Defy (Brothers of Ink and Steel Book 3) (13 page)

“Where are you taking me?”

“Someplace safe.”

“What about the FBI agents?”

“Exactly,” he says gruffly, weaving in and out of the traffic.

“
Exactly
what!?” I suck in a frightened breath as we streak through the middle of the Louisiana State University campus. “They’re going to come after you until they catch you,” I try warning, but he doesn’t answer me.

For a moment, I study Ryder. His eyes are full of danger and intensity as he scans the road methodically. His right hand works the stick shift of the Dodge Avenger while his left grips the steering wheel. He’s not nervous or uncomfortable—just focused and determined. The way he handles and controls the car is at a professional level—he’s done this kind of driving before.

A car turns out onto the narrow road in front of us. I’m sure he’ll be forced to stop.

Ryder swerves just in time to miss a collision and rolls up onto the sidewalk, straight between two groups of students who stand gaping at the chase in shock. Even though Ryder has expertly maneuvered the car to avoid them, they leap out of the way in terror. Books and papers scatter into the air.

He careens back into the flow of traffic before the blue sedan comes out of nowhere to block the road about twenty feet ahead of us. And the distance is closing fast.

My heart is slamming in my chest, out of control.

“Ryder, I want you to stop the car and let me out,” I try to say calmly, but it comes out in a tremoring voice. This has to stop. We’re not going to come out of this alive, and Ryder still hasn’t given me any reason to truly doubt the police. If he was so worried about them, he should have just stuck around and come with us.

“Can’t do that, Farrington,” he answers plainly.

He wraps his fist around the lever of the emergency brake and yanks it up as he cranks the wheel to the right. The vehicle stops its forward motion but now slides in an arc to the left until it’s lined up side-by-side with the sedan.

Ryder drops the brake lever and slams on the gas as we pitch forward down a cross street.

The emotion, the stress, the fear—it all comes to the surface and I blow. In a frenzy, I curl around to face him, bring my legs up between us and kick and punch him over and over as hard as I can.

“I WANT TO GO WITH THE POLICE, RYDER!” I scream as I assault him with every bit of strength I have. “LET ME GO!”

The car screeches around a sharp corner, and as it does, my body is thrown against the passenger side door. From my weight, it swings open and I freefall towards the concrete.

Chapter Nine

Ryder

I watch the door come ajar from my peripheral. I grip hold of her calf and haul her back up towards me—grateful for the seatbelt still holding her snug around the waist.

“Pull it closed tight,” I say.

Farrington’s visibly shaking as she straightens her body under the belt and slams the door shut. She sits still, gulping deep breaths of air.

“Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head no and stares forward, obviously traumatized. Maybe she’ll stay put under the entire seatbelt now and
not
try jumping from the car.

One of the black SUVs has gained ground and tries ramming us.

“Get your head down, Farrington.” I don’t wait for her to comply. I reach my hand over, grab the back of her head and pull her down.

As I do, the perp in the SUV sends three bullets into the side of the car, making me careen into oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the road.

“What are they doing?” she cries in confusion. “Oh my God, they’re shooting at us!”

“I told you, you just need to trust me,” I answer.

Three cars collide in the chase’s wake, one of them rolling over into the midway. I was trying to avoid that, but it does block off the SUV.

The Red River meanders to our right. I’m only about two hundred feet away from the bridge when the actual Lousiana State Police come racing onto the scene to block my path.

I turn a sharp left, knowing they’ll follow—I have to lose them, or at least throw them off my course long enough to get Farrington safe—into a crowded shopping center.

“I’m going to be sick,” she cries, her head resting between us on the seat.

“You can sit up now.”

“Where are we?” She looks out the window. “Oh look, a Famous Footwear, I could use a new pair of heels.”

“Really?”

“Not really!” she yells at me. “What the hell are you doing?”

I grin at her snark, then swing right and cut through the space between the buildings. We shoot back out quick, and I pivot to the right again, taking a back road that will bring me up and around so I can spin up onto the bridge.

“There’s a US Marshall behind you. Are you going to stop now? Let them help us!”

“Hmm . . . let me think.” I peer into the visor mirror.

“Ryder!?”

“Don’t know him, so nope.”

“Oh my God.” She shakes her head and curls her hands into frustrated fists.

I hook through a liquor store lot. The black SUV comes barreling in from the other side and races head-on towards us.

Farrington starts screaming. I don’t blame her—we’re hemmed in on the right by parked cars and on the left by the building itself.

Braking hard, I spin to face the other way but see a black and white waiting for me.

I’m going to have to create a hole and push around him. Or . . .

“Hold onto something.” I shift into first, power rev the engine, drop the clutch like a brick and spiral hard. White smoke comes billowing up from the tires.

The Hemi growls and the rubber squeals and burns. Our car spinning in a circle creates a massive distraction of noise and smoke. Farrington’s still screaming her head off, and I think to myself this would be a lot more fucking fun if she’d just embrace the ride.

“You’re going to kill us!” she cries, holding the dashboard.

“Highly unlikely.”

My book-ends take a minute to wait and watch suspiciously. That also means people will stop from a safe distance and watch too. Going past the cop car will be the easiest—he’s the lightest of the two vehicles and easier to push out of the way.

Just before I do, a car on the other side of an empty space pulls out, leaving a hole right in the middle—nice!

Wrenching up the e-brake, I glide into position and slide like the lucky devil I am through the opening and take off like a shot back to the bridge.

Farrington turns in her seat and watches as the cop and SUV square off in the midst of the burning cloud, before bringing her eyes back to shoot me an incredulous stare.

“They told me you were just in this for the bounty. Is it true?”

“Does it look true, Farrington?” I shake my head. “I don’t give a fuck about any bounty.”

“I’m so confused! I don’t really even know who you are.”

“Yeah, and now you’ll never forget me.” I smile.

That’s when I see the barrier on the onramp to the bridge. That must’ve been tricky—the bridge is divided into two separate sections going over the Red River—each section of bridge is three lanes and one way.

Time to adapt, improvise and overcome.
I drive up and onto the median.

She cries, “What are you going to do?”

“You have an issue with trust. We should work on that,” I say as we drop off the curve and accelerate onto the bridge going
against
the oncoming flow of traffic.

Zero to sixty; sixty to eighty-five. “Hold on, baby.”

“RYDER!” Farrington yells as I shift into sixth gear.

“Right? I love the sound of the Hemi V8—gets me all hard and tingly.”

“IT’S ONE WAY!”

“Oh, you noticed.” I snake through the cars as they blare their horns and rush to the side. “No choice, Farrington.”

To my right on the other portion of bridge are a few cop cars following parallel to us.

“We have to step it up a notch.”

“A notch.” She groans, holding her head.

I punch the gas. Can’t have them erecting a barricade on the other side.

Speaking of
erections
—one hundred and ten MPH.

As soon as we’re over the river—which is fucking fast and I’m grateful for the midday traffic, since this could have gone a lot worse—we cross over to where the roads merge over dry land, and I slide back into traffic.

“Barksdale Air Force Base?” she scans the road ahead. “Why are you going there?”

I’m ahead of her and have already activated the Bluetooth call. “Rodriguez, we’re coming in like triple ghost pepper salsa.”

“Yeah, Ax-man, it’s all over the talk box.”

“Talk box is a scanner,” I tell Farrington, who smiles exaggeratedly.

“I got that.”

“We have your back.”

“I can see the welcoming committee.” There’s a line of military police Humvees across the gate with an open space for us to get through.

“Agents are waiting for you inside the chow hall. Our men will handle the local authorities,” Rodriguez says, and you can hear the grin in his voice. “It’ll be a pleasure questioning Warner, Guthrie and Oliver.”

I laugh.

“They aren’t—” Farrington starts.

“Real cops?” I finish for her. “Sure they are. Real dirty.”

We slip between the security vehicles and through the gate. 

"How did you—?" Farrington asks, still surprised. 

"'Cause I’m the best.”

"Ryder." She tilts her head in a playful way. “Full of yourself much?” 

“It comes easy when you’re as good as me.”

“How’s she doing?” I ask Rodriguez, who is my friend and a security force specialist on the Barksdale Base.

“She’s shaken up.” He develops a shit-eating-grin before he looks away from me to sip at his coffee.

“What?”

“She asks about you an awful lot.”

“I did save her life.”

“So she told us.”

I stretch back and fold my arms behind my head arrogantly, looking up at the ceiling. Rodriguez, who is a short, stocky Mexican-American with dark eyes and hair and a great sense of humor, takes a seat opposite me at the small table. Farrington and I, along with her FBI entourage, are being housed in an east military barracks wing that was cleared out for our use. It’s like a basic hotel room with a bed, couch, kitchenette and dining table for two. It’s the first time I haven’t felt on high alert since yesterday.

“All right, big shot, your hunch was correct.” He leans back in his chair. “What tipped you off?”

“First off, I planted a bug on the phone line outside of Miguel’s house. Briggs was monitoring it. Second, I didn’t trust local authorities, especially when they wanted me nowhere near her, so I followed them. Briggs heard when the call came in from Weston, the chief of police, to Miguel and they decided on a drop point for the girl. That’s when I broke her out,” I explain. “Briggs recently informed me that Weston is in FBI custody, but they had no evidence to hold the rest of his team.”

“So the Bureau believes they were acting unaware?” Rodriguez asks. “What do you think?”

“I’m not convinced,” I tell him. “But they were assholes, and I don’t like assholes.”

Rodriguez laughs. 

“When Miguel, aka Mason, learned that his cover was blown, he hauled ass while the feds froze all of Mason Enterprises’ assets.”

“I’m sure he has enough offshore and overseas accounts to keep his ass set up for a while.” I get to thinking. “You know what I don’t understand?”

“What’s that?” he asks while he removes a red and white pack of Marlboro’s from his jacket pocket.

I almost drool as he flips the boxed lid—I can smell the tobacco waft from the box.

“You going to light that up right here?” My feeling of earlier triumph is a bit squelched. “You’re already flaunting your coffee.”

“Like you were just flaunting your heroics?” He rolls his eyes. “Still trying to quit?”

“Not trying, I have.”

“It shouldn’t bother a tough guy like you.” He rolls the flint wheel of the lighter.

“Dude, you’re a dick.”

“Fine, pussy lips, I’ll wait and do it outside.” He laughs. “Now, what was it you didn’t understand?”

“Why didn’t he simply have Farrington killed? Think about it—she said she overheard his men talking about how they were keeping her pristine for a sex-slave buyer in Mexico that would help pay off Miguel’s botched drug deal debt to Cruz—the one Drew Jameson created with his theft—while at the same time getting rid of the key witness.”

“That isn’t farfetched.”

“No, it’s not—she’s a beautiful, young, intelligent and fiery university student who would give the buyer quite a fight. But when they had the opportunity to kill her and be done with her when she was in Weston’s custody, why did they take so much risk and trouble to get her back? They could have easily just killed her, eliminating the only eyewitness to Jameson’s murder.” I consider the implications. “Honestly, with the amount of money Mason Enterprises is raking in, surely Miguel could fix the wrong with Cruz financially and simply do away with his witness.”

“Maybe she heard wrong,” he suggests. “Miguel could’ve been saving her for himself.”

“That’s a theory.”

A brisk knock at the door steals our attention. Rodriguez answers it. I’m surprised to see it’s my longtime friend and colleague, Agent Jones. As always, he’s dressed simply but impeccably, wearing a standard pressed gray suit.

I stand up and extend my hand to greet him. “Jones, it’s good to see you. I had no idea you were working on this case.” His dark hand folds around mine. Jones has the build of a linebacker, stands a head taller than me and looks like he could chew bad guys up and spit them out just as quick. Not for the first time, I decide I’m glad he’s on my side.

“Farrington’s a high-profile case. I asked to get in on the action,” he says. Then he gives me a pointed stare followed by a sardonic smile. “Speaking of Farrington, she’s asking to see you.”

Rodriguez rolls his eyes.

“It’s hard work being a hero. You know, I think it’s a good time for you to get that nicotine fix,” I say to him. Then to Jones, “Let’s go.”

Rachel