Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(50)
Once she was on the street, she shifted into drive and took off like a bat out of hell, her tires squealing on the pavement and leaving a thin puff of gray smoke in her wake. The Land Rover’s big engine growled as it shifted through the gears, and Eve took a moment to lament the fact that she’d purchased an automatic. For this little endeavor, a standard would’ve been better, but she’d have to make do with what she had.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered, watching the rearview mirror with one eye even as she kept the other on the road. Her vacation house was on a mountainside, and the road leading to it was curvier than a coiled snake. “Can’t you CIA guys see we’re up to no good? Why the heck aren’t you following us?”
“Jesus!” Becky yelped, grabbing the bar above the passenger window as Eve took the next curve on two wheels. “Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?”
“My father sent me to defensive driving class a couple of years ago when I was having problems with that stalker,” she answered through gritted teeth as she wrestled the wheel back to the right, hugging the edge of the road until Becky glanced out her window and down a mountainside so sheer it defined the word vertigo—why the world’s most beautiful views also happened to be the most dangerous, Eve would never know.
Unconsciously, Becky leaned away from the window and toward the middle of the vehicle, as if her puny five-foot-two-inch frame could really affect any change in the vehicle’s trajectory should Eve lose control—which sooo wasn’t going to happen. Eve wasn’t good at much, but she’d taken to driving like a fish to water.
“Defensive driving?” Becky gulped. “This…this is more than d-defensive driving, Eve, this is—Holy shit! Look out!”
A herd of peccaries, Costa Rica’s infamous wild pigs, raced across the roadway, and Eve was forced to slam on the brakes. The Land Rover shuddered and skidded, necessitating her to go against instinct and turn into the slide. But just as her instructor had promised, and just like she’d practiced a million times, the maneuver allowed her to control the vehicle and bring it to a jolting stop a mere foot from the squealing pigs.
“He was an ex-Hollywood stuntman,” she explained, breath sawing from her lungs, heart racing at breakneck speed, even as she tapped an impatient finger, waiting for the nasty-tempered swine to make it across to the opposite side of the street.
“Who?” Becky breathed, foot up on the dashboard to brace herself, both hands now closed in tight fists around the bar above the passenger side window.
“My defensive driving instructor,” Eve explained as the last pig crossed the road—she was certain there was probably a joke in there somewhere. And right at that instant, the white van appeared around the bend behind them.
“They took the bait!” she squealed delightedly and pounded a victorious fist on the steering wheel before stomping on the gas.
“Who the hell are you?” Becky demanded as they proceeded to blast down the mountain like a bullet from a gun.
***
“They’re late,” Boss grumbled in the driver’s seat, checking his watch. They were sitting across the street from the green expanse of La Sabana Metropolitan Park where the Inter-American Highway led into downtown San Jose. The smell of tobacco from the nearby smoke shop filled the air coming in through Bill’s open passenger side window, competing with the more pungent aromas of the fish cart on the corner and dozens of car exhausts. But that didn’t distract him from the fact that, according to what Vanessa told them, they should’ve seen her and Rock blazing into town on the back of a dirt bike fifteen minutes ago. Bill already had his cell phone out before Boss finished with, “You need to call and tell your sister, so she can keep those damned spooks away from the house for a little longer.”
“On it,” he said, punching in Becky’s number and listening as his secure connection was made. After the first ring, Becky picked up with, “Holy shit! You’re never gonna believe where I am.”
“Becky—” he tried to interrupt her, but she just talked right over him.
“After one hell of a car chase…By the way, did you know Eve can drive like a Hollywood stuntman?”
“Huh?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she quickly went on. “The important thing is, I think the spooks were clueing-in to what we were doing, making them run after their own tails and all, because they started to back off. And that’s when Eve had a friggin’ epiphany. Guess what she did?” Before he could even open his mouth, his sister sailed ahead. “She decided we could kill two birds with one stone, and that brings me back to where I am. Which is standing in line at a seedy-as-hell sex shop watching Eve purchase a whorehouse’s worth of vibrators.”
“Huh?” Okay, so apparently his vocabulary had shrunk to that one word. And it might have something to do with the fact that his brains had ostensibly turned to mush. Just plain, gray mush. It was the only thing that could account for the fact that none of what Becky had just said made damned bit of sense. Hollywood stuntman? Sex shop? Eve?
“Oh, shit!” Becky breathed. “They’re coming in the door. I gotta go.”
And that was enough to joggle some sense back into his slushy cerebrum. “Beck—” But she’d already hung up on him. “Goddamnit!” He clenched his fists before once more dialing her number, grumbling to Boss as he listened impatiently to the click and beeps, “I don’t know how you put up with her. She is the most exasperat—”