Chapter Twenty-Five - James
I’m out of bed in an instant, reaching for the gun that’s not there, as I try to wake up from a night of sex-induced deep slumber.
Where the fuck is my gun?
Harper is standing next to me, pulling on her top. Her shorts are hanging off her hips, half-zipped, a phone sticking out of each pocket. Before I can make sense of what I’m seeing, she whispers, “What was that noise?”
“The Smurf?” I answer as I find the gun on the floor and check the chamber and the mag. The FN Five-SeveN holds twenty rounds.
Twenty is more than enough.
A scream jolts us into action and we bolt for the door at the same time. I push Harp back. “Stay here,” I growl down at her. “I’m not kidding.”
I don’t wait for an answer, just open the door and press my back against the hallway as I maneuver towards the living room. Where the fuck did we leave the Smurf? Outside?
But no, the TV is on, cartoons are playing softly. There’s wrappers and stuff on the coffee table like she’s been helping herself to food.
I notice the open back door in the kitchen and hear the whine of a dirt bike engine at the same time.
“Fuck!” Harper’s next to me and we hop down the porch steps in tandem and run for the garage.
“Get in,” I bark at her. The keys are in a magnetic holder to the left of the tailpipe, so I grab those, get in, and start it up. “Where did they go? Did you see where they went?” I pull forward out of the garage.
“That way.” Harper points behind us, to the desert beyond the back yard. There’s a cloud of dust. “Did someone take her?”
I ignore her. This kid isn’t going anywhere without me until I say so.
I gun it. “Hold on!” I yell to Harp over the roar of the engine as we bounce along the scrub. I glance in the rear view and there’s a trail of decimated yucca plants.
“Oh my God,” Harper says as she grabs the handle above the window. We gain on them and the biker looks over his shoulder at us, then increases the throttle and pulls away on a flat stretch of hard-packed sand. The sun is just starting to rise and the glare blinds me for a moment, but it blinds him too, and he swerves west to avoid it.
Harper has her head out the window pointing at something up ahead. “There’s something up there. What’s he heading for?”
Mesquite trees are lined up in the distance, signaling there’s a dry river bed up ahead. They are thick, big enough to possibly stop the Hummer if I try to plow through them. “If he can make it to the river bed he can lose us. Harper,” I say, pointing to the gun tucked under my thigh, “grab the gun. When I pull up next to him, you shoot out the tires, OK?”
“What? No! I don’t shoot guns! I’ll hit Sasha!”
“How the fuck do you not shoot guns?” But the conversation drops off when I hit a good-sized ocotillo plant. Instincts kick in and we both shield our eyes from the onslaught of flying limbs that splatter against the windshield. “Fuck! The ocotillos are everywhere!” It’s like someone planted the tall twiggy bushes on purpose to keep off-roaders away. “Harper!” I grab her by the arm. “You drive, herd him towards that wall of ocotillos over there! I’ll shoot out the tires and even if he gets away, the thorns will—”
“James! I can’t drive!”
“What the fuck? How the hell?” But the biker is on to me and he swerves. I head the opposite direction, anticipating his evasive move, and direct him back where I want him.
“I don’t see Sasha! What if she’s back at the house?”
She’s right. Fuck.
“There’s a scope in the back, Harper, get it out and look. I think she’s slumped over on the tank.”
Harp climbs in back and starts fishing through a box of gear on the floor. A few seconds later she gasps. “She’s on the tank, but she looks dead!”
I swerve again to keep the biker going towards the ocotillos and not towards the line of mesquites. He guns it, mistaking the dried stalks as dead tree branches, and throttles through the wall of thorns. I follow, but unlike him and Sasha, I’ve got a windshield to protect me. The bike swerves severely, and they are going forty-five or fifty miles an hour at least, so for a moment I panic, thinking he’s gonna kill the Smurf with a wipeout.
But he recovers and now that he’s through the wall of thorns, he’s got a straight shot to the riverbed where the wall of mesquites will let him slip by and stop us dead.
Harper opens the sun roof and sticks her head out.
“Shoot that fucker, Harper!” She ignores me, but she’s climbing up through the sunroof. “What the fuck are you doing? Get your ass back in here and get this gun!”
The bike is way out ahead now, more than fifty yards, and the whole thing is looking more and more hopeless when he begins to slow. “The tire’s going flat from the thorns!” Harp yells. “Pull up to him, James, pull up next to him and I’ll shoot the other tire.” She reaches down and grabs the gun, then lifts herself back up through the sunroof. But this time her legs disappear.
She’s on top of the fucking roof! She’s gone crazy!