“Maybe it’s the driver, not the car. Look out!” Torq grabbed the steering wheel and took us around a large saguaro.
“Sorry!” So narrowly averting a collision and being impaled on a cactus rattled me, though I would have thought I’d plumbed the depths of fear hours ago.
“Just keep your eyes on the road. This was the fastest beast in the garage.” He kept looking in the rearview mirror, preparing to fire if necessary.
“Sure thing,” I said. “But where’s the road?”
He grinned.
Our trip around the cactus slowed us down. Emma gained on us, coming up alongside us on the left.
“Damn!” Torq said. “She’s going to ram us. The most effective place to ram a car is the left rear bumper. Brace yourself. And if the airbag deploys, ignore it. It’ll deflate in a second. It’ll be hot in your lap, but it won’t disable the vehicle.”
“Aren’t you going to shoot her or something?”
“Just—”
Wham!
My head snapped forward and backward from the impact. Max bounced around in the back. I screamed. Torq grabbed the wheel and straightened us out. “Foot back on the gas,” he yelled.
Emma fell back.
“Whoohoo! We did it. We lost her.” I peered into the rearview mirror. I grinned, spirits soaring. “We left Emma in the dirt.”
“Don’t get cocky, kid. She’s not done yet.” Torq looked back over his shoulder. “She’s back. She’s riding in your blind spot, preparing to ambush us.”
“What? I knew I should have adjusted the mirrors! Then I wouldn’t have any blind spots!” I craned around to get a peek at Emma. “Well, don’t just sit there, shoot her!”
“I never realized you were so bloodthirsty.” Torq smiled.
“That bitch has tried to kill us too many times this week. I’m losing patience with her.”
“Our best bet is to outmaneuver her. She’s raising her gun.” Torq took aim right back at her, positioning his gun in the window behind me, trying to get a clear shot at Emma. “In a moment, she’ll let loose between twenty and thirty rounds of quick semiautomatic fire. And she’s accurate as hell, a prize markswoman. Once she starts firing, we have two options—slam on the brakes or perform the bootlegger. I say go for the bootlegger.”
“But we’ll be going in the wrong direction then.”
Zing! Emma hit my side mirror with her first shot. A volley erupted, just like Torq predicted. Torq was firing back, yelling instructions for the bootlegger.
“Foot off the gas.”
I removed my foot, trying to cover my head and duck as I did. “I hate this! I don’t like being shot at.”
“Nobody does, Dom,” Torq answered calmly. The car veered wildly.
“Spin the wheel! Pull the emergency brake.” Torq kept firing.
“Where’s the emergency brake? Is it one of those floor buttons? I can’t find it.” I was looking around wildly. “I’m not familiar with this car! Is it American or Japanese?”
“It’s German,” Torq said through clenched teeth and pulled a lever between the seats.
The car spun around perfectly, wet sand flying in all directions.
Something was wrong with Torq. I turned to look at him and noticed he was clutching his arm. “You’re hit, aren’t you? That bitch got you.” My voice pitched up several octaves with worry. I felt woozy just thinking about it.
“Don’t panic, Dom. We can’t afford panic right now. Release the emergency brake and punch it! We need to fly. Take us out into the open desert. Then we’ll loop back around and head for the bridge. Let’s hope to hell we get there before Emma or the water does.” He reached under the seat for a first-aid kit as he spoke, still clutching his arm.
“How bad is it?” I steered according to Torq’s directions, afraid to look at his arm. “Should I pull over?”
“Hell, no! It’s just a flesh wound. She barely grazed my arm. It’ll bleed like hell for a few minutes until I can get it bandaged. Then I’ll be fine.”
I didn’t believe him. “Did you hit the bitch?” Cold anger, when it erupts, is a very scary thing. In that moment, I lost sight of Emma as a person and wanted her dead as a Dickensian doornail.
“I doubt it.” Somehow Torq managed to single-handedly apply a bandage, give directions, and reload his weapon as I drove.
A few minutes later, the bridge came into sight. So did a car blocking the bridge entrance.
“Good, the bridge is intact.” Torq sounded calm and confident.
“And what about that car?” Okay, so I sounded shrill. I think I had a right.
“A one-car roadblock. No problem,” Torq said.
I gave him a “you’re so crazy” look. “We didn’t cover roadblocks in class. Why don’t I pull over and let you drive?” I tried to match his calm, but I was already white-knuckling the steering wheel.
“Worried about those insurance rates again?”
If he was trying to goad me into action, it wasn’t working. “No, seriously, I can’t ram another car. It’s not in my nature. I’m basically conflict-averse—”
“This from the woman who was screaming for blood a minute ago?” He paused and sighed heavily. “Dom, I can’t drive with this arm and ride shotgun at the same time. I’ll talk you through it.”
I did my own big shoulder-heaving sigh, which Torq took for acquiescence.
“Put on your high beams. Let’s blind the bitch. Aim for the rear fender between the rear wheel and the bumper. Hit at an angle and keep the accelerator floored through the collision. No matter how badly the FAV is damaged, keep going. Get us across that bridge.”
Torq braced his arm and winced, ready to take a shot at Emma as we passed by. “This time, the airbags will almost certainly deploy. Be ready.”
We were closing the gap quickly.
I looked but didn’t see Emma anywhere. I tuned everything else out and focused on my target area, holding the wheel in a death grip.
We were almost there. Seconds to impact. I braced myself, repeating Torq’s instructions, flooring the gas pedal. Aiming … aiming. At the last second, I closed my eyes and plowed into the left rear quarter panel of Emma’s vehicle.
Metal screeched against metal. My foot lost the gas pedal. I felt the whiplash of the impact and my airbag deployed. Unable to see, I held the wheel straight, found the gas pedal again and punched it. We were either going across that bridge or into the river with gusto.
Just as Torq had promised, the airbag deflated into my lap. Emma’s car spun out of the way. We sailed onto the bridge. I was scared to the very edge of panic. The rain pelted down so hard that even with my wipers on high I was having trouble seeing through the flood on the windshield. We could have actually been underwater for all I knew. I wondered briefly if I’d been mistaken and we’d taken a wrong turn into the river.
In my rearview mirror, I saw Emma appear from behind a cactus and jump into the car. Seconds later, she was barreling across the bridge after us. I headed straight into open desert. Behind us, Emma had cleared the bridge.
Suddenly, up ahead, a pair of headlights appeared.
“It’s Pussy!” Torq said. When I gave him a questioning look, he grinned. “Didn’t I tell you? She’s my colleague, my cohort in crime. A P.I. Max’s brother hired to protect him.”
“I think you left that part out,” I said, feeling suddenly jealous and a bit guilty for making fun of Pussy. The world was certainly on its head when I was trying to kill Emma and glad to see Pussy. “Is she just a cohort or a co-cavort?”
Torq grinned that sexy grin of his again. “Jealous?”
Before I could think up one of my infamous boring retorts, another pair of headlights appeared. And another. Overhead, I heard the roar of a chopper as it led the charge toward us.
“Look. Pussy called in reinforcements. Good girl,” Torq said.
“Who are they?”
“FBI. Local law enforcement.”
Behind us, Emma swerved and headed ba
ck toward the river.
I yanked on the steering wheel and gunned after her.
Chapter Twenty-three
Torq grabbed the wheel and spun us away from the river. “Let her go. She’ll never make it. The water’s too deep.”
Before our eyes, Emma’s car shot into the raging water at full speed, as if extreme mphs would fly her to the far bank.
“Suicide,” Torq whispered under his breath.
Emma charged partway into the river before the car lost its grounding and began to float. Guiltily, I was half-hoping she’d make it. Just disappear and start a fresh, new life. Use her spy camp skills to create the perfect alias and cover life.
No such luck. In just a couple of seconds, the current slurped the FAV into the heart of the raging, bubbling torrent. The FAV did several 360s in the water before a wall of water toppled it end-over-end like a scale model in a Bond movie. It sank without fanfare, disappearing from sight into the murky water.
I stared hard in the dark, looking for a figure to emerge from the car. Looking for Emma with a sick feeling in my stomach and a profound sadness for her choice.
“Do you think she made it?” I asked stupidly, hopefully, fearfully.
“Slow her down and stop,” Torq said, avoiding an answer. “Let’s get back to civilization.” Torq picked up a two-way radio and began communicating with Pussy and the other rescue vehicles. He reached over and squeezed my hand as he barked commands to the others. In seconds we were surrounded by cops and agents of all variety and badge.
Torq jumped out of the FAV. “Stay here.”
I’d had enough high-performance driving for one night. Torq could take over. I slid over to the passenger seat.
He stood in the rain, talking with the law enforcement boys for several minutes before he ran back to the FAV and jumped into the driver’s seat. “Some of the boys are headed downriver to make sure Emma didn’t somehow manage to escape.” He gave me a look probably meant to convey hope. He wasn’t as unemotional as he’d have people believe.
“The chopper’s going to land in the open area up ahead. They’d like to ask you some questions and take you and Max to the hospital for observation.”
“What are my options?” I wasn’t in the mood to be questioned and, though the thought of a helicopter ride was tempting, I much preferred being with Torq.
“You could drive back with me.”
I bit my lip and nodded toward his arm. “Maybe you need to be in the chopper.”
“Nah,” he said and grinned.
“Okay, I’ll stay with you.” I grinned back.
“Let’s go let ‘em know they can take Max and the chopper home.” Torq revved up the engine and put her in gear.
“Are you sure you can drive?” I asked, worried about his arm.
“Can I drive?” He snorted and took off toward the chopper, showing how fast he could accelerate just to prove a point. As soon as we stopped, Torq jumped out and went to talk to the cops and the chopper crew. The crew ran over to the FAV with a stretcher, loaded Max in, and took him away.
A few minutes later, I watched as Torq returned to the FAV in the pouring rain, his shirt molded to his chest, his hair slicked to his head, curling at collar length, a big old bandage around his upper left arm. He was walking his cocky, badass walk and looking a lot like he had when I first saw him, only wetter. There was something hot and sexy about having just defeated death together. Maybe that’s why Bond always gets the girl at the end.
“You going to be all right?” Torq asked as he climbed into the driver’s seat next to me. He was asking about more than my physical condition. My sanity seemed to be at stake.
“Define ‘all right.'” I couldn’t really say I was unchanged, or at that moment, totally steady. But I’d found an inner strength I hadn’t known existed. That was enough for now.
“Should I insist you go in the chopper?” His voice was soft, sultry, concerned, but somehow still begged me to refuse. His gaze slid to the tank top molded to my form.
I shook my head no. “I’ll be fine. You’re the guy with the gunshot wound.”
He shrugged and nodded at the cadre of vehicles around us as we watched the chopper take off. “We’re going to caravan back.”
Torq put his good arm around me and pulled out behind the rest of the law enforcement vehicles, driving with his bum arm. The rain still poured down, but the lightning had subsided. I pushed thoughts of Emma aside, deciding to dwell on the positives and ponder the dark stuff later.
“So I guess I win,” I said, cuddling into him like I belonged there.
“Win?” he said.
“I thwarted the kidnapping, didn’t I? A real kidnapping. Not to mention, I saved your ass—”
“My ass? Who showed up with the FAV at the key moment?”
“Yeah, but I stayed alive until you finally made it. And just so you know, I was trying to escape and warn you.”
He shook his head, but he was grinning.
“Plus I did all that fine high-performance driving. I get bonus points for that. I get to go down in the annals of FSC, right?”
“Yeah. Sure. Too bad there’s no prize money, Jenna.” He made my name sound sexy.
“Okay, so you’ve outed me.” I paused. “What about you? Who is the real you? And after all this excitement, will you be able to stand another boring camp session, or will you return to the real spook life?”
He smiled at me, looking a bit sheepish. “Actually, I am still a bit of a spook. I run my own consulting firm. I’m a corporate spy. I do a session or two for FSC for fun from time to time.”
“Oh.” I took a minute to digest that info. He was certainly a man of mystery. I stared at him hard, willing him to say more, but he remained mute. I changed the subject. “How did you find me?”
“Pussy sent out an SOS when Max went to the can and didn’t return. I knew Emma was really Susan. I’d been keeping my eye on her. But I had nothing on her. She was pretty clean in her hit attempts.”
I digested that info.
“As soon as Pussy contacted us, I called and told Rock and Fry what I suspected. Pussy checked the garage and found an FAV missing. The FAVs are all equipped with tracking devices. Led me right to you.”
I nodded.
He gave my shoulders a squeeze. “Are we good?”
“Well …” I paused, trying to phrase my question. “You still have some explaining to do. Like why you stole my camera?”
“Oh, that,” he said as if breaking into and entering my room was no big deal. “I took it for your protection. I suspected someone of taking a shot at us during the opening car explosion. I was worried that someone might not like you having those photos.” He gave me another playful squeeze. “I was going to give it back. Honest.”
I pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You bugged my room using an FSC pen, too.”
“Yep.” He didn’t sound the least bit sorry, either. “To keep on eye on both you and Susan. I figured Susan would check for bugs in her room, but not yours. You threw me off for a few when you stashed it in Wade’s room.” He smiled as if he was impressed. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. I’m guessing Torq isn’t your real name?”
“Good guess.”
“So?” I spoke with a leading-question intonation. “'So,’ what?”
“You’re not going to tell me your name?” I fell back on Mom’s flirting advice and batted my eyes.
He smiled. “Spooks don’t have real names.”
“Oh, come on. Your mother named you something.” I looked him over, not having a clue what name he looked like. “Jason?” Hey, half the guys my age are named Jason. It was a safe bet guess.
“No.”
“Justin?”
“Not a chance.”
“Rumpelstilskin?”
He shook his head and grinned. He gave my cheek a playful stroke. “You can call me just about anything.”
Then he stopped the FAV, leaned over, and kissed me. “I wish�
�” I said.
“What?” He slid his warm hands up under my wet tank top, favoring his left arm only slightly.
“I wish you weren’t in such a weakened condition.” I traced his wounded shoulder.
He gave me a quizzical expression.
“Famous last lines. Octopussy.”
“Ah,” he said, understanding. “To hell with the arm. The part of me we need right now isn’t hurt at all.” He pulled me close and kissed my neck, working his way slowly upward, one hot kiss after another.
“Oh, James.” I’d always wanted to say that. I ran my fingers through his hair, reveling in the heat of his kisses and the rush they were working on me.
He ran his hands along my ribs and down the plane of my stomach. I guided them lower.
“Oh, James. Oh. Oh!.”
Spy Candy Page 25
