All Jacked Up (8 page)

“And I’ve really wanted to.”

She gave a little faint smile at that, hearing his sarcasm through all the life and death stuff. “Okay,” she finally said, “I’ll make you a deal. Stop calling me names. Tell me what’s going on instead of asking for blind faith.”

“What’s your part of the deal?”

“I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

Jack exhaled heavily, coming around the car and motioning for her to drive. One of them had to the bigger man and at least he had the right equipment. Besides which it was way more comfortable in the tiny car when he didn’t have a steering wheel in his lap. “We have to keep moving,” he said as she started the car and pulled it onto the road. “Don’t want some overachiever catching up to us because we stayed in one place too long.”

“Um . . . I think it might be too late for that.”

Jack glanced over at her, found her looking in the rearview mirror, and twisted around to look out the back window. A black F-250 was coming up behind them. Big, fast. Lethal.

“Don’t panic, it’s probably just a guy with a lead foot.”

The truck hit their back bumper.

“And really bad depth perception?” Aubrey said as they lurched forward, her voice rising on each word so she finished in a near shriek.

“Okay, maybe it’s Corona.”

She looked over at him, the expression on her face saying there was no maybe about it.

“Step on it,” Jack said, just as she put her foot to the floor and the game little car sped off.

“Then what?” she asked, both of them knowing that they were already getting all four cylinders out of the Focus while the guy behind them had four to spare.

“You keep wanting to save the day,” Jack said, “now’s your chance.”

So much for letting her save the day, Aubrey thought. He outweighed her by a hundred pounds and her upper-body strength was gnatlike compared to his. She had no choice but to slam on the brakes and cut across the two-lane road, fighting the wheel as they hit the opposite shoulder and the back tires spun out on the gravel.

The guy behind the wheel of the F-250—a guy she was pretty sure wasn’t Laurel or Uncle Danny since they were a packaged set and this guy was solo—seemed to lean forward and grin. Or maybe it only felt like that with his engine roaring and his bumper coming right at them, face high.

“Jeez, make it easy on him, why don’t you?” she screamed at Jack, picturing her little blue Focus squashed flat with them in it, the police and the F-250 driver staring at the mess.
Honest, officer,
he’d say,
they made a U-turn right in front of me. There was nothing I could do.
The cops would shake their heads, think, woman driver, and buy it. The F-250 driver would go collect his bounty from Corona, and she’d never see her house or the Library of Congress again.

Like hell. She stomped on the gas, hunching over the steering wheel, willing the car to
move
. The back tires finally bit in and the car fishtailed its way onto the road. She could have sworn she felt the truck brush her back bumper as she scooted by it. She zoomed up the hill toward the parkway, pedal to the metal, gaze switching from the rearview mirror to the road ahead so fast it made her dizzy. Might as well concentrate on the road, she decided. Even if zooming felt faster than she’d ever gone, it wasn’t going to be a match for the F-250. “Maybe we should go someplace populated,” she yelled at Jack.

“We go screaming into town with him on our tail and we’ll have the cops on our backs, too.”

“We’re so far in the country they probably haven’t even heard of heroin, let alone Pablo Corona.”

“Corona’s mold. You can’t see him but he’s in every crack and crevice, just waiting for a little moisture and neglect. We show up at the local cop shop and before the day’s out and—”

“We’re moldy?”

“Exactly.”

“Stay away from similes, Jack, they don’t agree with you.”

“Huh?” He frowned over at her, shaking his head like she was the one making no sense. “Look, even if the cops aren’t crooked, the guy in the truck won’t have to break a sweat to take you out. By now my name’s on every wire from here to Mars. If I go into a cell I won’t be coming back out anytime soon, but there’s no reason to hold you. By the time they cut you loose Mario Andretti back there won’t have to rely on horsepower anymore.”

“Do you really think this guy is that on the ball?” She watched in the rearview mirror as he screeched to a halt behind her and executed an awkward back and forth sort of turnaround in the middle of the road. “He can’t even do a decent U turn.”

“I bet he can fire a gun pretty good,” Jack said.

Right, the guy was a hit man, not a stunt driver. And straight seemed to be no problem for him. Aubrey dug in her backpack, blind, feeling around and coming out with a box of thumbtacks. “Try these,” she said, handing them to Jack.

“These are the ones with the plastic tops.”

“And the pointy bottoms,” she said, her eyes on the rearview mirror, filling up fast with F-250 grille.

“They won’t sit upright in the road, and even if they did, they won’t do anything to those tires.”

She made the turn onto the parkway, not bothering to slow down long enough to check for traffic. The guy in the truck was more cautious, but he was on them again in seconds. Like mold. “Just throw them,” Aubrey yelled over the roar of six hundred horses bearing down on them.

Jack flipped open the box and stuck it out the window, giving a little upward flip with his hand that sent the thumbtacks sailing over the roof of the car. The F-250 didn’t even swerve.

“Let me guess”—Jack brandished her backpack—“your junk drawer?”

“I thought some of that stuff might come in handy.”

“Against me, which is why you lied about it.”

“Something like that,” Aubrey admitted.

“It worked,” Jack said, “this is getting fucking embarrassing. I could swear that guy is laughing at me.”

“That would’ve worked for McGyver.”

“Who?”

“TV detective, used whatever came to hand to get himself out of impossible situations.”

“Here’s what works for me.” Jack pulled his gun and pointed it over his shoulder.

“Not the back window.” The gas pedal was already on the floor, but she pushed harder anyway. “This is a lease car.”

“Yeah, like that’s gonna be a problem.”

“Think whatever you want, Jack, but I’m getting my life back, too.” And she meant it. “If you can come out of this and pick up where you left off, then so can I. Even if it means paying off the lease on this car, my mortgage, and the credit cards I maxed out . . . Okay, it’s not all rosy, but I refuse to let some crazed drug kingpin and a no-necked secret agent take away everything I love.”

“How about the guy in the F-250?”

“Not on your life.”

“I’d prefer you bet with yours.”

“Fine. Jump out anytime.”

Jack mumbled something, stuck the gun out of the window, and fired at the truck. The guy eased off and shot back. One of the Focus’s rear tires blew in a roar that was barely audible over a near-deafening shriek of sound. Aubrey noticed her throat burning before she realized it was her screaming as the car lurched up in the air and torqued sideways, taking them off the edge of the road.

“Cliff,” Jack yelled just as she saw the land drop away from his side of the car. She fought the wheel again, almost getting them on the pavement before the blown tire caught on the lip of blacktop and sent them careening over the edge.

It wasn’t a cliff, but not much better. Aubrey braced her hands on the steering wheel, pushing back against her seat every time she felt the rear end of the car bump over something and threaten to somersault. Ferns and undergrowth whipped by her windows, Jack was screaming instructions she didn’t hear, and a glance in the rearview mirror told her the guy in the truck was still cautious but adventuresome—or maybe not, considering he probably had four-wheel drive.

“He probably has four-wheel drive,” Jack shouted at her.

“You think?” Aubrey headed for the thickest part of the forest. There was no way they were getting back up that hill, so size was the only thing they had on their side.

“Head for the thicker trees.”

“Gee, I wish I’d thought of that.” She made a panicked left, the car scraping between a huge mossy oak and a deadfall that would have been waist high if they’d been standing next to it. The truck turned before the oak. Aubrey looked over and there he was, driving right next to her and a little uphill. She couldn’t see the driver and he couldn’t see her. Or shoot at her. But he could herd her into a big old tree and, yet again, make her death look like an accident. If anyone ever found them.

“There.”

Aubrey tore her eyes off the truck and looked to where Jack was pointing out his open window at a narrow space between two trees up ahead and a little down the hill, nothing but shadows visible beyond. “You sure?” she asked, already knowing there was no other choice.

She kept the car going sideways along the hill, watching the truck come closer and closer on her side, waiting for just the right second before she cut the wheel hard right and sent the car toward Jack’s opening. Gravity wrung a couple more miles per hour out of the Focus, but gravity was no match for the little rise they hit.

“Shit!” Jack yelled as they were launched into the air, heading straight for the trees. He pulled his head and arm back in the window just as they hit and his side of the car caved in. So did Aubrey’s, and the Focus seeming to hang between the two trees for a second before momentum carried them through with a screech of metal and a shower of leaves and tree bark. And a splash.

They plopped down in a small stream, just wide enough for the car to fit endwise between the banks. The water wasn’t deep enough to seep in the door bottoms, let alone kill the motor. Aubrey gunned the engine, searching the gloom, looking for a way out of there.

Jack reached over her and opened her door. “We only have one option,” he said, shoving her out into water so cold she barely had time to register it before her ankles began to ache.

Jack clambered out after her. “My door is jammed,” he said, reaching in to get his jacket and hers, tossing her backpack to her. He started off downstream, stopped after two steps and turned back. Sure enough, Aubrey was still dawdling by the car, bending over with her head stuck inside. “C’mon,” he yelled at her.

“Just a sec.” She dug all the change out of the console, turned the ignition off and dumped everything in her backpack. “Are you sure this is the only way?” she said, just as a bullet answered her question by peeling a strip of paint off the top of the car about an inch from her head.

She ducked around the door and ran full out, no idea how she was staying upright since her feet and ankles had gone completely numb. “Won’t it be faster if we stay in the car and drive down the stream until we find a way out?”

“There won’t be a way out of this in the car,” Jack said, his hand on the small of her back shoving her along.

They could hear the driver of the F-250 crashing through the underbrush along the riverbank. Another couple of shots boomed through the peaceful forest, thwacking through the tree branches behind them and setting birds screeching into the air.

“Yeah, this is a lot better,” Aubrey huffed out, cold and wet to her waist already. “Now I know how the ducks in the shooting arcades feel.”

“Get your ass in gear or you’ll get to know how the dead ones feel.”

Aubrey gave him a dirty look. He didn’t see it, but there wasn’t enough oxygen getting to her brain to come up with a snappy retort, let alone voice it with her teeth chattering. Interestingly enough, it was her lack of response that got his attention.

He peeked over her shoulder, got a good look at her face and said, “We have to get out of this.”

Amen to that, Aubrey thought, looking at the riverbank and coming to a dismal conclusion.

“There’s too much undergrowth for us to climb out without exposing ourselves,” Jack said. He took his hand off the small of her back and wrapped it around her wrist, pulling her along behind him while he searched the opposite bank for a quick exit. Not finding one. “We’ll have to keep going and hope the water doesn’t get any deep—”

He lurched forward suddenly, his hand tightening around her wrist before the water closed over his head. If he’d expected her to serve as some sort of lifeline, he was sadly mistaken. Instead of Jack popping back up, Aubrey was yanked off her feet and swept into the current. His weight and her wet clothing took her under water before she could close her mouth and eyes.

For once she was thankful for Jack’s manhandling ways, since all the breath whooshed out of her and she started to sink like a stone before he jerked her back up. She hit the surface, wheezing and shaking uncontrollably, thirty-four-degree water from mountain snow melt sucking all the energy from her. Jack was bobbing a foot or so away. He turned and met her eyes just as she realized what that sound was up ahead. And why the current had suddenly picked up speed.

“Hey, knock it off, Uncle Danny.”

Uncle Danny, aka Daniel Caparelli, aka Danny Caps, and currently up to his receding hairline in trouble, gave his nephew another shove, this one harder. “Drag your lazy ass off the bed and get dressed. We need to get moving.”

“Ow, damn it, that really hurt.” Carlo Caparelli, aka the dumb-ass that had gotten them into trouble, stated the obvious. He rolled cautiously off the narrow motel bed, groaning and coming up short, one leg bent at the knee like a lame horse, the other taking all his weight. “In case you forgot, I was shot last night.”

“In case you forgot, we’re gonna be dead if we don’t get that beanpole of a librarian. Besides, it was just rock salt, candy ass.”

“That don’t make it hurt any less.”

Danny rolled his eyes but he held his tongue. The kid was up and putting on his clothes. He was taking his sweet time about it, limping and groaning like he was at death’s door, but he was doing it.

“How’re we gonna get her now that she’s got that guy with her? He seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Yeah,” Danny said, thinking about the setup he’d found, matches, emery boards. If they hadn’t gone into the house before it had a chance to fill up with gas, they’d be dead. Just the thought of how close they’d come made every orifice on his body slam shut. “It won’t matter. Sooner or later he’ll let his guard down, or make a mistake, or just get tired.”

Danny knew tired, sick and tired as a matter of fact. The mob wasn’t what it used to be, what with the spics and Russkis taking over. They didn’t know nothin’, running around killing people right and left, hiring dumbshit kids like Carlo, kids with nothing between their ears but mouth. Which left the veterans like him to clean up the mess. And veterans, in this business, were few and far between.

“Okay, I’m up already, where are we going?”