The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) (7 page)

“Where are you going to find a distraction that big?” I asked, feeling a bit uneasy. I had an idea where this was going.

“It’s going to have to be completely bonkers, Rona
n
—
s
omething loud and maybe a little dangerous and just a whole lot insane.” Dawkins smiled at me and threw an arm around my shoulders. “Which is to say, you’re the perfect man for the job.”

C
H
A
PT
E
R
8
:

WHEELS OF MISFORTUNE

I
’d never driven a car before, but Dawkins assured me it was easy. “A car like this one,” he said, pointing to the orange Cadillac, “practically drives itself!”

“It doesn’t have any back wheels,” I pointed out.

He waved his hands as though this were no big deal and yanked open the Cadillac’s door. “It’s a front-wheel drive.”

I thought of Greta out there, handcuffed and alone. “Okay,” I said, sliding into the driver’s seat and snapping on the seat belt.

“First, you’re going to turn that key there. That starts the engine.”

“I said I haven’t driven before. I didn’t say I was stupid.”

“Then you put your foot on the brak
e
—
t
hat’s the wide center peda
l
—
a
nd you’re going to move the gearshif
t
—
t
his knob her
e
—
f
rom
P
to
D
. The
D
stands for
drive
. At that point, you’re good to go.”

The world through the dirty windshield was streaky and faraway. “I can’t really see.”

“What’s to see? It’s a truck-stop parking lot.” Nonetheless, Dawkins spat on the glass and rubbed it with the sleeve of his leather jacke
t
—
s
mearing the dirt but clearing some space on the glass.

“So then I give it a little gas?”

“You’re going to need to give it a
lot
of gas. Really stomp on the pedal. Just go for broke.”

“Key, brake,
D
, gas pedal. Got it.” I played through it in my head.

“Just aim straight ahead, past that line of cars at the gas pumps and right to the open road beyond. Trust me, before you even get close, I’ll have reached the SUV, taken out that bald number, and freed Greta. Then she and I will come fetch you.”

I shook my head. “That’s the stupides
t
—
”

He tossed the black leather satchel onto the seat beside me. “Don’t forget to bring that when you ditch the car. It’s got our stuff.” He cradled the mechanic’s creeper in his arms. “Remember,
you’re
the distraction. So honk the horn the entire time. Yell like a crazy person if you want! We want them looking at
you
, the idiot driving a car without tires. Not at
me
, the guy skating in from the loading dock.”

With that, he stooped over and dashed outside, back the way we’d come. From the angle the Cadillac was facing, I couldn’t really see the SUV, but that was probably for the best. I pulled the door shut, locked it, and turned the key in the ignition.

The car engine must have been bi
g
—
r
eally big. It made a world of noise.

I was so startled that it took me a few seconds to remember what I was doing.

As I shifted into drive, there was a pounding on the window: I screamed and let my foot up. The car rocked forward and the engine died.

Beside the driver’s side window was Albie. “You get out of that vehicle
right now
, young ma
n
—
d
o you hear me?” He jiggled the door handle.

I smiled, shrugged, and turned the ignition key again. This time I knew what to do: I kept my foot on the brake, shifted gears, then noticed Albie picking up the tire iron Dawkins had discarded. He raised it up like he was going to swing it right through the windshield.

I jammed my foot so hard against the gas pedal my leg went numb.

The front tires spun, throwing up a smoky cloud of burning rubber. For a moment, nothing happened. Then something seemed to catch, and the Cadillac leaped forward off the jacks.

I yelled in terrified surpris
e
—
a
nd a little bit of excitement, to be honest. I was driving!

Until, that is, the car’s back end crashed down on the pavement.

I hope I never find out what a car wreck sounds like, but I imagine it sounds a lot like the earsplitting screech the Caddy made as it flopped into the parking lot.

Albie slammed his fist against the roof and cried out, “Stop! Please, stop! You’re ruining a classic!”

But there was no going back. I punched the gas again.

The car barely moved.

I stood on the pedal with both feet to push it as hard as I could. The engine revved, whining louder and louder until finally the car began dragging itself forward. It was like a thousand metal fingernails scraping down hundreds of chalkboards.

It moved in jerks and spasms, like a dying animal. The back rims caught on something, the front tires spun and gray clouds of smoke obscured the windshield, then suddenly the car surged forward, fat showers of sparks fanning up behind me. After twenty feet of this, Albie gave up and watched, peeking between his fingers.

Me, I kept my leg stiff against the gas, my shoulders braced against the backrest, and looked right.

There was no sign of Dawkins. Everyone else was motionless, staring at the Cadillac: Truckers at the diesel pumps, parents with their kids, the gas station attendants in their pale-blue work shirts, and Greta and Mr. Clean. The SUV was more than a hundred yards away, parked between the fueling stations, but I could see their faces easily. Which meant, I guess, they could totally make out my face, too.

Mr. Clean recognized me and began walking my way,
his arm outstretched, aiming the blunt end of the Tesla gun.

I didn’t hear the first shot because the noise of the metal undercarriage scraping the concrete was so loud.

But I
saw
it.

A jagged beam of bright-purple electricity stretched through the air from the gun, crackling past the front of the Caddy’s grill like a sideways lightning bolt. It left a bright afterimage in my vision.

I blinked then looked back in time to see Mr. Clean aim again. Right at my face.

I ducked. The inside of the car filled with light and a smell like burnt wiring, and all the hair on my arms and head stood on end. A smoking hole as large as a grapefruit appeared in the passenger side window.

Without lifting my foot from the gas, I slid all the way down in the car seat. Now I couldn’t see where I was going. The car kept up its lurch-and-stop progress across the lot, and I peeked up above the door just as Mr. Clean, still walking my way, lifted the weapon for a third shot.

This time the bolt of electricity came sweeping across the hood, sawing through the space where my head would have been if I’d been sitting up. The windshield shattered, showering me with little cubes of safety glass, and where the bolt hit metal, it threw off white-hot sparks.

I screamed, sure I was going to die.

The Caddy was too slow. There was no way I was going to get away from Mr. Clean and his blonde boss, not without back wheels.

I risked another glimpse over the door and saw a dark blur behind the gunman: Dawkins on the mechanic’s creeper, speeding across the open lot to the SUV.

And then I had to duck again.

Tendrils of lightning crackled around the Cadillac’s passenger side. Thankfully, the massive door held against whatever the Tesla gun threw out.

The next time I looked, I saw Dawkins and Greta pile out of the SUV. Dawkins grabbed the mechanic’s creeper, threw it to the ground, and then leaped atop it like a skateboarder.

He rode it straight into Mr. Clean’s back, and they both went down. Greta ran past them, toward the Cadillac, waving her arms and shouting.

I turned off the ignition in time to hear her say,
“
—
o
h my god turn off the car before you set everything on fire!”

I pulled the strap of the satchel over my head and pushed open the door.

The Caddie had left a trail of deep gouges in the pavement, and wide streaks of oil and gasoline. They stretched all the way to the garage, where Albie was still standing, looking dumbstruck, the tire iron dangling from his limp hand. I had driven less than a hundred feet.

“Sorry!” I shouted to him.

Greta ran up, panting. “Are you out of your mind? What kind of fool drives a car with no back tires?”

There was a scorched hole through the door where the bolt of energy from the Tesla gun had struck. Another minute and it would have cut all the way through.

“Let’s grab Dawkins and get out of here,” I said.

But he and Mr. Clean weren’t done with each other.

Dawkins was sitting on Mr. Clean’s chest and throwing punches, but the guy took them in stride. He curled his legs up, hooked a knee around Dawkins’ shoulder, and with a twist, wrenched him off.

“We’ve got to get that gun,” Greta said, running toward something glimmering on the pavement.

She reached it just as Mr. Clean and Dawkins rolled right up to where the truck-stop entrance met the ramp from the highway.

I took a quick glance around for Blondie and Slicked-Back Hair, and that’s when I saw what was headed our way.

“Hey!” I shouted at Greta as I ran toward her. But she wasn’t listening.

Greta scooped up the Tesla gun and took a stance like a cop in a movi
e
—
f
eet wide, both hands around the weapon, arms locked. “Stop
now
or I’ll shoot!”

“Greta!” I grabbed her collar in my fist and yanked her toward me, hard.

A wall of wind slammed us backward against the pavement as a blue eighteen-wheeler semitrailer skidded past, its brakes locked. In its wake was a cloud of smoke thrown up by the skid.

We sat on the concrete, coughing.

“What happened?” Greta asked. She tucked the Tesla gun into her jeans, pulled her shirt down, and staggered to her feet. Then she helped me up.

“Dawkins!” I called out. “Jack!” I waved the smoke away, but there was nothing to see: just an enormous trailer truck in the middle of the gas station off-ramp.

The driver had stopped his vehicle, but only after it had skidded over the spot where Dawkins and Mr. Clean had been fighting. Had they escaped? Rolled to the other side, maybe? I jogged alongside the wheels, shouting, “Jack? Jack?”

Greta followed. “They got away, right? Ronan, tell me they weren’t there whe
n
—
”
And then she shrieked and clutched my arm.

I saw what she was looking at.

An arm was sticking out from beneath a set of four giant tires, the leather jacket unmistakable, the fingers of the hand relaxed, and open. The wheels rested nearly flat on the pavement. Anyone underneath them wouldn’t be getting up ever again.

We’d found Dawkins.

C
H
A
PT
E
R
9
:

GRAND THEFT AUTO

I
don’t know how long we stood there, staring. Long enough that the big rig driver, a portly man with
muttonchop whiskers, swung down out of his cab and came to stand beside us. “They were in the
roa
d
!” he kept saying.

“We have to get out of here,” Greta said, dragging me backward by the hood of my sweatshirt. “He’s gone, Ronan. We can’t help him.”

“But.…” I couldn’t stop staring at Dawkins’ empty hand. I felt sickened knowing that he was under those wheels, sure, but that was only part of it. Mostly, what I felt was alone. The only connection I’d had to my parents had been this crazy kid with the weird accent, and now he was gone.

“I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“No, Ronan, you’re not,” Greta said, yanking my arm again. “You are going to come with me.”

She pulled me past a bunch of senior citizens in fanny packs and sun visors who were piling out of a turquoise tour bus and joining a thick ring of onlookers. In the commotion, everyone seemed to have forgotten about the Cadillac.

“Keep edging back,” Greta said quietly beside me. “We’ll disappear in the crowd.”

“There they are!” someone said. “Take them, Mr. Four.”

A hand caught my right arm and twisted it back so hard that I yelped. I found myself face-to-face with Slicked-Back Hair.

Mr. Four, I guessed.

He was clean-shaven, his face weirdly slack-jawed and waxy looking. I couldn’t tell how old he was. Definitely past thirty.

He stared at me, unblinking, his eyes full of nothin
g
—
n
ot hatred, not satisfaction at having caught me, just emptiness. I felt cold metal as he snapped handcuffs onto my wrists.

Next to him was Blondie. Her slow smile made my mouth go dry. “Children, we’re going to have to take you in for questioning.” She held up her badge again, and the people around us cleared a space. “There’s nothing to see here,” she announced. “Just two officers of the law apprehending a couple of young criminals.”

“Let
go
of me,” Greta snapped, twisting and trying to break the woman’s grip.

The woman smacked the back of Greta’s head with her open palm, then plucked the Tesla gun out from under her shirt, saying, “Aha!”

Around us, the crowd murmured.

Spinning Greta around, Blondie cuffed her, too, and pushed her toward the SUV. Mr. Four followed suit, planting his hand between my shoulder blades and shoving so hard that I thought I was going to fall flat on my face.

Then I heard something strange: applause. The crowd around us was
clapping
. Just a few people at first, but then everyone joined in. And why? Because they believed what the blonde woman had told them: that we were criminals. For some reason, I felt ashamed. I dropped my head as we crossed the parking lot.

But Greta wasn’t so easily embarrassed. “Are you people kidding me? We’re being kidnapped, you idiot
s
—
o
w
!” The woman smacked Greta again, and she fell to her knees on the hot pavement. Without another word, Greta used her cuffed hands to shove herself back up. She kept her head held high.

Greta was right: We weren’t criminals. The people around us had no idea what was going on. “We’ve done nothing wrong!” I sai
d
—
a
nd got a sharp jab at the back of my head from Mr. Four.

And then we’d reached the SUV. Mr. Four and the woman pushed Greta in first, me right after. They opened our cuffs and then locked them around the armrests in the backseat.

“While we see to a few things,” the woman told us, “you will be silent and will draw no attention to yourselves. Or there will be consequences.”

Mr. Four went to the rear of the SUV and dug out a couple of long black zippered plastic bags, like the sort people carry suits in. He followed the woman back across the broad parking lot to the truck.

After a minute, the big rig slowly moved backward. Several minutes after that, Mr. Four returned, hunched beneath the weight of those two long black bags, one slung over each shoulder. They looked…full. Of something.

With a grunt, he heaved the bags into the SUV. Then he closed the back door. We were next. He rattled the chains on our cuffs to see if we were still locked up tight.

Without a word, he turned and headed back into the crowd.

“Was that what I think it was?” I asked, picturing the bags in the back and feeling queasy.

“I don’t even want to know,” Greta said. Suddenly her cuff was swinging loose on her arm. “But why don’t we get away from here before they come back and show us.”

“Wh
a
—
h
ey, how’d you do that?” I asked, but then answered myself, “Oh, let me guess: Your dad’
s
—
”

“Right. He taught me how to pick locks. These are standard-issue Peerless cuffs, an old-school brand that’s a total cakewalk if you know what you’re doing. Which I do.” Clenched in her fingers was a crooked bit of wire that looked like one of the pins that kept her mess of red hair in place.

“Unlock me, too!”

“No time.” She climbed forward between the front seats and slid behind the wheel like she did this sort of thing every day. “We have to get out of here. Those dumb jerks are so sure of themselves that they left the keys.” She snapped the seat belt, adjusted the mirror, and gently cranked the ignition. “Pull that door shut.”

I slid the side door closed with my free hand as the engine came to life with a quiet rumble. In a moment, Greta had the SUV moving.

“Your dad taught you how to drive, too?” I asked in disbelief, but she didn’t answer. She nudged the gas and soon the SUV was rolling away like we had just stopped to fuel up and now were getting back on the road.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I gasped for air.

“You all right back there?” Greta asked, her eyes on the road.

“I can’t believe this,” I said. “Are we really getting away?”

“I hope so,” Greta said, glancing into the rearview mirror and biting her lip. “Unless they have…wow.”

I twisted and looked over my shoulder. Through the smoky back window of the SUV, I could see the truck stop dwindling, getting smaller behind us. And I could see something else: the blonde woman and Mr. Four running after us, keeping pace with the SUV.

“They’re chasing us!” I shouted. “You have to go faster!”

When we reached the on-ramp, the blonde woman stopped. She stared after us, her hands on her hips.

Mr. Four didn’t slow down at all.

He ran with long loping strides. There were cars leaving the truck stop that he passed in a blur, dodging them like they weren’t moving. When he came upon two cars driving side by side, he just hurdled them, sailing through the air and landing in stride. He kept coming.

“How can he move like that?” Greta asked. “What are these people?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How fast can you push this thing?”

“I just hit thirty miles an hour,” she said. “That’s the speed limit for the on-ramp.”

“Forget the speed limit,” I said. “We need to lose this guy!”

He was moving faster than the traffic, bouncing from foot to foot, never slowing.

Greta punched the gas.

The SUV seemed to gather itself for a split second before surging forward. Through the rear window, I could see Mr. Four get smaller and smaller, until he was just a dot at the edge of the on-ramp.

We drove in silence for a minute.

“Who
are
those people?” Greta asked. “And why are they so hot to get you?” Her eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror. “I mean, nothing personal, Ronan, but you’re kind of an idiot.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, smirking. “Dawkins never got a chance to explain them to me. And neither did my mom.” I knuckled my eyes with my free hand and hoped that the people who took my dad weren’t anything like this woman and her crew. “I don’t know anything more than you do.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “My dad will help us. Once we find a phone.”

“Didn’t you already call him?” I asked. “Back at the truck stop?”

“He didn’t answer. I left a message, but…” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Let’s just concentrate on getting as far away from those people as possible. In a couple of hours we’ll be at my dad’s place and this nightmare will be over.” She smiled anxiously at me in the rearview.

I watched as a pair of ambulances roared past in the opposite lane, their sirens blaring.

They were too late, I knew. I thought of poor Dawkins squished under a semi like a bug under a boot and shuddered.

“We got away, Ronan,” Greta said, her voice full of forced brightness. “We’re safe now.”

“Sure.” I said, clanking my handcuffs. “We’re safe.”

I didn’t believe it for a minute.