“Whose car is that?” Leilani demands.
Robert shakes his head and whispers more instructions to the driver. Leilani opens her purse and fumbles through it until her hand touches something cold and metal. She pulls the small gun from the purse and leans forward to show it to Robert.
“Let’s just play it by ear and see what happens,” she says.
“If they catch up to us, I’m not defenseless. I can do whatever it takes, okay?”
Robert unholsters his pistol and c.o.c.ks the trigger. He unbuckled his seatbelt and looked back at Leilani with grim determination.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Bamford, I won’t let anything happen to you,” he says.
Leilani bites her lip and looks at Gabrielle. Gabrielle’s face is pale with fear, and she’s shaking violently. Leilani unbuckles Gabrielle’s seatbelt and pushes her flat onto the backseat.
“Don’t be afraid, Gabby,” Leilani says.
“Just keep down and try not to move.”
Gabrielle looks up at Leilani with wide, fearful eyes and asks, “Leilani, is that a gun?”
“Yes, it is,” Leilani says.
“It may not look like much, but it’s strong. Don’t worry, and I’ll protect us.”
A loud blast of machine-gun fire shatters the tense silence. The car violently jerks as bullets spray the back and the sides. The glass in the windshield cracks and the metal sides of the car start to crumble. The town car is bulletproof, but it can’t withstand an endless attack. The driver turns sharply down an empty road, and Gabrielle and Leilani slam into the side of the car.
Leilani rubs her aching side and pushes Gabrielle off of her. With one hand, she grabs a handlebar above the window, and she squints through the cracked glass at the back of the car. She raises her gun, but she knows better than to fire—the damaged window is their only protection.
“Where the hell is you,” Robert shouts into his emergency walkie-talkie.
“Outflank them!” He glances over his shoulder and shouts at Gabrielle and Leilani, “Both of you get down!”
Robert climbs over the divider and joins Leilani and Gabrielle in the backseat. He pushes Gabrielle down onto the floor of the car and reaches for Leilani, but she slaps his arm away. Behind the town car, a second SUV has joined the first. Men with machine guns hang out the open windows and fire in the town car.
“Robert, don’t worry about me,” Leilani says, “I can take care of myself.”
She knows that her little pistol is no match against the men with machine guns. Waylen taught her how to shoot with perfect accuracy, but that’s little help in a firefight. She bites her lip and watches as Robert rolls down the right window. He sticks his hand out and squeezes off a round of shots. He aims for the SUV’s tires, and the bullets spark orange and yellow where they hit the concrete road.
Robert pulls his arm back inside and rolls up the window as the attackers return fire. Suddenly, the town car tilts dangerously to the left—the attackers have shot one of the tires. Leilani slams into Robert’s side, and the man groans loudly. A loud, high-pitched sound comes from somewhere in the car—it takes Leilani several moments to realize that Gabrielle is screaming.
“Gabby, hush,” Leilani says.
“I need to think.”
Robert fumbles in his pocket and pulls out another round of bullets. With quick, practiced movements, he reloads his gun and rolls down the window. He squeezes the trigger and aims at the nearest SUV. There’s a loud popping sound as the car’s front tire explodes. The SUV rolls onto its side and flips into a ditch on the side of the road. The other SUV speeds forward until it’s just inches away from the back of the town car.
“Drive faster,” Robert shouts.
The SUV bumps the back of the town car, and Leilani falls backward, landing on top of Gabrielle. She climbs back onto the leather seat and watches in horror as the SUV swerves to the left and then the right. They’re trying to run us off the road, she thinks.
Robert rolls down the window and aims for the SUV’s windshield. The bullets crack the bulletproof glass, but they don’t stop the SUV. There’s a sudden flash of machine-gun fire from the SUV, and Robert screams. A bullet slices his arm, and he drops the gun. He pulls his arm back into the car and collapses against the backseat. His face is pale with pain, and dark blood stains the sleeve of his shirt.
“Robert!” Leilani screams.
She rips the skirt of her dress, grateful that she’s wearing thin cotton. She wraps the fabric around Robert’s injured arm and ties it tightly to stop the bleeding. She looks out the back window and feels her heart skip a beat. The men are pointing a small rocket launcher out of the side of the SUV. She grits her teeth and c.o.c.ks her little gun.
“Open the sunroof,” she says.
“What are you going to do?” Robert asks.
“I’m going to shoot them,” she says with grim determination.
“No, that’s far too dangerous,” Robert says.
“Just get down. Reinforcements are on the way.”
“We don’t have time to wait for them,” Leilani says.
“They’ve got a rocket launcher; if they fire, we’re all dead.”
“Leilani, no!” Gabrielle screams from the floor.
Leilani looks down at Gabrielle and sees her fumbling in her backpack. Gabrielle pulls out a cellphone and taps out a message. Her hands are shaking so badly she almost drops the phone. Who is she texting at a time like this? Leilani wonders.
The sunroof slides open, and Leilani slowly stands up. She sticks her head and chest out of the window and almost collapsed at once; the car is moving so fast that the wind feels like a solid wall. She gasps for breath, but it’s almost impossible to breathe. She raises the gun and squints at the men holding the rocket launcher. She curls her finger around the trigger and braces herself against the recoil.
But before she can fire, the men with the rocket launcher disappear back into the SUV. They roll up the windows, and the SUV screeches to a quick stop. Leilani ducks back into the town car and watches the SUV get smaller and smaller in the rear window.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“They went to all that trouble to track us down, and then they just gave up—what happened?”
“Maybe it was just a warning,” Robert says.
“Maybe Jackson just wants us to know that he’s capable of killing you at any time.”
“Jackson?” Leilani asks.
“I know he’s angry at Waylen, but do you really think he’d go this far?”
Gabrielle’s phone beeps loudly, and she shakily pulls herself up from the backseat. She glances down at the screen, and her face goes even paler.
“What is it?” Leilani asks.
“It’s nothing,” Gabrielle says quickly, stuffing her phone back into her backpack.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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