Through a swirl of smoke, Quinn saw one of the men at the helicopter pointing at them, and then in an instant, the man disappeared again.
Quinn changed directions, heading back along the side of the car toward the men he’d seen shot. Behind them steps ran toward the spot where they’d been. For a moment, he thought they might be clear, but then a man rushed at them out of the smoke.
Nate shoved the barrel of the man’s rifle toward the sky before the man could get a shot off. The attacker quickly flipped the stock end around and smacked it into Nate’s shoulder, sending Quinn’s partner staggering. But Nate was able to hold on to the rifle and rip it from the man’s hands.
“I’ve got this,” Nate said to Quinn as he threw a palm strike to the attacker’s jaw.
“Come on,” Quinn said to Dani, and pulled her fast along the car into the smoke.
As they crossed the asphalt, Quinn’s foot hit the arm of one of the men he’d watched drop. He could see the guy’s face now. A bullet hole dead center in his forehead.
Whoever had done this was a pro.
The smoke thinned as they started around the curve in the road.
“You can let go now,” he whispered to Dani. “Just stay close.”
Either she hadn’t heard him or wasn’t interested, because she kept clutching his jacket.
They were almost out of the smoke when they heard a voice behind them say, “I’ll take over now.”
Quinn turned.
Standing twenty feet behind them was a blonde woman wearing a leather jacket and dark pants. Her most important accessory was the pistol pointed at them.
He put himself between Dani and the woman.
“Deal number one,” the woman said. “I get the girl, you live. Deal number two: I get the girl, you die. Your choice.”
“No,” Dani whispered.
The only hope they had was for Quinn to buy enough time for Nate to catch up to them. “She’s no good to you,” he said. “She doesn’t even know where the location is.”
The expression on the woman’s face remained unchanged. “I don’t know what that means. I’m here to recover the girl. So, if you please.” She motioned with her free hand for Dani to come to her.
A footstep, faint and off to the side, behind the woman.
“Who do you work for?” he asked. “The Wolf, right?”
This time there was a tick of her head. Score one for Quinn.
“Why don’t you give her a call? Tell her I’m willing to make a deal.”
Dani’s grip faltered, and he could sense her confusion.
The woman scowled. “I’ve already given you your choice of deals. Give me the girl.”
Out of the smoke near the hill, a voice said, “Everyone freeze.”
As much as Quinn had hoped it was Nate he’d heard approaching, it wasn’t.
The blonde woman whipped around and pulled her trigger. At almost the same instant, a rifle yelped twice from the smoke. The woman jerked to the side, hit, and fired off four more shots as she sidestepped into the cover of the smoke cloud.
Quinn pushed Dani in front of him. “Run!”
She hesitated, looking at him.
“Just run. Find someplace to hide! Go!”
She took off.
Quinn ran back into the smoke in the direction the woman had disappeared, wanting to ensure she didn’t come after Dani. As he reached the back of the Lexus, feet staggered toward him from the left. He twisted around, but it was Nate.
His partner had an arm around his ribs and blood on his face.
“You okay?” Quinn asked, not worried about what he could see, but what he couldn’t.
“I’ll be fine,” Nate grunted. “Where’s Dani?”
“She’s okay. I sent her down the road.”
They heard a thup, back closer to the helicopter.
The woman, Quinn thought. Though he would have loved to deal with her, with the smoke and the condition Nate was in, they needed to get away.
“Come on,” he said, and headed after Dani.
Bianca touched her thigh again. The bullet had passed a half inch under her skin, hitting only meat before exiting the other side. It had been a while since she’d been shot, and it didn’t make her happy.
The girl and her friends could wait. With their car wrecked, they weren’t going to get very far.
Morse’s men, however…well, she’d already taken out all four men behind the car. Now she wanted nothing more than to deal with the rest.
The first was easy. It was logical that one man would be tasked with staying at the helicopter.
Slinking through the smoke and ignoring the pain from her wound, she moved along the edge of the road until she reached the aircraft’s tail section. There wasn’t as much smoke here, but enough to limit visibility. She ducked under the tail and headed forward until she reached the main body. Peeking around the edge, she saw the shadow of the man standing right next to the floodlight.
She raised her gun, aimed for his exposed ear, and thup—one down.
She almost blew it with number two. As the first one dropped to the ground, she started to step out from under the helicopter. That’s when a different shadow rushed at her.
He’d been standing next to his friend. Apparently two had been left behind.
She took him down when he was ten feet away, silencing him just as he started to yell for help. She expected to hear the third man running over to help, but the only steps were faint in the distance — the girl and her friends thinking they could get away.
She waited several more seconds to be sure, and then crawled the rest of the way out from under the aircraft.
The smoke was finally starting to lift. She could see the Lexus now, and the body lying beside it. She hadn’t been responsible for that one. Whoever it was had lost the fight she’d heard.
She sneaked over and saw he was one of Morse’s. She checked his pulse. He wasn’t dead, but from the slack look on his face he wouldn’t be waking very soon. She was deciding whether or not to waste a bullet on him when she heard a grunt coming from the other side of the car, near the hill.
Peeking over the hood, she spotted another person lying on the ground. She approached cautiously, her gun pointed at him. He held a rifle loosely at his side. When he noticed her, he tried to sit up and lift the gun but was unable to do either.
Blood covered his shirt from a bullet wound in his gut. More soaked his pants around his right knee.
This was the guy who’d shot her, she realized. Two of her blind shots had caught him. Nice.
She raised her gun to finish the job.
“No! Don’t!” he begged.
Thup.
“What the hell?” Orbits said as he neared the bend in the road.
A bright light was shining on the other side, smoke rising through its halo. As he rolled to a stop, he spotted the outline of someone running toward him.
“What the hell?” he repeated.
The runner turned out to be a woman, and not just any woman.
He toggled the window down as she neared. “Hey, something wrong?”
She slowed, looked back toward the light, and then at Orbits. “There’s a-a robbery going on over there. Some men with guns. I barely got away.
“Guns?” He pushed the button unlocking the car. “Get in!”
One of his competitors had no doubt just blown it, and Orbits was in the right place to reap the benefits.
She hesitated.
“Come on,” he said. “Hurry. I’m not going to hang around here and get shot.”
She looked back toward the corner again. The smoke was still the only thing there.
“O-okay. Only for a little ways.”
“Sure, sure. Just get in.”
As soon as she was seated beside him, he executed a U-turn and headed east.