Page 34 of Deadly Hacker

“Get back, slut!” the man snarled at her, unwilling to accept defeat. “You’re finished!”

“He needs help! If you don’t let us go, he’ll die!” she shouted back.

He looked at Rad, limp on the sand, and a cruel smile darkened his face. “I would’ve made good money from him, but he’s useless to me now. Drop the knife, and I might still let you come back to Russia with me,” he commanded.

“Nope, never happening,” she hissed.

“You think you’re special,” he snapped back. “I’ll break you in. I’ll show you how to serve your man properly.”

He made a dash toward her, letting loose the taser. The electrodes spat out and landed on her bare skin, but only one made proper connection, sending a small jolt through her body. Emma Jean screamed as the voltage ravaged her nervous system. Her hands spasmed and the knife dropped to the ground. She stumbled to her knees and immediately began kicking up puffs of sand as she scrambled backward away from her attacker. He advanced on her, laughing maniacally at his small triumph.

As soon as he was close enough to aim the taser at her again, she took a mad jab at him with her foot, using her other leg and both arms to support herself in a sort of reverse plank. He howled and spun around, clutching at his injured leg. Emma Jean saw something shiny fall into the sand. At first, she thought it was the taser.

She was wrong. It was the ring of keys.

Emma Jean used her arms to propel herself up onto her feet, swiping the knife in the process. But her attacker was just as quick. He pounded his free hand down onto the keys to stop her from diving for them. His dark eyes flicked up at her just as she glared down at him. And then, she did the only thing her instincts could tell her to do.

She pounced, knife raised in the air. She landed next to him in the kicked-up sand, blinking away debris in her mad grab. She drove the pointy end of the knife right into the top of the man’s outstretched hand. There was a horrible crunch and he fell on his side, pulling his hand to his chest with bugged-out eyes.

Emma Jean clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from vomiting. The knife was wedged completely through his hand, the bloody tip poking out of his palm. She was almost as shocked as he was, but she had to push through it. She dived down and snatched the bloody keys from the sand, fumbling them a few times in her hurry to get away.

“Come back! Fuck you!” the man screeched, rolling around in the dirt. “I’ll end you!”

He reached for the taser beneath him, but only wailed with pain when he realized he no longer had a good hand left to grab it. Between his gunshot wounds and the knife wedged in his other hand, there was nothing for him to do.

Emma Jean ripped away from him, her shaky legs carrying her faster than ever before. She all but crumpled to the ground as she returned to Rad’s side. He wasn’t moving. Emma Jean’s vision swam with exhaustion and hot tears. She tugged at him, begging for him to wake up. She stumbled quickly to the RV for her clothes, then returned.

“Come on, Rad,” she muttered. “We have to get out of here. Please!”

His eyes fluttered a little, but he didn’t show any other sign of life. Emma Jean forcibly scooped his heavy, muscular arm up over her shoulder. It took a few tries to get it to stay in position, especially since Rad could only offer the faintest hint of his own strength to help. His fingertips pressed softly into her flesh, showing her he was still alive. But only barely.

She began the grueling, awkward trek out into the blazing desert, moving toward the impressive red rock formation a short distance away. She knew the gunman’s car had to be out there, just around the corner, almost within reach. She heard the slow but persistent rustle of her attacker dragging himself after her. If she had been alone, it would have been easy to outpace him. But she couldn’t let go of Rad. He needed her to save him, just as he had saved her. She pushed herself as hard as she could, the sweat and tears mingling on her face. She felt bruised, weak, and defeated. Every little glance down at Rad sent sirens off in her head. His situation was worsening by the second. If they couldn’t get out of this damn desert and back to civilization soon, Emma Jean knew she would lose him.

Her legs shook and buckled beneath her. Rad was so heavy. All those muscles turned him to dead weight, made more difficult by the unforgiving sun overhead. With every step, their attacker’s curse-tinged shouts were harder to make out, his words stolen by the wind. The blood was rushing in Emma Jean’s ears. Her heart pounded like a gavel in her chest. She could feel herself getting weaker, losing strength even as she gained determination.

“We’re so close,” she promised Rad. “Almost there.”

She held her breath as she dragged him through the sand around the corner of the rock formation. At first, the car was nowhere in sight. Then, she saw the golden-bronze hue of the vehicle’s paint, which blended in so well with the desert landscape, especially with whirls of sand tossed up by the breeze. As soon as her eyes landed on the car, a gust of hope propelled her forward. Still dragging Rad along with her, she closed the distance and clicked the unlock button several times. She threw open the passenger-side door and began shoving Rad’s enormous body into the seat. It wasn’t until she was sliding behind the wheel that she realized she was hyperventilating. The car’s windshield was blurry with sand and mud, the road was nearly invisible from this spot, and her trembling hands struggled to fit the keys in the ignition. When she noticed that it was a manual transmission, she burst into tears.

“I can’t; I don’t know how to do this,” Emma Jean cried, the stress of it all getting to her. She floundered with the stick shift for a minute or so, just racking her brain for advice. It had been years since someone had given her a lesson in driving a stick. She closed her eyes and tried to transport herself back to that moment.

Just Emma Jean and her eternally patient father in an abandoned parking lot, driving slow loops around the cones. That situation had been so vastly different from this one that it was difficult to put herself there again.

“Deep, slow breaths,” she mumbled to herself. Just like she taught her students.

After a few breaths, she could almost hear her father’s voice in her head, gently giving her instructions on how to drive this machine. When she opened her eyes, she saw their attacker limping toward them in the overhead mirror. Her stomach churned. He looked like a horror movie villain, dripping blood and wailing threats.

Time was up. She had to act now.

Emma Jean grabbed the stick shift and thrust it into first gear. For a moment, she considered putting the car in reverse and ramming into the crazed gunman. After what he’d put them through, it seemed a fair option. But she knew he was harmless to them now. He was injured beyond repair, not without a team of dedicated doctors. He could only move at snail’s pace, and she had stripped him of his ability to wield a weapon.

The car jerked forward. She tried to shift into second gear, but the car stalled out. Panic flooded her brain again.

“Damn it, Emma Jean, get it right!” she whimpered.

“You got this,” Rad mumbled. She whipped her head around to look at him, shocked to hear his voice. He had one eye cracked open, fixed on her. His face was white as a sheet. Blood was drying brick-red on his face. He was completely immobile, lying in the awkward twisted position she’d put him in when she forced him into the car.

Emma Jean reached over to touch his hand. It was ice-cold, but she could feel a pulse in his wrist. His fingers curled toward her touch, not making contact, but doing their best.

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