Sexy/Dangerous (14 page)

Adam had never experienced anything like this. A quick look in the busted mirror on his side showed the SUV barreling after them. “They’re coming!” he called out.

“I see them. Hold on!”

She took the curve on what had to be two wheels, and Adam felt his seat belt snap him back against the seat. He was glad to have it on. The Honda was far enough ahead that the guns being fired at it were having trouble finding the mark, but the SUV was gaining.

Max told Adam, “Grab my phone off my belt. Hit the red button on the face, then the green one.”

Adam fumbled for her clip. He freed it, and when he opened it saw that the phone’s face was unlike any
he’d ever seen before. The wheels of the Honda hit a particularly large crater and the force almost made him drop the phone. Once he recovered, he quickly punched the buttons. A second later a female voice came over the phone’s speaker. “What’s up, sis?”

Max hollered back, “Portia! I’m rolling and I’m hot!”

A bullet shattered the back window and covered the backseat and the dogs with shards of glass. Max cursed.

Portia asked, “Is that gunfire?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Max steered around a crater the size of the Grand Canyon and kept her attention on the road ahead. They were coming up to the county road that led back to the highway, and she had no clue what she’d find at the junction.

Portia said, “Okay, Max, I have you and the babies on screen. I have your perps, too. Is Dr. Gary with you?”

“Yeah. He’s holding the phone.”

“Okay, we’ll do intros later. Where are you heading?”

“Big Bad Wolf. I may need to hide in the sunflowers, though.”

“No problem.”

“Thanks, babe!”

“In case your phone is being monitored, use the new software you downloaded to keep me posted. It’s safer.”

“Will do. I’ll check in once I get to the Wolf’s den.”

“Okay. I’m still trying to ID your caller. Good luck!”

“’Bye,” Max said. “Thanks, Adam.”

Adam was so dazed by all that was happening he
didn’t know what to think. The people behind them were actually shooting. He felt like he was in a movie, but this was real.

Max came up to the junction and her eyes widened at the sight of all the trailers, cars, and cameras parked on both sides of the road. The media. She’d forgotten about them. She hoped they had their cameras rolling because things were about to get wild.

With the SUV hot on her tail, Max blew through the junction, took the curve at an incredible speed and charged onto the county road. She could see the surprise on the faces as she flew by. In the rearview mirror she watched them running like ants for their cameras while others ran for their cars. When the SUV thundered by them a second or two later, all hell broke loose as many of them scrambled out of the way. Max was grim. Knowing the media, she was certain some of the reporters were going to try and join the chase, and that was the last thing she needed.

Adam jumped when Max’s phone rang. “Should I answer?”

“Yes!”

Max was rolling at a good ninety miles an hour down a road with a posted speed of fifty-five. In a few minutes she’d be coming up on a residential area. Small towns didn’t usually have high-speed chases so she hoped no one would be hurt. From the speaker phone she heard, “Max, this is Gadget!”

If Max hadn’t been so busy dodging minivans and sedate, sedan-driving townies, she would have smiled hearing the voice of her good friend. “Where are you?”

“With Hannibal.”

“Why the hell hasn’t DOD contacted us?”

“Got a couple rogue Pentagon elephants in the mix. Hannibal wants you to bring the doc to him.”

“I’ve got armed bogeys on my ass, and the media! How am I supposed to swing that?”

“The media?”

“Yeah!”

“You’re Cleopatra Jones, I have faith in you. The Wolf has a new whip ready to go. Once you grab it, meet me where the sunflowers grow and I’ll take it from there.”

Wheels screaming, Max passed a pokey motor scooter.

“I’ll see if we can’t get those cockroaches on your tail some Raid. Stay safe.”

“Will do!”

And he was gone.

Adam stared. “Who was that?”

“Myk Chandler’s brother.” Max passed a school bus and swerved to miss hitting an elderly driver making a slow exit out of McDonald’s. “I’ll explain later!”

She cast an eye to the back and the dogs. Ruby was staring out of the shattered hatch window and barking angrily at the SUV, but Ossie was lying down. Max had some meds on board that would let him sleep through the long road trip they were facing, but she didn’t know when she’d be able to stop so she could administer it. Grim because she knew how uncomfortable he must be, she had to put him out of her mind for now and try and make it to Detroit in one piece.

Suddenly, Max saw two brown cruisers from the county sheriff roar up behind the SUV and turn on their lights. She yelled a triumphant, “Yes!”

At first she didn’t think the SUV was going to stop,
but the driver must have come to his senses because as she pulled away the perps fell farther and farther back. Her last view was of the deputies with their guns drawn, approaching the vehicle. However, the media was still coming. She could see a white van struggling to catch her, but because she knew they weren’t going to be shooting at her no matter the outcome, she slowed a bit, blew out a breath, and concentrated on finding a posted sign that would lead them to the highway.

Jan Kruger was grim. Gary had gotten away! According to the two men he’d sent in to scout, the housekeeper or whoever the woman was claiming to be had fired on them with a weapon powerful enough to make them run for their lives. So much for the laughable security. He cursed Kent again and tried to figure out what to do next. After the disastrous assault attempt, they’d abandoned the big boat and were now on a smaller one speeding away from the scene as fast as the engine would go. He assumed the Coast Guard would be showing up soon to investigate, and he wanted to put as much distance as possible between him and the now empty big boat. He glanced over at Oskar. The man was sweating and looked a bit green. Apparently, water travel didn’t suit him, but that was the least of Jan’s worries.

Once they docked, Jan, Oskar, and the two mercenaries with them jumped out and the operator of the boat roared away. There was supposed to be a car waiting for them. Just as Kruger grabbed up his phone to find out where it was, a Hummer and a pickup truck drove up. Jan ignored them for a moment. “Where’s Gary now?” he demanded of Oskar.

The short squat Oskar took out his laptop and punched in a few numbers. He studied the screen. “He still has his cell phone on. They’re heading east.”

“Good.”

The driver of the Hummer—a member of a South African family now living in Grand Rapids—handed Jan the keys then got into the pickup and was driven away. Jan and the others piled into the Hummer and followed the narrow country roads to the highway.

Merging onto the interstate, Max took the Honda’s
speed up to seventy-five, then hit the cruise. Pulling her foot off of the accelerator, she relaxed and steered. Now that they’d seemingly shaken all of their tails, Ossie was her chief concern. She looked up at the mirror. “Ossie?”

Ruby put her head up instead and barked a couple of times as if to relay Ossie’s poor state.

“I know, baby,” Max responded sympathetically. “I’m going to stop first chance I get.” She watched Ruby resume her position close to her brother’s side and her heart swelled. Max looked Adam’s way. “How you holding up?”

“I’m blown away, but I’m fine. Never been shot at before.”

Max nodded her understanding. “Nothing like a bunch of bullets to get your attention.”

“Got that right.” He then asked, “What was all that talk about Big Bad Wolves and elephants and Hannibal? I’m guessing they’re code names?”

“Yes. Big Bad Wolf is Mykal Chandler.”

Adam smiled. “Okay.”

“I guess his wife gave him the name.”

“Gadget?”

“A friend named Saint, and like I said earlier, he’s Chandler’s brother. Half brother, if you want to get technical. Only man I know who can enter and exit a locked room. He has almost as many toys as Portia.”

“Hannibal?”

“The President.”

Adam stared. “Of the United States?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to see the President?”

“Apparently.”

A stunned Adam sat back against the seat. “Why?”

“For your safety, I assume. Things must be real ugly if he’s taking you in.”

Adam thought about that. “This is serious, isn’t it?”

“As a heart attack,” she replied gravely. “And it’s all connected to your prototype. Any idea why?”

“No. The thing heats homes, that’s all.”

“Saint mentioned rogue elephants in the Pentagon. I wonder how that ties in?”

Adam shrugged.

“Maybe Chandler will know more.”

Adam hoped so, because right now he was having trouble telling up from down. While she drove, he tried to make sense of his new, upside down world.
The President!
He had always wanted to meet the nation’s first African American chief of state. The former five-star general and ambassador to the United Nations had taken the oath of office three years ago and was leading the nation in an unprecedented renaissance of technology, education, and public works. Had Adam been
told a few months back that he’d be meeting the President courtesy of a woman with a big gun and two dogs with GPS capabilities, he’d have asked if the person had been doing crack, yet here he was, on his way to the White House—to be protected, no less, from what or whom he didn’t know.

He looked over at Max. Her face was serious and her jaw set tight. After watching her sweep the beach with her Terminator and experiencing the way she drove to escape that SUV, he made a promise to himself never to cross her. Girlfriend did not play. However, being male, Adam wasn’t sure how he felt about having to hide behind her skirts, so to speak. He had no problem with a law enforcement officer being female if he needed rescuing from a mugging or something else requiring that type of assistance, but this situation with her being the alpha individual was different.

Or was it? He had been raised by a strong female who also didn’t play, and because of her he’d always prided himself on being all for gender equality. But this? Being told to go hide inside while she whipped on the bad guys wasn’t doing it for him, on any level. Would he feel differently if the command had come from a man? Probably. So his problem, he had to admit, was him. Was he man enough to step back and let the lady do her job? That was the question. He wasn’t sure, but he hoped that his indecision didn’t get him killed.

It was seven in the evening when they pulled into a gas station outside of Grand Rapids. Max, dressed in a dark brown shirt, shorts, brown hikers, and socks, looked like a park ranger instead of who she really was—a woman packing weapons of mass destruction in the well
of her Honda. She swiped her credit card through the slot and pumped the gas while discreetly keeping an eye out for trouble. The station had eight pumps. Five were occupied. There was a teenage boy in a turned around baseball cap. Across from him stood a young mother fueling a green minivan holding the requisite 2.2 kids. Beside and behind Max were three seniors, one of whom was a woman. The shot-up Honda with a cracked window was drawing attention, so Max turned her back on the curious eyes and mentally willed the pump to hurry up. Adam had gone inside the convenience store to buy water and snacks. As he came back out with his purchases, she was pleased to see that he hadn’t been inside messing around. The sooner they got back on the road, the sooner they’d get to Detroit.

With the car fueled up, she grabbed the receipt from the pump, climbed back in under the wheel and said to Adam, “I wanted to give Ossie his med, but time to go. Too many eyes on us right now.”

The station was a lot busier than it had been when they first pulled up, and all of the people going in and out of the store were slowing down to take a look at the car. Max couldn’t blame them. The Honda’s right front was heavily damaged. The busted headlight and crumpled hood were the result of the collision with the fence. There were bullet holes in the doors and on the tailgate. The shards of glass all over the backseat were going to be a hazard to the dogs when it got dark because they wouldn’t be able to see them, so she would to have to stop somewhere and clean it up before then. As she steered the Honda away from the gas station and back toward the highway, she kept her eyes on the
mirrors to make sure they weren’t being followed and hoped they could find a rest stop nearby so she could see to her dogs.

She found a spot thirty miles down the road. It took her all of ten minutes to do what she had to do, then she and her crew were rolling again.

They were now heading east, and the sun was setting behind them in all its blazing glory. The drive to Detroit would take nearly three hours, but Ossie was asleep, the Honda’s gas tank was full, and so far no one was on their tail. Max hoped for an uneventful ride.

It was not to be. As they passed through Grand Ledge, a suburb west of Lansing, the state capital, a Hummer sporting camouflage paint suddenly appeared in Max’s rear mirror. The hulking vehicle was a little ways back, but it looked to be rolling, so Max moved into the right lane to let it pass. When it came up beside her, she glanced over. Leaning out of the passenger window was a soldier with a gun. She stomped on the brake. Her quick reaction saved them because the Honda slowed just enough for the Hummer to pass it and mess up the gun man’s aim. The big gun gave off a boom that probably killed a tree or two along the roadside, but Max and her crew were in one piece.

Alarmed, she left the road and tore down the shoulder to pass the slow-moving traffic in front of her. The ride was bumpy and she prayed they didn’t run over something that would slash the tires, or hit a concrete bridge abutment. When she saw an opening in the traffic ahead, she powered back onto the pavement, floored the accelerator and took the Honda up to a smooth sailing ninety. The Hummer was trying to keep up, but it was boxy, slow, and big, no match for her smaller, nimbler vehicle.

She turned to check out Adam. He looked stunned. “You okay?” she asked him. She kept an eye on her mirror to make sure the Hummer wasn’t gaining.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Was that the Army?”

Max was stunned, too. “It sure looked like it.”

Adam turned around to gauge the Hummer’s progress and saw that it was falling farther behind. “They could have killed us!”

“I think that was their intent.”

“What in the hell is going on?”

“Wish I knew,” Max said. “Why would the U.S. Army try and take us out?”

“Didn’t your friend say something about the Pentagon?”

“Yeah. Rogue elephants. I wonder if somebody’s gone off the farm?”

She looked over at Adam, who replied, “You mean like somebody operating outside the lines?”

“Yeah. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Really?”

Max knew that the stories of generals running amok were highly classified, which was why few people were aware of the four-star busted two years ago for providing weapons to a militia group in Washington State, or of another quietly tried and jailed six months ago for heading up an international trafficking ring that specialized in young Russian boys. Why would someone in the Army be after Adam’s prototype, though? The device had to hold some kind of serious value for all this drama to be happening. She wished she knew the answer because the question was nagging at her like a bad tooth.

Night had fallen as they sped from Lansing to Detroit. Neither she nor Adam had spoken in a while. Both
were deep in thought, searching for clues to the riddle threatening their lives.

Max was glad it was dark. Checking her mirrors like clockwork for bogeys, she hoped the night would hide them until they reached Myk’s place.

She picked up the next bogey just outside of the city limits. She was heading south on the Lodge Expressway, glad to be only a few minutes from their destination, when a sleek silver sedan rolled up on her in the sparse evening traffic and tried to ram her from behind. Fighting to right the wheel, she managed to gain control, only to be bumped again with so much force the Honda was sent spinning like a break dancer on his head, across the two empty left lanes and directly toward the concrete highway divider. Cursing, Max turned the wheel in the direction of the spin, hoping they wouldn’t hit the divider head on. At the last second the steering caught and the tail end hit the wall instead. The impact slammed them. Pieces of plastic, shattered headlight housing, and sections of the bumper flew into the air, but she was already maneuvering the battered Honda back on the road.

The other car gave chase. No lumbering Hummer this time. The opposition was in something fast—faster than the Honda—but Max planned to give them a run for their money. In truth, what she really wanted to do was stop the car, grab her gun out of the back, and blow them to hell, but she doubted they’d be polite enough to wait for her to do that, so driving was all she had. Luckily, she was good at it.

She stomped the Honda up to ninety-five and dared them to keep up. Under the overhead lights illuminating the road, she did the next few miles weaving in and out
of the traffic so fast the other cars she passed might as well have been standing still. On the long empty stretches she was rolling at a hundred, then 110. She flashed past a sign indicating construction up ahead, but pressed on with the sedan glued to her tail. She paid no attention to the next construction sign, which reminded her she was only a half mile from the construction and hoped the sedan would too. Max roared around a Greyhound bus poking along in front of her. Swinging the Honda back into the left lane, she saw the sedan appear from behind the bus then zoom up behind her. Her mirror showed the bus merging to the right in anticipation of the upcoming construction zone, then she focused her attention on driving. Less than thirty feet ahead stood huge concrete blocks cutting off the lane. Because of the Honda’s high profile, she was pretty sure the sedan couldn’t see around it and at the speed they were traveling, she was also sure they were counting on her to alert them to hazards. Wrong. As she neared the construction barrier it seemed to grow larger and larger. Max waited until the last possible moment to swing over, and as she zipped out, the sedan slammed into the concrete and went up in flames.

“Yeah!” Adam yelled, pumping a triumphant fist.

Max looked over at him and grinned. Ruby was barking in the backseat.

Adam said sagely, “I think I may need a new pair of drawers, but that was some hellified driving.” He looked back and saw the fire. It sobered him for a moment. “That could have been us.”

Max disagreed. “Not with me driving.”

Adam chuckled and sat back to enjoy the rest of the ride.

A short while later they were exiting the highway
because the Honda was done. Having taken bullets, fences, rammings, and bounces off highway dividers it barely rolled. Max managed to coax it up the ramp and onto the street, but she sensed once she cut the ignition it wouldn’t start again.

Adam looked around at the stark, dark surroundings and didn’t have to be told that this was not one of the city’s better areas. “Where are we?”

“West side.”

Max considered her options. She could call Mykal, but Portia had warned her not to use her phone, and for good reason. Cells were notoriously insecure, and calling him might send the unwanted guests to his door. She thought about using the software on the laptop but dropped that idea, too. Nighttime brought out all kinds of predators and carnivores, and she didn’t want to wind up shooting some dummy bent on jacking her computer while she was sitting in the car using it. She peered around. For now they were on their own, and not knowing if the friends of the men in the Hummer or sedan were close by, waiting for another opportunity to pounce, she thought it best to find a hidey hole ASAP.

Jan and the others had been tracking the silver car and the Honda on Oskar’s computer. The camera mounted on the car’s dashboard had been able to give a real time view of the chase. The woman’s amazingly adept driving left Jan looking forward to meeting her face-to-face. She impressed him as being a remarkable individual and he wanted to know all about her. He’d silently cheered as the Honda was rammed and sent spinning across the road, but minutes later when a brilliant flash of light
filled the screen just before it went dark, he demanded, “What’s happened?”

Oskar punched in codes and numbers. “Looks like the car crashed.”

“What!”

“I’m getting nothing from the sensors inside. Can’t tell if the drivers got out in time but it doesn’t appear as if they did.”

Sevi Crane, one of the young mercenaries, asked, “Are they dead?”

“Possibly.”

Jan cursed. He didn’t know the men in the car well enough to mourn, but he did mourn the fact that Gary continued to slip through his fingers. Detroit was a Black enclave he would normally have avoided given a choice, due to the crime and the races of the people who lived there, but necessity dictated he go in after the prey. The Hummer they were in was less than thirty minutes away. He and his men were now wearing the uniforms of the United States Army. Jan planned to use the ruse to do whatever it took to get Gary. A few well-placed calls from his Washington contacts would keep the local law enforcement agencies from interfering, and that was all the help he would need.