Chapter 19
NINETEEN
CALEB
A plan.
A plan would have been better.
But then after I hopped the fence into the backyard and took a peek inside the window, I saw that rat bastard raise a gun at Harper and her son.
Logic and plans and anything else kind of left the building at that point.
I just had to get to Harper as fast as humanly possible. Which seemed to require going through the window. So through the window I went.
As I was crashing through the window with my full body, that was when the brief thought flashed—
Oh, an actual plan might’ve been smarter.
Too late.
Because I land hard on my knees through a crash of splintering wood bits and shattered glass—so much glass—before rolling awkwardly sideways.
And then the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in my life explodes right near my ear.
A gunshot.
Holy shit.
The rat bastard just shot at me.
Right. Because I just jumped into the living room where Z was holding a gun on Harp.
“Run!” I shout as I scramble behind a nearby couch.
The front door slams, and I can only pray that means Harper and her son just escaped and all that heroism actually counted for something.
“Who the fuck are you?” Z shouts, and the man does not sound like he’s in his right mind. “Who sent you?!”
Another shot fires off in the small living room, all my muscles contracting as a puff of couch fluff explodes above my head.
Yup. A plan would have been smarter.
Because I can hear his footsteps crossing the room and I didn’t exactly think up a great escape. I just had to get Harper away from the gun.
Well, mission accomplished.
She’s long gone.
Another shot has me curling into a ball again, but then, fuck—
I can’t just sit here waiting for this asshole to shoot me. I look around in desperation for something, anything—
There’s a baseball bat in the corner! If I can crawl around the couch and get to it, then maybe I could—
“You.” Z sounds murderous, and more disconcerting, far too close.
When I swing my head upward—he’s right there. Leaning over the couch, pointing a gun straight at my forehead.
“I should have fucking known it was you.” His voice drips with hatred as his thumb cocks the hammer.
I roll for the baseball bat, even though I know there’s no point.
Z has a clear shot.
I’m about to die.
Another deafening shot rings out, and my eyes squeeze shut, all my muscles tensing in preparation for the pain.
But the screaming isn’t coming from me.
“You shot me!” Z shouts, sounding shocked.
What?
I swing around, only to find Z’s gun dropped on the ground behind the couch. I crawl back and snatch it up, then pop to my feet, glass crunching underfoot.
And there’s Harper standing in the front doorway, holding a small gun in her hand. Where the hell did her gun come from?
But I’m struck too quickly by the implications of her standing there to care.
She came back.
For me.
“Harp, you shot me in the ass!” Z screams, rolling off the couch to the ground, hands jammed to his bleeding butt.
“Come on!” Harper shouts at me from the door.
I don’t waste any more time. I haul ass across the small living room to follow her out onto the gravel driveway.
“Why the hell do you have a gun?” I shout as we run toward her car, where Bruiser is standing by the open passenger door, mouth dropped open.
“All Texas women carry a gun,” Harper says, sprinting toward the driver’s door.
No arguing with that logic.
“Not your car,” I shout. “Let’s take mine in case they’re tracking yours.”
She nods, stopping mid-sprint. “Good thinking. Bruiser, follow him. He’s a friend. He’s your—” She breaks off, shoving the gun in her purse. “Uncle,” she finishes lamely.
The boy just nods and runs to join us as I motion them across the street.
I unlock the Jeep and we all jump in, Bruiser clutching a book to his chest as he and his mom get in the back seat. She grips him to her side as she buckles both of them in.
“Go, go!” she shouts.
I go.
I hit the gas pedal, mind racing furiously as I calculate all the new variables that have entered the equation. Then toss them all out again.
We’re in chaos-land, remember, dumbass? It’s all variables.
So I have to focus on priorities.
There’s a man back there with a gunshot in his ass, plus some sort of danger that Harper’s caught up in that involves Silas and probably some very bad people who were powerful enough to have insiders at a Texas penitentiary.
Not to mention there are sirens in the distance, so somebody heard the gunshots and called the cops.
Which means—
“We’ve got to ditch the Jeep,” Harper and I conclude at the same time.
A police car rounds the corner down the road in front of us, lights flashing.
“Get down,” I instruct, doing my best to look like a normal, calm, collected driver as I watch Harper in the rearview mirror put her hand behind Bruiser’s head and urge him to duck down in the back seat while the cruiser’s still a ways down the road.
By the time it passes, I hope I look like any other John on a lunch break.
“Tell me you have a plan,” Harper says from where she and her son are still crouched down in the back seat. “Do you have a plan?”
“Toss your phones out the window, for one, in case he’s tracking them.”
“Dammit, I should have thought of that,” Harper says.
“Dollar in the swear jar,” her son whispers.
Harper huffs out a little laugh. “Sorry, slugger. You’re right. Do you have your phone on you?”
“No,” he says.
She pulls out hers, rolls down the window, and tosses it.
“I don’t have another car to swap to.” I check all the mirrors. “So I say we hide this one in a garage and wait for backup.”
“You have backup?”
“I have backup.”
“Do you also have a safe house somewhere around here with that garage you mentioned?”
“No.” My mind spins as I try to work through the variables. “But we could go to a hotel.”
“Too visible,” Harper says. “Same with a public garage. Where else can we ditch the car?”
“We could park it at a mall and take a taxi back to Dallas,” I offer.
“And risk more witnesses? These MC guys are ruthless. Oh shit!” Harper says, ducking again. “Down, Bruiser.”
“Swear jar,” comes his small voice.
“What?” I don’t hear sirens again, and my eyes search the road. I don’t see anything except for—
Except for four tricked-out motorcycles riding down the road, throttle roaring as they pick up speed and zoom by.
“Is Dad okay?” Bruiser asks in a small voice.
“He’s fine,” Harper says, voice short.
There’s a tense silence for a moment, and then, the kid’s voice even more wobbly, “I don’t feel so good.”
And then a soft retching noise.
Pretty sure he just threw up in the footwell of the back seat. Poor kid. He’s gotta be traumatized by seeing his fucking dad pull a gun on his mom.
“Oh, honey, it’s okay. That’s okay,” Harper says in this soothing mom voice.
And I think that’s when it really hits me. Holy shit. Harper’s a mom. She’s had a whole-ass human she’s been raising all this time. I mean, I knew it from the pictures, but it wasn’t real before now.
“New plan,” I say. I reach for my phone docked in my dash and hand it back to Harper. “Find the closest Airbnb, filter by ones with garages.”