The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(24)

He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the muddy shallows where I stood, shivering, in my summery frock.

“You need to what our horses?”

“Commandeer. Take them,” Nueve said pleasantly. In the distance, over the crackle and pop of the smoldering chopper, you could hear the sirens of the phony cops’ bikes, and the sound was getting louder.

The kid barked a laugh. “You and what army, Tinker Bell?”

Nueve answered with a sarcastic echo of the kid’s laugh, then pulled a weapon from his jumper. It was shaped like a gun, but it looked more like a blaster from Star Wars or those shiny metallic pistols from Men in Black. He pointed it at the kid’s head.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” the old man said, matching Nueve’s calm, pleasant tone. A revolver had appeared in his hand, and the revolver was pointed at Nueve’s head.

Some of the color returned to the kid’s face. I was still a little tense myself, and my mind barely registered the fact that the world had gone very quiet—no more sirens, just the sound of the burning chopper and cows lowing in the distance.

The kid’s eyes grew wide as it dawned on him. “Hey, Granddaddy, that ain’t no girl—that’s some ol’ boy in a dress!”

He started to laugh and as he laughed a jagged hole appeared in his jeans, just above his left kneecap. He screamed and fell out of the saddle, clutching his leg and writhing in agony in the poopy mud.

“Sonny!” the old guy cried.

Nueve leaped forward and hurled the grandfather from his saddle. The old man’s gun went off as he went down, but the muzzle was pointed toward the sky.

“I told you it was an emergency!” Nueve hissed at him. He swung into the saddle with the grace of an accomplished horseman.

“Come, Kropp!” he cried.

A bullet flung up a clod of mud an inch from my left foot. I felt another rip through the hem of my dress. I heaved myself onto the other horse with a lot less alacrity than Nueve.

“I don’t know how to ride!” I shouted.

“An excellent time to learn!” Nueve shouted back and flung the reins into my lap.

And then he was gone at full gallop, riding toward a dense stand of trees fifty or so yards from the pond.

I scooped up the reins and gave one quick snap against the horse’s neck while popping his sides with my heels, like I’d seen in a dozen movies. It worked. The horse bolted forward, nearly hurling me over its bouncing rump. I clung hard to the reins, yelling at the top of my lungs, not trying to steer or guide it, just employing the Kropp method of dealing with disaster: hang on for dear life and pray you don’t get killed.

I was almost to the trees when I heard the motorcycles. I risked a glance over my shoulder: two of them, coming up fast on big Harleys, wearing the standard-issue black jack boots and tinted visors. Only these weren’t cops; they were agents of darkness, and that meant one thing: they wouldn’t stop until they were dead—or I was.

I wasn’t sure how much horsepower a Harley had, but I figured it was more than what I had. Nueve had disappeared into the trees, leaving me totally defenseless, and what kind of rescue mission was that? A trail snaked through the winter-bare trees, and I hit it at full gallop as bullets hit the trunks on either side, peppering me with five-inch splinters and chunks of wooden shrapnel.

The trail widened and suddenly Nueve was riding beside me. I guessed he had pulled off to wait.

“We’ll never outrun them!” I shouted over the thundering of the hooves and the roar of the killers’ bikes.

“I’m drawing one off!” he cried. “Here!”

He tossed the shiny weapon he had pointed at the farmer into my lap. “Wait till I’m clear,” he called. “The rounds are heat seeking!”

And then he was gone, whipping the horse off the trail and into the trees, riding with his cheek practically laid on the horse’s neck to avoid being knocked off by low-hanging branches.

A bullet whizzed by my ear. I twisted around and pulled the trigger without bothering to aim. The gun kicked in my hand and I saw a tiny contrail stream from the muzzle toward the rider no more than twenty feet back.

There was a soft whumph! on impact. The bullet tore through the bike’s gas tank. The rider was close enough for me to see my reflection in his visor as the Harley exploded into a fireball, hurling his body forward, a fiery human projectile that came straight at me.

I goaded the horse’s flanks and snapped the reins against its neck, and he answered with a burst of speed. The burning rider missed hitting my horse’s rump by a foot.

Nueve and the other rider were nowhere in sight, but I didn’t pull up and I didn’t slow down. The trees were thinning out and I could see open pastureland ahead. Now what? Just keep riding or stay in the trees?

With ten yards between me and the na**d sky, I yanked the reins hard to the right, and my horse lunged off the trail. He must not have liked dodging trees at full gallop any more than I did, because all at once we were back on the trail—or it may have been a different trail; I was very disoriented by that point.

Same trail or different trail wasn’t the thing that mattered though. The thing that mattered was the dude on the Harley coming straight at me at fifty miles per hour.

I raised my weapon. Even without the heat-seeking rounds, I don’t think I could have missed, we were that close.