Chapter Eighty-Three
Nathan
There was no reason for the guards to be so rough with us. The van door flew open and they grabbed me by my heels. I kicked back just before they dragged me out of the van and I dropped to the sun-baked dirt. Bree landed on top of me and then both guards kicked us and told us to get up.
I fought the urge to take them both out. It didn’t matter if I was wearing a blindfold. I already knew six ways I could kill them.
But I refused to make things worse.
Instead, I pulled Bree close as I helped her up. “They’re angry. That’s good. Just think of them as kindling. There’ll be a fire soon enough,” I whispered in her ear.
The guards shoved each other as they pulled their weapons from the van and closed the front doors. I heard them lock but thought the side door was still hanging open.
Someone out there must have been watching over us.
“Hey, I can lend you the money you lost to Javier,” I said. “All I ask is the chance to go back and get a little revenge on him myself.”
“Tempting,” the passenger-side guard said. He was shorter than his cousin and stood near the front wheel of the van.
The driver shoved me from behind. I could feel he was taller than his cousin but a lanky, uncoordinated type. He pushed me into his cousin on purpose.
“Start walking. Past the van,” he said.
“What, you want them laying in the middle of the road?” the shorter cousin asked. “You don’t think we’ll hear about that?”
“I don’t care what you think,” the guard behind me snapped. “I still say you are walking back to the warehouse.”
“Why don’t we all drive back and have a little chat with Javier?” I asked.
I slowed my feet down, refusing to move past the front of the van. The guard behind me prodded me in the back but just then his cousin made some reference to a long-ago birthday party. The taller cousin growled and stepped around me to tell the shorter man off.
Bree crept up behind me.
“Is the van door still open?” I asked.
Bree used my back for balance and reached out one foot. She slid it along the van and then confirmed that the side door was still hanging wide open.
In front of me I heard a solid thunk as one cousin shoved the other in the chest. They were arguing over the birthday party slight and it was quickly devolving into nothing but swearing and name calling.
After the fifth time I heard ‘horse’s ass,’ I gave Bree the signal to get into position. She felt my double-tap and moved to stand directly behind me. She gave herself and me enough room to move in case I had to swing around, then she reached up and put her fingers on the hem of my blindfold bag.
The cousins were really getting into now. I could hear their boots scraping across the dusty road as they shoved each other and grappled. Neither was letting go and the two stumbled back and forth in front of the van until they needed more room to sort out their problems.
I knew the second the cousins moved in front of the van because I could hear a sharp swing and a miss. The taller cousin had tried to punch the other and now the fight was really on.
“Woo hoo hoo, felt the wind on that one,” the shorter cousin taunted.
“Lights on,” I said to Bree.
She tore the hood off my head, and I squinted against the blazing desert sun. Bree grabbed my belt and guided me back to the opening of the van door.
The first thing I saw was the two cousins grappling and trying to trip the other one onto the dirty road. They had moved a dozen yards or so in front of the van and were oblivious to our movements.
The second thing I saw was the toolkit under the driver’s seat. I made sure to keep my head in sight as I reached down and slid it out. I waited until the first real punch landed and then I flipped open the lid.
The shorter cousin now had a bloodied lip and he gave a growling war cry before flinging himself at the other guard. While they fell to the ground in a cloud of dust, I found a pair of clippers and made quick work of my ties.
When I turned around, Bree was waiting as we had discussed. I snatched the hood off her head and then sliced through her ties. She cringed in the bright sunlight, delighted that she was able to use her hands to shade her eyes.
In front of the van, the two cousins were peppering each other with light body-shots and mostly just coming up with new ways to call each other an ass. They didn’t notice when Bree jumped into the van and crawled into the front seats. She popped open the driver’s side door for me.
I shut the side door as quietly as I could and sprang into the driver’s seat. Because it was supposed to just be a quick stop, he had left the keys in the ignition. I cranked the key and the van roared to life.
It still took the fighting men a few seconds to realize what was happening. I had backed up down the road a dozen yards by the time they untangled themselves and started to chase us.
That’s when I whipped the van around and slammed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. We kicked up a huge cloud of dust but I could still see the cousins running after us. I watched the rearview mirror.
“Get down,” I told Bree.
The cousins had drawn their guns and the first shot zinged off my side-view mirror. I swerved the van and created a thicker cloud of dust. Soon they were nothing but vague shadows far behind us.