Page 64 of Dash

I had no time to explain.

“Sorry.” I pulled out of Thena, yanked her dress up and back in place, and muscled her to the floor. “Get down and stay down.”

I ripped off the condom, zipped up my pants, slid out my Glock from its holster beneath my jacket, and chambered a round, ready to rock and roll.

Thena’s rounded eyes flashed with a million questions, but she did as I asked. Even as the hum of pre-combat adrenaline shot through my veins, I understood how she felt. Cut off, denied, and manhandled right when we’d both been at the edge of an amazing climax.

It sucked, but then again, our enemy didn’t give a fuck.

The limo swerved hard to the right. The sound of charges going off ahead and behind us pummeled my eardrums. It left my ears ringing and my hearing muted. A peek out the windows showed me a wall of fire separated the limo from the Suburbans front and back. Flashes of flames licked the limo’s darkened windows as King sped through them.

“Ruck up,” Micah shouted over the limo’s intercom as King fought for control of the vehicle. “Charlie Foxtrot in progress.”

Charlie Foxtrot was military slang for clusterfuck. As if I hadn’t fucking noticed. Unable to locate my comms, I pounded the intercom button with my fist. “Copy that. Rucked up and ready.”

Plink, plink, plink.

A barrage of rounds pinged against the bullet proof windows and clanked against the layers of armor plating builtinto the vehicle. I dropped lower to the floor and covered Thena with my body. Had the limo not been armored, we would’ve all been mincemeat.

These assholes were subpar if they thought I was gonna overlook such an important detail. Or maybe they just hoped to get lucky. Well, their luck was about to run out.

The limo veered one way, then the other. Jammed against the floor, my shoulders slammed against the bar and the bottom of the seat. The screech of metal on pavement told me our tires were gone and we were skating on rims.

Not ideal.

But King was a skilled driver, trained for this sort of thing. He fought hard to control the car. I felt more than saw the vehicle as it veered off before it hit a series of ruts. Thena and I rattled and bounced like dice trapped in a cup.

“What’s happening?” she cried out from under me.

“Stay down.” I braced my hands and pushed up to manage a glimpse through the tinted windows.

The limo jumped the ditch on the right side of the road and charged through the woods. Branches snapped and scraped against both sides of the car as it bounced over the uneven slope. Even with most of the tires gone, King managed to avoid several collisions with some of the bigger trees. Rims sinking into moist earth, the limo began to lose speed. It skated over a long flat at the bottom of the slope. Looming at the end was the abrupt edge of a steep hill.

Not a steep hill. A cliff. A rocky fucking cliff.

The car turned violently, smashing me against the bottom of the seat.Crash. Impact. My brain jangled in my skull. Broken bottles and glasses rained over us, but the limo jerked to a full stop.

I shook off the glass from my back, pushed off the floor, and went into assess mode. The right side of the limo waswrapped around a huge oak tree. It had stopped the vehicle ten feet from the edge of the cliff and prevented us from going over.

“You okay?” I asked Thena.

“Fine.” She pushed up from the floor with my cane in her hand.

I smelled the fire before I spotted the sparks.

“Out.” I bellowed. “Everybody out!”

I grabbed Thena, pulled the handle, and using a great deal of strength, pushed the limo’s armored door open. As I dragged her outside, I kept my weapon up, searching for a target, but the light of the moon peeping in between the clouds revealed no targets in my crosshairs. Bozeman and King were already there, flanking me on both sides. They held their carbines tight against their shoulders, cheeks pressed against their rifle’s butts, eyes on their scopes.

“Tangos?” I asked.

Bozeman answered curtly. “None visible.”

Yet.

“The limo’s gonna blow.” Time was not on our side. “Gotta move, fast.”

I coiled one arm around Thena’s waist and, dragging my lazy leg, ran up the slope behind Bozeman and King, assessing my surroundings for a decent defensive position. Thena tripped on her heels and cursed. She shook them off and, still holding on to my cane, picked up the pace.

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