Chapter 27
WELLER
The door slams, and Owen’s fist hits it before the sound has finished.
“Stop the van.”
He grabs the handle and holds on, head dropped, shoulders heaving, his knuckles bleaching around the latch.
Owen wrenches at the handle as we move farther away from her.
I catch him around the chest, but he comes backward into me with enough force to knock my bad ankle against the leg of the stool, then twists, elbow driving into my ribs as he tries to get his feet under him.
“Ezra.” Owen’s voice is enormous in the cramped space. “Fucking turn around. Now. I can’t do this.”
Ezra ignores him and keeps driving. She’s with Freddie. She’s safe.
Owen bangs a fist against the metal wall of the van. Then Tristan stands, catches a fistful of Owen’s shirt, and shoves him down hard.
“Fucking quit.” Tristan’s hand remains twisted in his shirt with a death grip. “You’re making it worse.”
Owen looks up at him, wild-eyed and furious. “You think I don’t know that?”
Bianca’s scent is everywhere, in my shirt and on our skin.
The distance between us is hard to tolerate. I keep seeing her face, the exact moment she understood that the plan wouldn’t include us staying together, when her eyes found mine as though there had been some mistake I could still correct.
The plan is to head straight to Winston’s as soon as we can shake the tail.
Owen’s shoulders slump as Ezra follows the other traffic boarding the ferry.
There isn’t room to pace like my body wants to. All I can do right now is wait.
No one gets out of the vehicles that have been following us. Passengers leave their cars all around us, doors slamming, voices passing close to the van before fading toward the stairs. Part of me thinks Bianca might come tearing down the narrow row between the cars.
A ferry worker passes carrying a stack of orange cones.
Between the three vehicles, they have the van covered. I don’t recognize anything about the vehicles or what I can see of the men. They’re not wearing uniforms. There are no logos on the side.
Owen reaches behind his leg and puts his hand on the case beneath the monitor shelf.
“Not here,” I say. The last thing we need is a public shootout. If they stay where we are, we’ll manage until we get off the ferry.
His eyes cut to the family walking past our rear doors. A little boy drags his palm along every vehicle he passes while his mother tries to pull him toward the stairs. Owen’s hand leaves the case.
Ezra’s phone vibrates against the console. He picks it up and reads. The hand holding the phone is gripping so tightly the tendons rise along his wrist.
“What?” Owen asks. “What is it?”
Ezra reads it aloud. “Got the car. Girls are safe. Call when you can.”
Owen’s head drops against the side of the van and he closes his eyes. Tristan visibly relaxes. Ezra reads the message again before he types with both hands and sets the phone facedown on his thigh.
Bianca is okay.
Winston’s pack is the next best thing to keeping an eye on her myself.
The ferry horn sounds, deep enough to vibrate through the floor. Engines start around us. Doors slam. The lanes fill with people returning to their cars.
Ezra starts the van.
All three of the vehicles we’ve clocked are off before us, and there’s no turning back.
Owen braces a hand beside the sliding door. “Once we get distance from the terminal, let me out.”
“And then?” Ezra asks, his eyebrows lifting a fraction.
“I’ll get rid of them.”
Tristan glances at him. “What a stirring plan, Owen. Does the second half involve returning to Bianca alive?”
“You’re staying in the van,” I say.
His jaw shifts, but he gives me one short nod. Good enough for now.
Four lanes of traffic give Ezra room to move. He takes the first turn without signaling, and the service truck follows. He cuts across the next intersection as the light changes, forcing a delivery car behind us to brake. The truck gets trapped on red.
For half a block, the road behind us is empty.
Then the pickup slides out of a gas station ahead and falls in two cars back.
Ezra sees it at the same time I do. He turns right, left, then through the rear lot of a strip mall where a back road spills into a neighborhood. The pickup stays on the main street.
There’s an SUV waiting at the next intersection.
“They have more than three vehicles,” Owen says as Ezra accelerates and the van leans into a turn.
I track the roads through the windshield and mirrors.
A box truck sits across the wide avenue toward the interstate, blocking both lanes beneath the sign, and a sedan noses out far enough to block the turn toward downtown.
On our right, the road narrows past warehouses and a strip of trees, the only route nobody has moved to close.
Ezra passes it. At the next intersection, a black truck rolls through the red light and stops across both forward lanes. The SUV behind us closes the distance.
“There,” Tristan says.
I follow his gaze to the only open turn, another two-lane road running between a chain-link fence and trees.
“They’re herding us.” Ezra’s eyes meet mine in the mirror.
He swings the van left instead, mounts the curb, and drives across the corner of an empty gravel lot. The whole rear lifts and comes down hard.
Ezra has opened a path back toward the divided avenue, but then the pickup tears across it.
Ezra brakes, reverses before the SUV behind us can close, and whips the van around. Gravel spits against the undercarriage, and the open road waits at the far end of the lot exactly where they wanted it to.
We take it because it’s now the only choice. Warehouses thin out, and trees press closer to the road. No cars pass us.
Owen opens the equipment case, and this time I don’t stop him.
He takes the first weapon he finds and passes another to me.
“Wait,” Ezra says.
The SUV surges forward like it’s going to ram us.
Ezra tightens both hands on the wheel. “Brace yourselves.”
An engine roars as it grows closer, and the impact lands at the rear quarter. My head snaps backward.
Metal grinds and shrieks, and the weapons we were just holding skitter beneath the seats. Owen catches the back of my shirt before my head bangs against the wall, but the next jolt tears us apart. Tristan hits the floor and the windshield fills with trees.
Ezra fights the wheel, but the van hits a tree, and its branches bust through the window.
Owen checks me. Tristan. “Ezra. Hey man, are you okay?”
The side door has jumped half off its track. Beyond the gap, the ditch runs into trees thick enough to hide us if we can get there.
Ezra twists in the driver’s seat and stops with a sound he tries to swallow. The door has folded inward around his left leg.
Owen crawls between the seats. “Where are you trapped?”
“Below the knee.” Ezra’s voice stays level, but sweat has already broken along his temple. “I can’t get free.”
Tristan pushes himself up on one arm, blood darkening the corner of his mouth. He looks through the open side door toward the trees, toward her, but then he turns to Ezra.
Owen gets both hands beneath the bent edge of the driver’s door and pulls.
Tristan jerks at the seat release while I pull on the seat as hard as I can. It’s stuck.
“Keep trying,” Ezra says, and Owen changes his grip, grunting from the effort. Ezra wrenches his leg toward the center and goes white around the mouth.
Doors slam.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Owen chants. “We need to fucking move.”
The frame gives another fraction of space, and Ezra can move his boot, but he’s still not free.
Footsteps on gravel grow closer, and something strikes the damaged side door from outside. Then a metal canister bounces through the opening, and gray-white smoke jets from both ends.
“Everyone out!” Ezra exclaims.
Owen grabs for the canister to throw it back outside, and the first breath folds him over coughing before his fingers reach it. My eyes flood.
Tristan yanks his shirt over his mouth and tries to reach the door, but a man in a dark mask fills the opening. Tristan drives his shoulder into him, and both of them disappear from view.
Owen follows.
The impact of his body against someone outside shakes the van. A shout cuts off. Another man grabs the doorframe, and I hit his wrist hard enough to feel something give. My second strike misses, and he catches my arm and pulls. I wrench against his grip, but the floor shifts under my feet.
Ezra is still pinned.
As my mind goes hazy, I catch a glimpse of Owen outside fighting three men. One catches him across the eye with a fist. Blood spills from his mouth as they drag him out of sight. I don’t see Tristan.
Cold presses into my cheek. Rough fabric covers my face and catches against my mouth when I breathe. My wrists are bound behind me.
“Where’s the girl?”