Dangerous Minds (Knight and Moon #2)(59)

“And what about us?” Riley asked.

“We’ll be off-road, speeding down the mountain in the fog at breakneck speeds, trying to avoid hitting any explosives.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “That’s a relief. I was afraid we’d be doing something dangerous.”

“Be careful,” Vernon said. “Pay attention to your unagi.”

The three of them took off down the Jeep trail and disappeared into the fog. Riley and Emerson buckled in and waited.

“The dogs won’t chase the fox unless they are allowed to pick up its trail,” Emerson said.

Riley cut her eyes to Emerson. “Have you ever been to a fox hunt? Nine times out of ten it ends up badly for the fox.”

Four sets of headlights shone through the cloud cover, and seconds later Riley could make out four ATVs loaded to the gills with Rough Rider soldiers.

“Do you know how to drive one of these things off-road?” Emerson asked.

“I’m the daughter of a small-town Texas sheriff, and I have four brothers,” Riley said. “What do you think?”

She gunned the engine and took off down the mountain, fishtailing through the lava cinders before getting her bearings.

Emerson looked behind them. The four sets of headlights were still in pursuit.

“They took the bait,” Emerson said. “The good news is that they’re coming after us. The bad news is that they appear to be gaining on us.”

Riley checked the speedometer. “We’re going forty miles per hour. I’m driving blind in this fog. Any faster, and I’m afraid we’ll lose control of the ATV.”

“If you don’t, Tin Man will catch us.”

“I see your point,” Riley said. She pressed on the accelerator and the ATV surged forward, bumping over the rough terrain.

The wheels of the ATV lifted off the ground as they launched off a knoll and were airborne for several seconds. They hit the ground hard and Emerson blew a weeeoop on his slide whistle.

“For the love of Mike,” Riley said, reaching across, ripping the whistle from Emerson’s hand, and throwing it out of the ATV.

Emerson watched the whistle bounce on the ground and out of sight. “That’s a shame. I was really beginning to get good on that thing. Another year of practice and I think I would have been ready for what we in the slide whistle game refer to as ‘The Show.’ ”

“ ‘The Show’?”

“You know. Playing the ‘bankrupt’ sound effect for Wheel of Fortune. The guy who has that job is just living the dream.”

The ATV burst out of the cloud cover, and Riley could see the Pacific Ocean far in the distance. “How far from civilization are we?”

“It’s about fifteen miles until we get to the Hawaii Belt Road,” Emerson said.

Riley looked down at the speedometer. It read sixty miles per hour. “At this speed, that’s fifteen minutes. Maybe we can stay ahead of them that long.”

The four pursuing ATVs emerged from the cloud cover, and Emerson turned to look.

“It’s Tin Man and about a dozen goons wearing khaki uniforms and campaign hats,” Emerson said. “They’re maybe a hundred yards behind us.”

Riley applied more pressure to the gas pedal, and the ATV leaped forward. They could see green pastures in the distance at the lower elevations, and the cinders lining the ground were starting to give way to scrubby grasses.

“I have my foot all the way to the floor,” Riley said. “We can’t go any faster.”

The pursuing ATVs were keeping pace, but they weren’t closing the gap.

“It looks like they’re at maximum speed too,” Emerson said.

Riley passed a rusty, tarnished metal tube with fins on one end. “Um. What was that?”

Moments later there was the sound of a tremendous boom, and one of the pursuing ATVs was catapulted at least thirty feet into the air before crashing to the ground and exploding into flames.

“I have good news and bad news,” Emerson said. “The good news is that there are only three ATVs and nine Rough Riders chasing us now.”

“And the bad news?”

“I think we’re passing through an artillery dump. The rusty metal tubes stuck into the ground all around us look to me like unexploded shells.”

Riley swerved, narrowly missing one.

“There’s one dead ahead,” Emerson said.

The ATV was going too fast to steer around it without rolling the vehicle and killing them both.

“Hold on,” Riley said, launching the ATV over a hillock and flying over the shell before landing roughly on the other side of it.

“This is nice,” Emerson said after they’d passed completely through the dump. “We’ve been on the island for less than twenty-four hours and already we’ve seen so many off-the-beaten-path things most tourists don’t even know about.”

Riley glanced behind her. The pursuing ATVs had made it through and were still a football field’s distance away.

“We could have died,” Riley said. “That’s not nice.”

“Do not dwell in the past,” Emerson said. “Do not dream of the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

“Buddha?”

Emerson shook his head. “Fence.”