, heavier vehicle tailing them.
Heading west into the setting sun, they entered the winding roads of the Hill Country. As Keira navigated the twists and turns, they lost sight of the SUV behind them. Light faded as the sun dipped behind the hills.
On a straight stretch, headlights appeared behind them, moving fast and closing the distance.
Keira swung off the main highway onto a paved side road, handling the vehicle like a racecar driver, taking each turn with skill and confidence.
Rogue glanced back. “I don’t see any headlights. Think we lost them?”
“No.” She rounded another sharp bend in the road, slammed on the brakes and whipped the vehicle into reverse, backing onto a narrow dirt road shrouded by overhanging mesquite trees and lined by giant prickly pear cactuses.
When they were far enough off the road with enough underbrush blocking their view of it, she parked, removed her foot from the brake, shut off the engine and killed the lights.
She took her gun from her shoulder holster and held it at the ready.
Rogue dropped the magazine out of his Glock and slid a full one in.
A moment later, headlights shone through the gaps between the pads of a cactus clump. The vehicle passed quickly, disappearing around another bend in the curvy road.
Silence stretched between Rogue and Keira. They remained in place, barely moving or breathing.
The adrenaline rush that had kept Keira’s body humming, slowly drained.
A minute passed. Then two.
Keira started the engine.
Rogue touched her arm. “Do you think they’ll come back?”
She shook her head. “This road is very curvy and doesn’t dead-end. There’s no reason for them to turn around. They should follow it all the way until it exits onto another highway. We’re going the opposite direction.”
Pulling out of their hiding place, she drove out onto the paved road and headed back in the direction from which they’d come. A few miles later, she slowed and took a farm-to-market road also heading east.
“Do you have an idea where we’re heading?” Rogue asked.
She nodded, her fingers so tight on the steering wheel they turned white. “I know these roads well enough.”
“I take it you’ve been here before.”
She nodded. “As Onyx, we scout the areas in which we might work, look for places we can hide and store that knowledge for later use.”
“Where do you store that knowledge?” Rogue asked.
Keira’s lip curled as she released one hand from the steering wheel and tapped a finger to her temple.
“Best data collection device I have.” Her lips curled in a smile.
“And I have a password-protected spreadsheet I update whenever I’m in an area.
Since I knew I was going toward Austin, I reviewed our options.
I know of several safe locations in the Hill Country. ”
Rogue glanced back at the road behind them, getting darker by the minute. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to one now.”
“Maybe,” she said, her brow dipping low.
So far, the other SUV hadn’t followed them.
He turned to her. “You said you ditched your burner phone.”
She nodded. “After we talked last night.”
“Yet they were able to find you without it.” He frowned. “We tracked you from facial recognition and your cell phone.”
“I was very careful and lay low today, keeping away from all surveillance systems,” she said.
“Yet they still found you.” His frown deepened. “Makes me wonder if they’re tracking me to get to you.”
She shot a glance his way. “Check your belongings, your clothes, everything.”
He reached over the back of the seat, pulled his go-bag into his lap and went through every pocket. “Nothing. Is it possible your laptop or the flash drive is traceable?”
She shook her head. “I was careful not to go online with my laptop. If I wanted to research information on the internet, I would go to libraries and use the computers there. The flash drive is one I purchased when I started tracking information. I kept it hidden from Viktor and anyone else in Onyx.”
“Whoever commissioned us to find and eliminate you knew I was coming. They didn’t know I’d rent a vehicle.
They could’ve traced calls coming into my boss, and then tracked my burner phone, which I also tossed after our conversation last night.
That leaves this rental. They might’ve had a chance to tag it when I went into your motel room.
I think we need to find alternate transportation. ”
She nodded. “My motorcycle.”
He frowned. “Back at the diner?”
“Yes. I left it parked at the strip mall behind the diner.”
“Are there any CCTV cameras there?”
She shook her head. “I checked. The strip mall is under construction. They’re gutting it. No cameras there.”
“Is your bike big enough for the two of us?”
“It’ll be tight with two, but it’ll do,” she said.
“Good,” Rogue said. “We’ll ditch this car a block or two from the strip mall and approach the motorcycle on foot.”
Keira’s brow creased. “I’ll want to inspect the motorcycle to make sure it hasn’t been compromised. I could’ve been the one to lead them to the diner.”
“We’ll do that. Then what?”
“Like I said, I know a place in the Hill Country we can hole up in for the night.” Her fingers gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white and her lips pressed into a thin line. “Then we can backup, regroup and come up with a plan to bring these bastards down.”
“I’m all for that.” Rogue’s lips twitched. “I don’t much care for being on the run while trying to investigate, but we’ll manage.”
“The place I have in mind is off the grid.”
“By off-grid, you mean, no phone service?”
Her lips quirked. “Little to no cell phone reception, definitely off the electric grid. But don’t worry. It runs on solar power and is well-stocked.”
They made it back to the junction of 71 and 620 and drove into an industrial area a couple of blocks away from the diner and the strip mall.
Rogue grabbed his go-bag, shoved Keira’s laptop and the butcher paper diagram into it and zipped it.
Keira led the way to the strip mall where she’d stashed her motorcycle near a junk heap behind the strip mall. She unearthed a duffel bag from beneath the junk heap and gave Rogue and his bag an assessing glance. “I’ll drive. Can you handle both bags?”
He nodded. “We’ll manage.”
Keira and Rogue spent some time going over the bike, looking for any GPS tag that might have led the attackers to them. Finally, they met each other’s gazes.
“Looks clean,” Rogue said. “Shall we?”
Rogue tied the two bags together, slipped his arms through the straps and slid them onto his shoulders like a large backpack.
Keira slung her leg over the seat and slid forward.
Rogue climbed on behind her, his legs and chest pressing against her.
Though his body was warm, a shiver of awareness rippled through her. “You'd better hold on,” she said.
When he wrapped an arm around her waist, she sucked in a sharp breath. She hadn’t had a man’s arm around her for...a long time. It was muscular and solid and stirred something inside her she thought she’d never feel again.
Heat. Desire. Longing.
Before she lost her grip on reality, she revved the engine and shot forward.
The man behind her slid backward a smidge, and the arm around her waist tightened.
For the next forty minutes, she drove, her thoughts more on the man behind her than the danger they had to avoid to uncover the truth behind Senator Morales’s murder.
Keira headed for the hill country, driving through winding roads, deep into the hills. Houses were fewer and further between, and the roads diminished from pavement to crumbling pavement and finally to unkempt gravel roads where trees and brush encroached.
Afraid she’d miss the turn-off, she slowed as she neared a particular curve in the gravel road. She pulled onto a narrow, rutted path only a motorcycle or four-wheel-drive could navigate. By the looks of it, the path wasn’t navigated often. At least that’s how she’d wanted it to appear.