Page 51 of Her Keeper
Now it was my turn to snort. “You’re driving around with a gun in your glove compartment? That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Only if I get caught. What are you planning?”
“Get me close enough to shoot their tires out. Takes them out of the chase and saves your car the trouble of t-boning them.”
“I appreciate that,” he said drily.
“Thought you might. Once they crash, we deal with them. Get the girls to your house. And figure it out from there.”
Joseph nodded and swerved around another car, bringing us in directly behind the sedan that was chasing the girls. I wondered who the hell was in that sedan and what they wanted, and then I thought it was a shame we weren’t going to be able to find out. I’d like to get those guys in a closed room with good soundproofing and making them tell me exactly what they’d been doing.
And who they were working for.
I wanted to know if we were right about the Massimos, to start with.
Unfortunately, that couldn’t happen. We were going to have to kill these guys to get them out of the way, so the Massimo question was going to have to wait for another day.
The important thing was that we get the girls home and safe.
I rolled my window down and leaned out of it, a small voice in my head noting how stupid and dangerous it was to be leaning out of the window of a car going roughly 100 through traffic,
Not as dangerous as leaning out of a window while following a car that was likely to have people shooting at you, though. The quicker I took them out, the better. I crouched lower against the door, trying to make myself a small target—if they were even looking behind them—and tried to steady my hand. My aim was good, but I’d never been the best at shooting out of a moving car.
I just didn’t get to practice it that often.
My first shot took out one of the tires, though, and my second shot took out the back windshield of the sedan. The driver jerked the wheel in surprise and that sent the car into a spin, exaggerated when my next shot somehow managed to hit another of the tires. The resulting flats made it impossible for the driver to pull the car out of the spin and it flew toward the building on the other side of the street, somehow missing all the cars in its path as it went. It hit the building with a crash and Joseph hit the brakes, doing his best to get our car stopped. The moment we were close to it, I jumped out and ran for shelter, my gun sighted on the car we’d crashed and my eyes on the men inside.
Only one of them was still moving, and he was evidently feeling good enough to be taking shelter behind the totaled car. Several shots rang out and I ducked down behind the car I was hiding behind and counted his shots, wondering what sort of gun he was carrying. When he stopped shooting, I peeked around the headlights of the car, eyes narrowed against the glare of the day. Where was the bastard? What car had he...
He shot at me again while I was still looking, and that gave me his location.
It also pissed me the fuck off.
I took a deep breath, shouted for Joseph to lay down some cover for me, and darted to the next empty car. We were surrounded by cars that had people in them, though everyone had pulled over and were ducking down, and I didn’t want to end up hiding behind a car with some innocent bystander in it.
We were already going to be in a world of trouble. The last thing we needed was for there to be a dead civilian or two in addition.
When I looked around the corner of this car, I saw that the guy who’d been shooting had moved as well. He’d actually gotten closer to me.
Idiot.
He was now well within my range, and so busy looking for where I’d gone that he wasn’t bothering to hide the way he should. I lifted my gun, stared down the barrel, and aimed carefully. Head shot for this guy. I’d love to know what he thought he was doing, but I needed him dead more than I needed answers.
A quick squeeze of the trigger and it was done, his brains exploding all over the building behind him.
I ran for the car that had crashed, gun up and at the ready, but when I got there, I saw that the men in there were all well and truly dead. We didn’t have to worry about any of them.
We would, however, need a cleanup crew out here.
I snapped pictures of the men in the car, and then the one on the ground, and then ran for Joseph. “Let’s go,” I snapped. “We need someone out here to clean this up.”
“Already called them. They’ll be here in ten.”
Good. I didn’t know who those guys were, but we didn’t need their family finding them like this. There was already going to be a war. If we could delay it for a couple days, at the very least, rather than having them start it right now over some dead soldiers, it would give us more time to prepare.
The pictures I had might help us identify who those men were. And that would be even better.
When we went to war, I wanted to know who we were fighting.
