Page 29 of Peace Under Fire

The hatchback engine started screaming as it rolled up the ramp. A death scream, like it knew what was coming.

Releasing his right hand from the wheel, he grabbed Mandy’s shoulders, pinning her to his thigh, and drove the hatchback into the clinic’s sliding glass doors.

* * *

Her chest a knot of greasy terror, Mandy tried to burrow into the rigid thigh pressing against her head. The jolting and banging and shooting had stopped. But Jacob hadn’t relaxed. If anything, he was tenser, his thigh like steel.

It was a good thing she’d come to him. If she’d been driving, she’d have panicked and crashed by now, joining her sisters in captivity rather than rescuing them.

While she didn’t regret coming to him, she did regret bringing death to his door. By coming back, she’d put him in danger. Just like she’d put her sisters in danger by leaving the compound and warning Jacob of what was to come.

It was her fault. Everything that was happening—to her sisters, to Jacob, to herself—could have been avoided if she’d never left home.

Sirens surrounded them. Would the cops save her from being taken? Stop Jacob from being killed?

If only she’d seen this in a dream. She could have prevented this situation if she’d known it would happen. Why hadn’t she dreamed this?

Jacob’s arm suddenly clamped over her shoulder and pinned her against his leg. His grasp was hard, almost punishing, yet reassuring at the same time.

The car strained beneath her, the vibrations traveling through her flesh and bone and numbing her skin. Her throat tightened until she could barely breathe.

Crash!

The sound was deafening, much louder than the earlier collision when the cockroaches had rammed them from behind. And it came from everywhere—all around them, below them, above them.

The car shuddered violently before it suddenly stopped dead.

The momentum tore her from Jacob’s grip and flung her forward. She slammed into the bottom of the dashboard, her left temple colliding with the plastic. She felt, more than heard, a hollow crack as she dropped to the gritty floor.

She lay there, a thick, eerie silence pressing down on her. And then the scream of sirens pierced the thick wool in her ears.

The side of her head began to throb.

Her head was still spinning, her ears ringing, when Jacob forced the driver’s door open. It squawked so loudly she heard it above the wail of the sirens.

She rolled over and sat up as Jacob slid out of the car. He kept low, his head down, and staying behind the open door. Shifting slightly, he turned toward her and gave her one quick look, as though checking for injuries.

“Grab your phone.” He waited for her to pick up the cell phone, which had fallen to the floor beside her, then leaned into the car and took her arm, dragging her out until she stood on shaky legs beside him. “Keep your head down.” He put his hand on top of her head and pushed down until she was crouched behind the door alongside him.

From behind them came a multitude of stern voices and urgent demands. “Police. Drop your weapon. Drop it!”

Weapon? What weapon? They didn’t have any weapons.

The staccato report of a gunshot sounded from behind the car—a pinging sound—and then fragments of glass, plastic, and metal rained down on them.

Oh, that weapon. The one shooting at them.

Jacob ducked and wrapped an arm around her waist, dragging her even lower and then urging her forward.

Multiple shots followed the first.

“Let’s go,” Jacob said in a low, tight voice. “Into the clinic. We can blend in there.”

“But the police—”

“You want to be detained while they sort this out?”

No, she did not. She instinctively shook her head, which set off a deep, angry throb.

---