I raced over to the passenger’s side of the car, tore open the door, and jumped inside just as Brock did the same in the driver’s seat. I shoved the key in the ignition, and Brock slammed his foot on the gas just as their doors swung open. Gunshots followed our exit, but soon we were rumbling down the dirt road I’d come in on.

“I don’t know how they got here, Brock. I swear!” I said.

His face was grim as he nodded.

“Check the car—the glove compartment, everything. They must have bugged it.”

A scan of the bottom of the car and sun visor revealed nothing, though really, I wasn’t sure what I was even looking for.

“It’ll be a black electrical thing, about the size of a pager probably,” Brock said, answering my next question.

And there, in my glove compartment, was a black electrical thing about the size of a pager.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Brock?” I said weakly.

There was a sharp intake of breath, then a terse, “Yep. That’s it.”

In one smooth motion, he opened his window, grabbed the black thing, and tossed it outside.

“That should take care of that,” Brock said, just as the far-off growl of a car sounded.

It didn’t matter that we had thrown out the tracking device; it had done its job already. Now Russell and his men were on our tail, and there would be no escaping them, no stopping.

“Alex?” Brock asked, concerned. “Alex, you okay?”

But I wasn’t. I wasn’t, and my breath was still caught in my throat; I couldn’t even tell him I wasn’t because I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t inhale or exhale, and when I did, a whoosh passed through my whole body and a wetness came from my pelvis.

Oh, please God, no.

“Alex?” Brock asked, but I was hyperventilating now.

I could feel them coming. As much as I held them in, tightened my pelvic muscles, their force continued pushing out. I was giving birth—right then and there.

“My water broke,” I croaked. “They’re coming, Brock. The babies are coming.”

“Oh God, oh God,” he said, his voice loud and high. “Okay, 20 minutes out there’s a hospital. St. Vincent, I think it’s called. We can make it. We can go there and… Just hold on, Alex.”

The excruciating pressure was back; I could only shake my head. Then, after the wave passed, I said, “No. No hospital. No stop—can’t—police. Have to get away.”

Now it was Brock’s turn to shake his head.

“No,” he said. “The safety of you and the babies is the most important thing right now—the only thing. We’re going to the hospital.”

I could only weakly shake my head and moan as another wave of contractions descended upon me. Why had no one told me just how painful they were?

The next twenty minutes were one long exercise in futility, in trying to hold in what was forcing itself out, what could not be contained much longer. Brock stroked my hair and wiped the sweat off my forehead every few minutes.

Other times he only squeezed my hand and said, “It’s going to be all right.” And, though the black shapes of the cars in our rearview mirror gradually grew closer, I almost believed him.

When we were minutes away from the hospital, I thought to call Kyle.

To his worried flurry of questions, I could only tell him, “Birth now. Chased. Get police to St. Vincent. Santa Fe.” Then my phone died entirely.

Beside me, Brock’s face was creased in concentration, his maple eyes squinting with it.

“We’ll make it,” he said, and that time I would’ve really believed him if it hadn’t been for the fear in his voice.

After we barreled through several hairpin turns and shrieked up to the front of the promisingly fancy-looking tan exterior of the hospital, Brock dashed out, opened the door, and helped me out. One staggering, excruciating step after another, and we were at the doors. Then a car shrieked behind us and there was a crash sound.

Turning around, Brock groaned.

I let out a low moan. I didn’t need to turn around to know that Russell and his men had finally arrived and that they were armed.

A bullet shattered the wall an inch away from us, and then more bullets sounded. Amid all this, a siren wailed. I turned around to see police officers running straight for us, their guns raised.

“Brock Anderson, you are under arrest,” a bald man barked. “Don’t move!”

Behind him, other officers were cuffing a furious-looking Russell Snow and several of his burly, equally furious-looking men.

“Please,” I told the bald officer as he advanced, gesturing to Brock. “Please leave him be. I’m pregnant. He’s the father, please.”

My arm was grasped, and I was pressed into a wheelchair as another series of contractions scraped through me.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the officer said, getting out a glinting pair of handcuffs.

Next thing I knew, I was being wheeled away backward, presumably by a nurse who politely ignored my mumbled pleas and only gave my shoulder a squeeze as assured me that everything was going to be all right.

Through the clear doors, Brock waved as he was taken to the police car. Then my wheelchair was turned around and the worst contraction yet occurred.

I let out a low moan, and the nurse pushing me said, “They’re coming out, aren’t they? Don’t worry, we’re getting you to a room right now.”

And then, everything went black.