She peered out the open window. The SUV had skidded to a stop about 100 meters ahead, partly off the road. Clouds of dust settled around the bulky vehicle.
A snarl that raised the hair on the back of her neck rolled through the night.
There was a crunch, the tinkle of broken glass, and the remaining headlight winked out, leaving an inky darkness more complete than any she’d ever experienced.
Now, all she could do was listen.
Metal whined then crunched, pierced and shredded by giant claws. She could hear the SUV’s undercarriage groan as it was buffeted. She thought Jake was on the hood of the vehicle.
There were muzzle flashes, and several pops echoed against the rocky slopes.
They were shooting at Jake.
The hot, dry air seemed sharp, cutting Anjali as it eluded her gasping lungs. She couldn’t bear to watch and she slid down further.
The doors of the larger vehicle opened and booted feet smacked the pavement.
“Get the girl,” someone said.
Panic swelled through her. Every beat of her speeding heart hurt. She groped on the floorboards for the fallen hammer.
Where was it? Where was it? Her fingers found the rubberized handle. But the tiny surge of relief she felt at having a weapon was swallowed by the realization of how completely inadequate it was against the firepower Kincaid’s men carried.
She waited, palms damp on the hammer handle, pulse racing, for what seemed an eternity. Finally, the door wrenched open, and someone probed the car. Though it was so dark she could only discern the incrementally darker shadow of the man because of his movements stirring the air.
Goose bumps raised on the back of her arms.
She lashed out with the hammer, but missed. The grunt of her effort must have given some hint to her location because a steely hand seized her upper arm and jerked her toward the open door.
She whacked the man’s forearm with the hammer, which vibrated with the impact, stinging her hand.
“Fucking bitch!” The man, his voice strident with pain, let her go and stepped back.
Her eyes were starting to get used to the lack of light and she could see him framed in the door—a large, black shadow against a thick charcoal backdrop.
His arm lifted as he leveled a gun at her.
The action stopped her heart. She froze.
A crack of gunfire split the night.
Chapter 19
The soft hiss and click of the Expedition’s doors opening jerked Jake’s maned head up. Three men jumped out. Only the driver remained in the vehicle and it wasn’t Kincaid.
He abandoned his assault on the SUV and leaped to the ground, avoiding the shards of glass, twisted pieces of metal he had torn free, and the odd rattlesnake basking on the latent warmth radiating from the road.
Rage burned in him like wildfire. The man inside the beast maintained control by a single thread.
Two men advanced in Jake’s direction, firing steadily as if their weapons protected them, but they were firing at phantoms in the dark, and none of the bullets found their target.
Two cars whizzed by, slaloming to avoid the stopped cars, horns blaring high and then low as they sped away.
Swearing, the mercenaries glanced toward the receding cars.
Taking advantage of their momentary distraction, Jake launched forward and clamped his mouth on a man’s forearm. His large teeth punctured the skin and sliced sinew, lodging in the bone. The mercenary screamed and released his weapon. Blood coursed, heady and seductive, onto the macadam. Stay in control, stay in control, he reminded himself, leaving the man injured and bleeding, then pouncing on the other mercenary.
Jake’s weight took the second attacker to the ground, his gun firing uselessly at the stars as he fell. Thump. The man’s head had struck the heat-hardened dirt at the shoulder. He went limp.
The lion wanted to play with the still form, but Jake reined in the impulse. He was the boss, not the beast, and there were two more men to handle.
“Fucking bitch!”
Anjali was in trouble.
The lion lived with a constant low-level buzz of fear, but now terror chilled his racing blood.
He sighted the third man leveling his weapon at the interior of the car.
The air thickened, catching at his body like grasping hands. The milliseconds it took for him to reach the car seemed more like minutes.
His near ton of muscle and bone hit the mercenary, driving him into the side of the car and rapping his hand against the unyielding frame inside the door. The gun popped free, discharging as it clattered to the pavement. The bullet exploded the window of the open door, showering Jake and Anjali’s assailant with glass.
Jake trembled with fury. He sank his claws through the man’s T-shirt. His breath ruffled the mercenary’s sandy hair. The man turned his head and tried to move, probably to go for a knife or a second gun, but Jake held his limbs pinned.
A third car blasted past.
Jake closed his eyes, warring with the beast.
This man had been a hairsbreadth from killing Anjali, and the lion craved his annihilation. Jake allowed himself to imagine it for a fraction of a second.
Taking the man apart piece by piece. His enemy’s rib cage spilt open, organs exposed while he screamed in agony. Blood wetting the ground and perfuming the night. The last tripping thud of the man’s heart before his eyes glassed with death.
Jake’s muscles seized, and he panted with the effort of restraining the urge. The man whimpered. The white of his eyes shone in the starlight.
“Jake.”
One word was all it took. The tension drained from him at the sound of her voice, and he collared the beast as easily as belling a tabby.
Anjali slid out of the car. Her gaze glued on the man Jake still trapped beneath his heavy paws.
She knelt, reached under the car for something—God, he hoped there weren’t any snakes under there—and came out with the man’s gun.
A series of pops sounded from the SUV, and Anjali plummeted to the pavement. Panic flayed Jake like a whip. He slammed the man’s head on the car, knocking him out and dashed toward the muzzle flashes, teeth and claws extended.
The mercenary firing seemed to realize his mistake, and dove into the SUV’s open door, slamming it behind him.
Jake braced his paws on the side of the vehicle, lifted it until only the far wheels hugged the ground, then dropped it. Shocks screeched and parts clanked as it landed, heaving, the frame bent from the force.
He could hear men shouting inside. But he left them, his whole attention on Anjali’s condition.
He found her huddled behind the stolen car. He sniffed her. Relief rushed over him. She was unhurt.
He nuzzled her and turned back to the SUV, but Anjali put a hand on his side.
“Look,” she said and pointed toward the rear tire of the vehicle. Flat. Air continued to hiss out of it in front of his eyes. He heard a second hiss and followed the sound to the front tire. Both tires were flat.
He concentrated on his human form and changed back.
“Shit,” he said when he realized he was naked.
“What is it?” Anjali asked, no doubt unable to see more than his shape in the darkness.
“I’m out of clothes.”
“I think we have worse problems. After what you did to that Expedition I don’t think it’s drivable either.”
He noticed she didn’t take the two armed men still in possession of said vehicle into account. Her confidence was almost gratifying.
“We could flag someone down,” she went on. “This is the main road to Vegas. I’m surprised so few cars have come by.”
Jake snorted. “I doubt anyone will stop and even if someone was moved to, my nakedness would scare him away.”
Anjali waved a dismissive hand. “I’m sure one of Kincaid’s flunkies is close to your size.”
She had a point, but he raised an eyebrow. “Flunkies?” Her choice of words was old-fash
ioned, and he found himself charmed.
“Do you prefer henchmen?”
He smiled, but reached for the unconscious man near the flat rear wheel. He might be a creature capable of killing a man with a single blow, but he felt vulnerable, naked. Not to mention the desert at night was surprisingly cool.
The man seemed almost as tall as he, but unfortunately he had several large holes in the black T-shirt which was apparently mercenary high-fashion.
He could hear the hum of men speaking in the SUV as he approached. In the movies, they would be summoning a helicopter, but Kincaid was nowhere near stupid enough to draw that much attention to himself. So they were probably calling for pickup.
Unless some convenient soldier-of-fortune called Barstow his home, it would be some time before help arrived, but Kincaid had mad resources. It was suicide to underestimate him.
The frame of the SUV was twisted. He doubted the men could open their doors, nor was it likely they could see him through the tinted windows, but he watched the Expedition carefully as he found the man who he’d knocked into the pavement. His clothing was in good shape. The man groaned as Jake stripped him and Jake was comforted to know he hadn’t killed him, that the lion could be leashed.
The mercenary’s clothing, khakis and a T-shirt like the other man wore, were a bit tight, but better than nothing.
Dressed, he trotted back to Anjali.
She focused on him, her brow wrinkled. “I don’t suppose taxis come this far, do they?”
He shrugged. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time to wait for someone to drive by.”
“I guess triple A is out, too? The sheriff?”
“Besides the fact I don’t have a license, I don’t know about you, but I think I’d have a hard time explaining the bullet holes in our stolen car.”
“What about . . . flying us out of here?”
Jake thought hard about that suggestion.
His success with controlling his lion side made the idea tempting. But the dragon had been triggered only rarely, and now wasn’t the time to be messing with the unknown. “I don’t know anything about my capabilities. I don’t relish the idea of us hitting the ground at one hundred miles per hour.”
Anjali’s shoulders sagged. “So what do we do? How did they find us?”
Her defeated appearance hit him like a punch to his gut. Jake reached out and rested his hand on her delicate shoulder, cradling the curve with his palm. Mine, said the lion. Protect.
How had they found them? “Fuck. Our phones.”
He swore again and tossed his burner phone onto the pavement. A crunch vibrated up his heel as he ground the instrument into the asphalt.
He held his hand out. “Give me yours.”
The whites of Anjali’s dark eyes gleamed as she opened them wide, and she groaned, but she passed him her cell.
She covered her eyes as he smashed the phone into a pile of worthless components. “Ugh, I just got all the numbers programmed in.”
Jake scooped up the remnants of both phones and tossed them in the road.
Anjali hugged herself. She was shivering a little, probably from exhaustion, the temperature was probably still in the mid-sixties.
He damned himself for bringing her, no matter how much pain leaving her had caused.
None of their options were good.
Staying with the road meant death, and the desert was probably worse. At least the snakes on the road were easy to see. Their brethren off-road would be camouflaged in the brush.
He had no water and nothing to protect them from the merciless heat of the sun due to rise in a few hours. He considered the horizon.
This area bordered the Mojave National Preserve, where there were campgrounds and ranger stations. With luck, they could steal another car and get back on the road.
As a plan, it was solid, but hardly risk-free. Apart from rattlesnakes, the lion could handle anything he encountered in this terrain, but could he protect Anjali?
He rubbed his hand on the T-shirt stretched across his chest. Anxiety gnawed in his belly. The feeling was as uncomfortable as it was unfamiliar. The beast knew fear, was intimately acquainted with it, but worry—that was something new.
Headlights sprouted and blossomed in the distance. “Grab what you can. We’re going into the desert.”
“Yo, Coventry!”
Zara Coventry lifted her head from her desk and rubbed the ache in her forehead from where she had been banging it on the faux-wood surface. She gazed at her intern, who stood in the entrance to her cubicle holding a cell phone aloft like the Olympic torch.
“What’s up, Derek? Elliot snatched that massacre in downtown out from under my nose. And I need something to rescue me from the slowest news day in two centuries.”
“Some guy just sent me this photo of a lion attacking a car on I-15.” He leaned over and showed her the picture on the phone’s tiny screen.
Zara quirked her eyebrows. “That blur is a lion?”
“Hey, the man was practically jumping out of his skin. I think he really saw something.”
“Drunk. Or high.”
Derek glared. She raised her hands. “OK, OK, where was this?”
“Along the Mojave National Preserve.”
Coventry groaned. “A lion in the preserve? Stop the presses!” she mocked gently, rolling her eyes. “Mountain lions in the Mojave Preserve are not news, Derek.”
“How about African lions?”
“What?”
“This guy claims he saw a massive African lion.”
Zara wrapped her arms around her body, her silky blouse whispering, and blew out a sigh. “OK. Call any venues that have lions from here to Vegas. See if any are missing.”
He turned to go, but she stopped him. “Oh, and Derek? Keep this quiet. If there really is an African lion roaming the interstate, we might just get off the graveyard shift.”
“No, no, no. Roll down the windows and go after him.” Kincaid paced from one end of his bedroom to another, his footsteps muffled by the thick California shag rug, and glared at his watch. 12:00 a.m. The whole thing should have been over hours ago.
“The car won’t start, sir. There’s no power. I think he ripped out the battery.”
Kincaid let fly a frustrated groan. “So shoot the windows out.”
“You’re not listening, sir. It’s pitch black out here and we’re not equipped to track him in the desert.”
Kincaid quashed the compulsion to wing the phone against the chocolate, linen-covered wall above the wainscoting. The movement might tug his injured rib. “How many of you are still alive?” He winced, remembering the carnage at the doctor’s apartment.
“All of us, sir.”
Kincaid sucked the inside of his lower lip. Finn was gaining some mastery over his animal side. Too bad they hadn’t been able to trap him earlier, before his faith in people had been shattered.
He brushed aside the futile thought. It was no use continuing to fume over something that was out of his hands, and he shuddered to think what Clara would make of this latest failed attempt.
The only important matter now was containing the mess.
It would be one thing for the CHP to find Finn’s car. There was no way to trace it to the Group, but the Expedition had to be disposed of.
He ran down instructions for the men and hung up, then scrolled though his contacts for another number.
A man with a guttural accent picked up.
“This is Gareth Kincaid. We met in South Africa last year. I need a big game hunter in California. Price is no object.”
Chapter 20
Anjali adjusted her grip of Jake’s hand, stumbling slightly as she tried to keep up. The desert stars, which at first had made her gasp at their sheer number and stunning brilliance, now seemed to press down on her. Pain made her hobble. “My blisters have blisters.”
“What?”
“I’ve been wondering,” she said, panting, not wanting to be caught complaining. “About why
you decided to change in the car, when you were so determined not to.” Well, she had been earlier, at least.
“Don’t step there.” Jake yanked her away from the round blob her foot hovered over. A rock probably, though she couldn’t have said for sure. The desert was apparently chock full of them.
“Rattlesnake.”
Anjali shuddered.
“They’re slow to react in the cold. You probably wouldn’t even hear a rattle before it bit you.”
Thank God he could see. The velvety darkness of the desert was disorienting, making her feel as if she were falling over a cliff. She tried to match his stride, struggling to follow his footsteps exactly.
“I didn’t decide to change in the car. I guess subconsciously my lion side felt men with guns were too big a threat.”
“Well, thank you.”
A quick glance over her shoulder told her the road was still visible in the distance and she sighed.
“You OK?”
“Fine.” True, at least by the definition from the movie The Italian Job. Freaked Out. Insecure. Neurotic. And emotional. “I was just thinking about the clothing situation.”
Though the air was chilly, a fine sweat beaded her hairline from the grueling pace Jake had set. He’d said if they didn’t get far enough from the road they would be sitting ducks at dawn and unfortunately, his logic was sound.
How crazy was it that she was on the run with a man she’d believed to be a murderer days before, being chased by her employer, a man she would have sworn would have hit a tree rather than run over a squirrel?
Everything about the situation defied rational behavior. She’d thrown her career away for a man she hadn’t known a week ago. And she didn’t regret it.
Even without their intangible—but very real—connection, she’d had a responsibility to intervene. A man’s life had been at stake. And he had more than repaid her.
She could see now that after the loss of her family, she’d been sleepwalking through life, but the desire to live had reawakened in her. Funny finding a reason to live with the possibility of cancer hanging over her. A laugh shook her chest. Running from gunmen will do that for you.
In Like a Lion (The Chimera Chronicles) Page 15
