Page 17 of Texas Hold Em'
Another shot.
“Fuck!” I hissed.
Carrie was too exposed. I had to do something.Anything.Otherwise she was going to get a bullet in the back.
I checked my mirrors. The two bikes were six car lengths back. The SUV was tailing farther behind, and I wondered who was behindthe wheel. Moss, the bastard who beat the shit out of Mason the other week? Or Caroline, Bates’s sadistic daughter?
A car pulled out in front of us from a side street without its lights on.
Carrie shrieked in my ear.
I released the throttle and hit the brakes hard, but we weren’t going to stop in time. The side of the car grew closer and closer and I lost control of the bike as it swerved and wiggled, fishtailing across the pavement until the back tire went out and we toppled over, sliding three feet across the road until we spilled out onto the grassy edges. Carrie tucked and rolled while I was a little less graceful, my limbs getting thrown all over the place until I landed heavily on my stomach seeing stars and trying to pull air into my lungs.
Carrie was already on her knees and crawling toward me on the grass. Her jeans were torn up, her knees bloody, the elbows of her jacket ripped to shreds.
“Get the hell out of here,” I wheezed.
But she wasn’t listening. It took me a minute to realize what she was doing as she pulled the back of my jacket up. When she pulled my pistol out of my jeans, I knew immediately what was happening.
Carrie knelt in front of me and fired two rapid shots right at the fast-approaching motorcycles.
She took them both out with shots right to the chest.
They dumped their bikes in a shriek of metal on pavement. Their corpses flopped across the street. One was crushed under his bike. The SUV came to a screeching halt and slammed into reverse. The tires screeched as they applied too much gas to back up.
Carrie got unsteadily to her feet, held the gun straight in front of her, and pulled the trigger.
A shot fired right through the windshield. The car suddenly caught traction and went screaming backward until it crashed into the median on the other side of the road. The tires continued spinning and the engine revved as the dead driver’s foot remained on the pedal.
I watched in shock and bewilderment as Carrie limped across theroad, opened the driver’s door, took their foot off the gas, and turned the car off.
She tossed the keys into the field behind the car before racing back to me and grabbing my arm to haul me to my feet.
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
“No shit,” I breathed as I looked at the aftermath of her destruction. Three men dead, just like that. She hadn’t even batted an eye.
I jogged to the SUV.
“Jameson, we don’t have time!” Carrie hissed.
I peered in the open door at the dead man inside and recognized him instantly. He’d been there that rainy day on the tracks when we did the trade off to get Sam back from Bates.
Carrie bent down and struggled to lift my bike from the grass. “Help me!”
I hurried back to her, the truth of what had happened not lost on me. She’d just saved my life from a hit by Bates.
I heaved the bike back up. She swayed on her feet and I grabbed hold of her waist and pulled her close.
“Are you good to ride?” I asked.
She nodded but grimaced and pulled her helmet off. “I hit my head and it’s pressing into me.”
I checked her scalp. No blood. Feeling the inside of her helmet, I felt the damage of the impact. She must have taken a good hit to the head. I took my helmet off and put it on her before getting back in the saddle and struggling to start the bike.
“Come on,” I grated. “Come on!”
Carrie stuffed everything back in her bag. It had dumped all over the ground when we went down. She slung it over one arm and gripped my shoulders to climb on behind me.
