Page 49 of Burn

Shaking his head once, Bones grabbed my hand and tugged me with him. “Stay close.”

Not like he gave me a choice. He moved at an angle, zig-zagging his way back to the car. Something moved in the dark ahead of us. Bones shifted his weight, releasing my hand before he lashed out at what turned out to be a man. Three strikes and the man went down and didn’t move again.

When he clasped my hand again, I dug my nails in to hang on. Then we were heading up the hill again. Two sharp, shortwhistles sent a shiver over my skin. He answered with one longer whistle.

“All clear,” Voodoo said as he suddenly rose up out of the darkness. A second flashlight appeared in his hand and he used it to do a scan of the hill. “Did you decide to take a walk, Firecracker?”

“They shot the Jeep.” Despite my effort to keep my voice calm, it still came out broken. “I didn’t want to get shot.”

“Seems fair,” he said before turning the light back to the Jeep. His sigh was eloquent. “Probably a loss.”

“Need to burn it,” Bones said. “Grab our gear, throw their bodies in, and light it up.”

“How do we get out of here?” If we burned the car, we were in the dark, in the middle of nowhere.

“We get creative,” Voodoo said, before he glanced me over again. “Here.” He passed me the flashlight. “I’ll get the other one. Stay with Bones while I drag bodies.”

“We could—” I broke off the offer, because he was already gone. It was eerie how they moved in the dark.

“Come on,” Bones said. Without further elaboration, he set off up the hill and it took some effort to keep up with him. Each step we took higher earned more protests from my body. It wasn’t just a hill anymore but a very steep incline that had me using my free hand to climb as well as Bones tugging me with him

At the top, I wanted to double over. Sweat slicked my face and my shirt stuck to me. There were two more men on the ground, both dead. A fifth one was dead in the front seat of their car. The headlights and grill were crunched from them ramming us.

“Stay here.” Bones let me go and then moved over to one of the bodies. He shoved it with his foot and it went tumbling down the incline. The second body followed the first. When he openedthe driver’s side door and pulled the man inside out, I had to look somewhere else.

The headlights being on revealed far too much. Including the fact we were on the side of a road, at night, and so far, no one had driven by. How much longer could our luck hold out?

As if reading my mind, he tossed the last body down the hill.

“Son of a bitch, Bones,” Voodoo called. “Some warning next time.”

The man standing there, with his expression a slash of violence in the darkness stared down the hill as one corner of his mouth kicked a little higher. The smile was more unsettling than the cold expression.

“Move it,” he said finally, seemingly trusting his voice to carry. “We’re exposed up here.”

With that, he turned back to the car and shut off the lights. He had a set of keys in his hand. That was something. I wrapped my arms around myself as I tried to see around the dazzled retinal burn left over from the headlights.

I could see a flashlight moving below. It wasn’t hard to figure out what he was doing. The car doors opened, then closed. It took another ten minutes, but Voodoo appeared at the top of the hill with the pair of bags.

“Come on, Firecracker,” Voodoo said as he opened the backdoor on the car we were acquiring. It was an older model Bronco. The interior didn’t smell pleasant either. “Don’t worry, we’re getting rid of this soon.”

Still, I climbed inside, but I didn’t see Bones anywhere. Voodoo was in the front seat and he pulled out his phone. The whole front screen was cracked. What I could see of it was all spiderwebbed glass.

Not a good sign.

When Voodoo held something over his shoulder, I stared at it. “Your taser,” he said and I accepted it. “Try not to drop it this time.”

Surprise filtered through me. “I didn’t mean to lose it that time. I dropped it when I tased the guy and we went down the hill.”

Voodoo twisted in the driver’s seat and gave me a firm look. “Did you hurt anything?”

“Probably,” I answered. “Everything hurts. But we need to go, right?”

So far, everything had been about running. Staying ahead of the people trying to take me.

“Does this mean taking the tracker out didn’t work?” Cause we left the doctor’s office hours ago, right?

“Not necessarily,” Voodoo said, but he didn’t continue with anything resembling an explanation. Bones had also not gotten in the car. Where was he?

---