Page 75 of Stay in Your Lane!

Gumbifying myself out a window it is.

We were lucky that whoever this was had decided on stealth. It kept them cautious, which meant we were able to put our shoes on and get the cats into their carriers before the banging started to get loud. Then Jeff began to yowl, the indignity of being back in the carrierandthe noise on top of that too much for his feline pride to handle.

“You go first,” Kyle said, pushing me toward the bathroom. The window was intimidatingly tiny. “Go! I’ll pass the cats to you!”

“Kyle Bowman? Everett Mulligan?” Holy crap—that wasReardon. “Open up!”

Not happening. I climbed on top of the toilet, slid one foot through the window, then the other, until I was in an awkward sitting position. My hips went through okay, but my shoulders got caught.

“Arms up,” Kyle whispered loudly at me. “Streamline your body!”

Iamstreamlining my body, I wanted to shout, but that would be extra dumb. It was already going to be the stupidest thing ever if Detective Reardon got tired of shouting at the front door, came around to the back, saw me like this, and decided to shoot me. The person who had to clean upthatcrime scene…

Fuck that.

I lost both skin and dignity squirming through the opening, but I landed pretty quietly. A second later, the first carrier came through. I lowered Patches to the ground and waited for Jeff, but?—

Crashwent the front door, followed by a hideous staccato noise.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Oh my God, that was coming from just inside. That wasKyleshooting. A second later he passed not a cat carrier, but a gun down to me.

“I don’t want this!” I said to Kyle’s pale, set face.

“Take it anyway!” Kyle snarled. He vanished as shots rang out from the front of the house. One tore through the wall not two feet above me.

Detective Reardon was trying to kill us.

I took Jeff’s carrier in a daze, then waited for Kyle. “Come on!”

“Take the cats and go!”

Oh, fuck that. I wasn’t leaving him to be the next man murdered by a killer cop. Besides, where would I go? We didn’t even have a car…

Except maybe we did.

I could hear an engine still running. I backed up to look and saw that Reardon had come in a patrol car, and that patrol car was, in fact, on right now. Evidently he’d come primed for a quick getaway.

“Get out here now,” I said, then picked up the carriers and ran for the car. Thecopcar. Oh my God, I was about to hijack a cop car. Did it count as hijacking if there was no one in it at the time? Was that simple theft?

A flurry of gunfire went off behind me, and my heart leapt into my throat as I jerked around toward the trailer, but there was no one at the front door. Reardon had gone inside. Inside, where Kyle was.Fuck!I put the cats into the back as fast as I could, then deliberated going in after him. The odds of getting through the next minute without being shot weren’t great, and getting worse all the time, but I couldn’t leave Kyle in there alone with that psycho.

My breath whooshed out of me in a gasp as Kyle came booking around the corner of the trailer, gun in hand, glasses askew, looking like a superhero who’d been caught in alter-ego form.

“Come on!” I yelled, and he skidded into the car a second later like he was on skates.

I got into the driver’s seat and backed us down the drive and onto the road in front of the trailer right as Detective Reardon scrambled out of the trailer. He raised his gun and fired at us, splintering the windshield. I ducked, afraid and furious and why did my lap hurt, and—oh right, I had a gun on my lap.

I couldn’t point it at a person—I just couldn’t—but I could use it as a distraction. I aimed for the drunk’s car, pulled the trigger, fought against the kickback of the tiny explosions happening in the barrel as the bullets sped away, and then…

The other car caught on fire.

Then it blew up.

Blew. The fuck. Up.

“Cars don’t do that!” I shouted, feeling a little betrayed. “They tested it onMythbusters!”

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