Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(64)
I shake his arm. “What do we do?”
“Shit. I don’t know. Where the f*ck is Martin?”
“I don’t know. Where are we?”
“There’s another… you gotta be f*cking kidding me,” he blurts out. “Follow me. I’m not leaving you here.”
“Where are we going?”
“There’s another tunnel.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Victor
“We’re leaving,” I tell her, and take her into the Scary Tunnel.
Eve never says a word, she just follows me, clutching my hand with hers. Her skin is sticky, dried blood from her scalp. It’s not as bad as she probably thinks it is. Any scalp wound bleeds like a stuck pig. It’s matted in her hair, a dark clump of rust on the white gold.
She keeps her head down as we traverse the tunnel. My every step is sure. I know where I’m going. The first time I came through here, it felt five miles long. First thing I need to do is get Eve to safety, then I need to get my hands on Martin. The son of a bitch is not getting away with this. The end of the tunnel isn’t far. Once we reach it I open the trap door and Eve hauls herself up the short staircase and out, and I’m right behind her, breathing free air on the other side of the wall.
“What is all this?”
“My family used to shelter runaway slaves,” I tell her, panting. “Back during the Civil War. Before that, too, I guess.”
I can see the flames over the treeline. It’s all burning, everything.
“The house,” she says.
“Fuck the house. Pictures of my Mom and Dad. Pictures of you and me. My life was in that house…” I trail off.
“No,” I touch her shoulder and pull her to me. “My life is right here. The rest of it can be replaced. Let’s get out of here, I want you safe.”
“How?”
The Toyota is still parked under the trees. My neighbor the dairy farmer must not have noticed it. Please let the key still be in the ignition. Of course, it is. The door is still unlocked. I help Eve into the passenger’s seat, rush around to the other side, and start her up. It’s rough going back to the road.
Headlights flash in my rear view mirror. Oh shit.
I tromp the pedal and the little hatchback gives her all. I suddenly feel sorry for disparaging her before. I wish for the Firebird but the Firebird is sitting in a garage somewhere right when I need her. The Toyota tries her best, and I weave from one side of the road to the other, so they can’t ram me, but there’s headlights up ahead. I should have known. Martin wasn’t going to just leave us to die without some kind of plan B. I don’t think they figured on me, though. I weave around the oncoming truck, gripping the wheel so hard it creaks. The front tire hits soft shoulder but I wrestle the car back onto the road, a dazed Eve lurching this way and that in the seat behind me. Eve has the shotgun.
“You know how to load that?”
She shakes her head.
“Push the lever on the top. It opens in the middle. Stick the shells in the holes. They can only go in the one way. Don’t touch the triggers.”
As she fumbles with it, I drive. There’s two packs of them hot on our tail, and they’re catching up. The Toyota’s little motor is screaming, but it’s built light, to save weight for gas mileage. She holds her own, especially on these winding roads where the big lumbering trucks have to slow for turns. I don’t. Eve snaps the gun closed.
There’s a flash behind us. They say you never hear the one that gets you. That’s because the bullet goes faster than the sound, and the crack comes after the back glass shatters. Something spins and bounces on my lap. They hit the rear view mirror, knocked it right off the mount and popped a hole in the windshield, a spiderweb folding across my vision. I weave in the road as they fire again, more flashes, more pops. The mirror on Eve’s side shatters into a million pieces, and falls away into the night. Another crack and her window blows out.
“Get down,” I bark at her, pushing her down into the footwell.
It doesn’t matter. For bullets a car like this might as well be made of tinfoil. There’s no cover from a bullet in here. I see a flash. Headlamps, this time.
A Mercedes. It’s f*cking Martin, weaving around the two trucks.
I can’t outrun them, but I can’t outdrive them. I can’t outdrive Martin, not in that. Fucking German engineering.
I pull Eve back against the seat. She winces, clutching her hand.
“Seat belt!” I bellow, and she doesn’t even blink before she yanks it on. I fumble at mine and take a sharp turn one-handed, the wheel straining against my wrist. I burned my hand somehow and I don’t even realize it until now, when the wheel starts to slide in my palm and grinds against the burn, sending lancing agony up my arm.
Martin swings wide. He’s trusting in the speed and handling of his machine. I can’t slow down in a sharp turn, have to put more power to the drive wheel to keep from losing control. He might be overcorrecting, he might be doing it on purpose, but the end result is the same. The big Benz side-swipes the little Toyota and then we’re bouncing and the cracked windshield is full of sky, then dirt. For a single gut-twisting moment I think we might roll but she stays upright, jounces down the hill into a dead field, crashing through more cut corn stalks. Fucking corn. Martin’s Mercedes grinds to a stop and he surges out, gun in hand.