Windswept (16 page)

Mia scrambled over yet another railing, ignoring the scrapes and bruises crying from all over her body, and judged the distance.

“Stop!” a man shouted from above.

Very good advice, if it hadn’t been coming from the guy who’d cut her air hose one hundred feet underwater and run down her dinghy at night. A guy pulling a gun from his pocket, as a wild glance back revealed.

Ryan launched himself with a grunt, landed in the center of the balcony like a panther, and turned. On one hand, he made it look easy. On the other, it seemed like suicide. She was no panther. She was no Marine or SEAL or whatever the heck he’d been in whatever branch of the military. She was just Mia.

Ryan shoved a chair aside, making space. “Come on!”

“Stop!” the man behind her barked.

Mia was no expert, but she was pretty sure the click she heard was the cock of a loaded gun.

She jumped. Reached. Strained every muscle, focusing on Ryan’s outstretched hand. She squinted, too, as if seeing less would help her avoid the spitting
Thwat!
of a silenced bullet, slicing very close to her ear.

She crashed into Ryan, bowling him over like a flying hippo, but that was fine. She’d made it, right?

Ryan scrambled to his feet and pushed her through the — thank you, Lord — open door of the room that some off-task corner of her mind calculated must have been 319. Like they’d be calling room service or something on their way out.

“Oi!” A hefty woman in a pink cleaner’s outfit flattened herself against the wall.

“’Scuse me,” Ryan murmured, racing past.

“Pardon us,” Mia yelped as he towed her along.

Ryan dashed across the hallway, kicked open the fire exit door, and started leaping down whole flights of stairs, which seemed like kid’s stuff after the monkey act they’d pulled off outside. When he pushed open the door at the bottom and skidded across the waxed floor of the lobby, a dozen heads turned. He led her onward, hurtling over suitcases, bumping past bellboys, and barely missing vases stuffed with fragrant flowers Mia really would have liked to stop and sniff.

Another time, maybe.

They sprinted for the front doors, then pulled to a screeching stop outside.

No taxi. No friendly couple in a pickup. No saddled ponies ready to help them make a quick escape.

Nothing but a white Hyundai with a pink hibiscus painted on the side, parked far across the way, and a neat row of pastel-colored mopeds, all leaning at exactly the same angle. All except the one an attendant was showing to a guest, a little apart from the next.

“You start it like this,” the attendant said as the lobby behind them erupted into shouts. The two men chasing them had burst on to the scene.

Ryan darted for the moped and Mia followed, wishing she had a better plan.

“’Scuse me,” Ryan grunted, grabbing for the bike.

“Pardon me,” she squeaked, jumping on the seat behind him. If they were going to barge in on maids and steal rental vehicles, at least they could be polite.

“Hey!” the guest shouted.

“Sorry!” She clung to Ryan as he shot down the lane. Her arms circled around his steely torso and hung on tight. “Go! Go!”

The engine of the moped screamed into high gear.

No helmets. No rental contract. No safety briefing. God, they’d have a lot of explaining to do if they survived this day.

The driveway filled with shouts, cries, and the sound of a car engine gunned to life by a hasty hand.

“Faster!” she shouted in Ryan’s ear, even though that was about as necessary as him telling her to jump carefully. “Faster!”

Ryan kept one eye on the narrow road, one on the side mirror, and his fingers dug into the grips. Was this as fast as the scooter could go?

“I think that cement truck we passed might have held them up,” Mia shouted in his ear.

He still kept the throttle jammed as far as it would go, which could never be fast enough. Too bad the hotel didn’t rent 750cc Harleys. He could have borrowed one of those instead of this…this… He groaned, glancing down at the frame.

“What?” Mia peeked over his shoulder.

He pointed at the label.
Kymco Agility 50cc.

He had to look twice to make sure there wasn’t a zero missing. How were they supposed to make their escape with fifty fucking cc’s?

The little scooter did its best, though, kicking up pebbles and dust as it hammered along the dirt road. Two bumpy miles later, they came to a paved road and a sign.

Rincon 2km, Kralendijk 17km.

Ryan did a quick calculation.That translated to about twelve miles of hoping this wheezing moped could save their asses.

Great.

Twelve miles was a long way to go, because even a three-cylinder Hyundai could catch them on the open road. And seventeen kilometers was a lot of open road.

About the only thing he liked about this scenario was Stanley’s media card in his pocket and Mia’s arms around his waist. She laid her cheek flat against his shoulder, and even if she did it to create a more aerodynamic shape, he liked the idea that she did it just…because. Because she felt as good leaning up against him as he felt having her there.

He glanced in the side mirror, and shit, there was the white Hyundai with the pink flower again. He leaned over the handlebars and willed the moped along.

A long right curve led to a lusher patch of green and the soaring towers of a church, standing prim white against the pale blue sky. Before he knew it, another sign blurred by.

“Rincon!” Mia exclaimed.

He glanced back at her.
So?

“It’s an old town. One of the oldest in the Caribbean, originally settled by the Spanish. Everyone says it’s beautiful.”

He looked ahead. Beauty, he already had on the back of his scooter. What he needed now was escape.

He ran a stop sign, then another, and the Hyundai did, too, but then both of them had to slow down because traffic picked up.

Pedestrian traffic, that is. Lots of it, and getting thicker all the time. Banners fluttered overhead and an unmistakable buzz filled the air. There was some kind of parade going on in town. Detour signs led to the right, and he was about to follow them when Mia tapped his shoulder.

“Dia di Rincon!”

“Dia di
what?”

“There! That way!” She pointed into the mass of people.

Of course — they could lose themselves in the crowd. He slalomed around the barrier and glanced back to see the Hyundai squealing to a halt. Nearly did a fist pump, too, but it took all he had to keep the moped moving through the ever-growing crowd. Three meaty ladies in white-and-purple flounced skirts sashayed along in front of him. Men in Panama hats and striped shirts danced alongside bands and more ladies — many more ladies dressed very much like the Chiquita Banana girl without the bananas. With their colored ribbons, bouncing skirts, and towering hats, they looked like giant dancing fruit tarts topped with whipped cream.

“What is this?” he murmured, tiptoeing the bike around four women in dresses that reminded him of tropical birds.

“
Dia di Rincon!
The festival!”

It was a giant street party, a touch of Rio brought to one small town — or how he imagined Rio to be, at least. Spices wafted from sidewalk grills and filled his nostrils. Chatter, announcements, and the beat of drums thrummed in his ears. It was getting harder and harder to make any headway, so he turned down a side alley, then another, and another that widened and spit them out on a blissfully open road where he could hit the gas again. The wind whipped his hair as he counted the miles — er, kilometers.

“I think we lost them!” Mia cried.

He checked the side mirror, sure she’d just jinxed them, but no, the road was empty. Closed, by the look of it. Maybe they really were in the clear.

They zipped past a scrubby landscape that stretched mile after mile, and he counted every one. They’d hit a rise and catch a view of Kralendijk ahead, then bottom out in sandy valleys where tight rows of cacti created a living fence, hemming them in from both sides.

He pushed the engine as if the Hyundai were still hot on their heels, which it probably was, in a way. He figured the two men had taken a parallel road and were speeding along on a converging route. Somewhere ahead there’d be a juncture where they’d find the thugs lying in ambush if he didn’t hurry along.

The moped’s balance shifted slightly as Mia craned her head around. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

He checked the mirror. Nothing.

“That.”

He squinted at the long straightaway ahead. Nothing. Nothing in the mirror, either, but she was right. A distant buzz sounded from somewhere ahead.

“Too loud to be the car,” he yelled over his shoulder. “And coming from the wrong direction.”

“Maybe a truck?”

He was about to say
whatever
, because a truck heading out of town was the least of their problems, but as the moped sweated up a rise, a shadow fell over them. He looked up and saw a huge bird rising over the crest of the hill. It roared and dove right at them.

“Oh, shit!” Mia’s arms tightened so quickly, he lost a breath.

Not a bird. A helicopter. Coming right at them.

He ducked and swerved just as it thundered over their heads, so close he felt his hair flatten from the wind or maybe even the skids.

“What the…?” he blurted, accelerating over the rise. The bad guys had reinforcements? “Where’d they get a helicopter?”

“One of the resorts?” Mia yelled into the wind. “Developers, remember?”

He glanced up and saw a pink flash. The helicopter had the same hibiscus logo painted on its side that the Hyundai had. Maybe Celeste’s cousin the hairdresser was right. Maybe there really was a powerful developer behind the bombing of
Neptune’s Revenge.

The sleek, black chopper soared back into view and barreled straight at them, this time from behind. He swerved so hard the moped nearly spun out. The foot he stuck out to keep them upright skidded along the road fast enough to send heat searing through the sole. The backwash of the rotor plucked at his hair.

The helicopter raced ahead, rose in a wide, gravity-defying arc, and came back for another pass. Ryan started slaloming for lack of a better option with the fifty feet of maneuverable space defined by the twin walls of cacti on either side.

Mia screamed as the helicopter swept by in another pass, so close he could have grabbed a skid and swung up into the cockpit with one hand.

But he didn’t want to get in that helicopter. He wanted to get himself and Mia as far away from it as possible, and now.

He stuck out a foot and somehow, somehow kept the moped from wiping out into cactus, then jerked the handlebars to get them back on course.

Mia stuck a hand over his shoulder. “There! Go!” she yelled.

As if he had some other choice.

Then he got it and accelerated toward the tree Mia was pointing at. Both of them leaned forward like they were on a galloping steed and not a purple scooter about to bust a hose. Behind him, the hum of the helicopter said it was banking into a turn, and the change in pitch of its rotor meant it was charging again.

“Come on, come on,” he willed the scooter along.

He didn’t have to look at the mirror to feel the helicopter bearing down on them, to sense the dragon’s breath of its wash. His ears filled with the roar of it until he was sure that, this time, they were shit out of luck.

The roar became a screech as the helicopter peeled away. Miracle of miracles, they’d made it into the tiny shelter under those low-hanging branches where no helicopter would dare range. He put both feet down, coming to a standstill for the first time in what seemed like days.

“God, I could hug this tree,” Mia murmured. She seemed to settle for tightening her grip around his waist, though, which suited him just fine.

The helicopter buzzed around the tree like a hornet, then hovered a short distance away.

“What now?” Mia croaked.

Were they calculating? Plotting? Loading rocket launchers?

The tree offered a measure of safety, but its branches were a cage. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. And to make things worse, another engine sounded in the distance. Ryan jerked his head left to trace the noise.

This time it was a truck. He eyed it closely. Was it a big, lumbering truck innocently heading to town or a big, lumbering truck on a mission to flatten him and his mermaid? He revved the scooter engine, just in case.

The truck rolled past without the driver so much as batting an eye.

“Go!” Mia thumped him on the shoulder. “Follow it!”

God, she was smart. The helicopter wouldn’t attack them in front of witnesses, or so he hoped. He twisted the throttle, darted after the truck, and steered the scooter in close — too close for comfort, really, but it beat getting beheaded by a helicopter — and hung in there, stealing glances in the mirror.

“What’s the chopper doing?”

Mia twisted around. “The guy hanging out the side is talking into a radio.”

A radio. Shit. They were probably calling out backup, like maybe a tank.

The truck slowed and joined a larger road with him and Mia in tow.

“Oh, great,” Mia muttered.

“What?”

“The good news or the bad news?”

He shook his head. Why couldn’t there just be good news? “Bad first.”

“The Hyundai’s back there again.”

He glanced in the mirror and caught a glimpse of the pink and white Hyundai hurtling around a curve in the coastal road behind them. It disappeared behind a bend, but only momentarily.

“And the good news?”

“The helicopter is peeling away.”

He glanced up, spotted a blur. “Why do I have the feeling these guys are tag teaming us?”

“Because they are? Because someone ambitious enough to bomb an internationally recognized ship has the resources to come up with a chopper and a car?”

Yeah, he guessed so.

“More good news.” She tapped his shoulder as the truck ahead of them turned down a side road. “Look!”

They were approaching Kralendijk fast, and man, he’d never been so glad to arrive in a one-horse town in his life.