Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (29 page)

Her voice cracked. “Please hurry.”

I pressed the pedal a little harder against the floor, weaving in and out of traffic. I was going faster than they’d have dared, because I didn’t give a shit if the police started chasing me. I passed a side road on my left, then another.
Too soon.
But the next one felt about right. I hauled on the wheel and cut the corner, bouncing across the sidewalk. “I’m getting close,” I told her. “Just hang on!”

I cut around a truck and roared on up the road. It led towards an old industrial area—where were they taking her? Why had they taken her at all, instead of killing her? They must want to figure out who she’d told about Kerrigan’s plot.

My stomach churned: they were going to interrogate her.

And then, in the distance, I saw tail lights I recognized. I had to come up with a plan—fast. Somehow, I had to stop the car without killing Emily in the process. And I had to do it fast enough that they didn’t have time to shoot me.

“Emily?” I said. “I can see you.” I heard her gasp of relief. “Listen: I want you to move around so you’re facing the rear of the car, okay?”

I heard her moving around. I fastened my seatbelt while she did it. Lightning lit up the clouds and it looked to be only a few miles away. The storm was going to hit us soon.

“Okay,” Emily said, sounding panicked.

I was gaining fast on the car, now. “Alright. Now press your back hard against the back wall of the trunk. Really jam yourself against it, so you can’t move.”

“Okay,” she said after a few seconds. “Done.” Her voice was tight with fear. “Why?”

I accelerated past the car Emily was in, then pulled in so I was directly ahead of it. “Because you’re going to stop very suddenly,” I told her.

And I slammed on the brakes.

A lot happened very quickly. My SUV screeched almost to a stop, but didn’t have time to stop completely before the car Emily was in rammed into me from behind. Then I was coughing and choking on smoke and a big, soft, white thing filled my vision. It took me a couple of seconds for me to realize the airbag had gone off. For a few seconds, everything was still, the two cars just sitting there hissing steam on the quiet street.

I got my door open and stumbled out of the car. Despite the airbag and the seatbelt, my neck hurt like hell.

The other car was a wreck. They’d piled straight into the back of me and steam was hissing from the hood. The driver and passenger were both dead: neither had had time to put on their belts and they’d slammed straight into the windshield.

The guys in the back had survived, though, and I had to deal with them first, before I risked getting Emily out of the trunk.
Emily!
Was she even alive? She could be lying there, hurt or dying while I wasted time on these—

I felt the rage descend, hot and red and all-powerful. The rage I’d been trying to hold back ever since I took this job, the rage Emily was so good at helping me control.

For once,
for once,
I could let it out.

I marched towards the car. The first guy was just climbing out of the back seat, the rear door open between us. I kicked it as hard as I could and he staggered back, sandwiched between the door and the car body. Before he could get free, I grabbed his collar and hauled him off his feet and over the door, then slammed him into the ground.
That’s one.

Another guy was getting out on the other side. He was out before I could reach him, raising his gun. He probably expected me to duck back behind cover. He wasn’t expecting me to lower my head and just charge at him, yelling at the top of my lungs. He shot once and missed. Then my shoulder whumped into his stomach and we landed on the ground with me on top. My fist hit his face before he could recover.
That’s two.
But I didn’t recognize either of their faces. Where was Powell, the leader? Had he been one of the guys in the front?

I worked it out just in time. I turned around to see him getting out of the rear door, his gun pointed right at me. They’d squeezed three guys into the back seat, not two. “Send backup,” I heard him say into his radio. “O’Harra’s trying to get the girl back.” I dived and rolled. Bullets sprayed the car just behind me.

I grabbed a gun from one of the men I’d knocked out, ducked down at the ruined front of the car and returned fire... but the bastard ducked down behind the trunk, the one place I didn’t dare shoot.
Shit!
And it sounded like reinforcements would be arriving any minute. They were going to kill me and take Emily. Take her and—

That’s all it took. Imagining what they’d do to her.

I jumped up onto the car’s hood, then onto the roof and dived on him. We hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, both of our guns clattering to the ground. We rolled, hands clenched on each other’s shirts, both trying to get on top so we could punch. I growled in pain as we rolled over on my injured arm. Powell managed to get in one good punch in the kidneys but then I got on top and hit him across the jaw and he went limp.

I slumped over him, utterly drained. It was difficult to think through the pain in my arm, I was still woozy from the crash and I’d picked up all sorts of cuts and bruises I hadn’t even had time to notice until now.

What brought me back to reality was the sharp smell coming from Powell’s military fatigues: a tang of mould that made my nose wrinkle. I shook off the pain: I couldn’t rest yet. She needed me.

I managed to stand, stumbled around to the rear of the car and fumbled with the trunk release until it popped open. And there looking up at me was the sweetest sight I’d ever seen: Emily, pale-faced and panting in fear, but alive. She flung herself out of the trunk and into my arms and I hugged her, not giving a shit how much my arm hurt. “I am never,” I said in her ear, “
ever
going to leave you again.”

She clung even tighter to me, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You’re goddamn right you’re not.”

I heard a car in the distance, driving too fast to be just a late-night commuter. “We have to go,” I told her. “Right now. They’re coming.”

Neither car was drivable: we’d have to go on foot. As thunder rolled overhead, I pulled her towards the nearest alley. Hand in hand, we ran into the shadows.

Emily

We threaded our way through alleys for half a block and then, when we were sure there was no one following, we turned onto a street. We’d wound up in a pretty lousy area of DC, not one I’d ever visited. The shops favored security shutters and razor wire and there were a lot of homeless people around. The two of us stood out a mile: Kian was in a suit and I was in an evening dress and heels. At any other time, I would have been nervous but, given what we’d just been through, walking through a scary area of town seemed like nothing. Plus, the thunderous expression on Kian’s face probably made any potential muggers think twice.

We’d walked less than a block when a car screeched around the corner, heading straight towards us. It was close enough that I could see the guys inside had guns... and they’d seen us. Kian grabbed my hand and pulled me into an alley, running so fast I could barely keep up. I thought again about taking my heels off but the alley was littered with broken bottles.

Two turns, three, and we finally slowed. Kian kept us moving, though, putting more distance between them and us. “That wasn’t a coincidence,” he panted. “They were heading straight for us. How did they find us?”

I shook my head. I had no idea.

Until we stepped onto the next main street and I saw it, across the street. I grabbed Kian’s hand and pulled him back into the shadows, then pointed.

Kian followed my finger to the white, boxy security camera. It was high on a post where it couldn’t be tampered with, but even from here we could see its distinctive red, white and blue logo.
Rexortech.

“Oh, shit,” breathed Kian. Then the full horror of it sank in. “Oh,
shit!”

I nodded. “DC is Rexortech’s testbed city, remember? Those cameras are
all over the city
now. All with facial recognition, all feeding back to Rexortech HQ. He must have someone feeding the info to Powell and his men. Wherever we go, they’ll spot us in a couple of seconds.”

Kian looked ill. “I’ve been trying to figure something out,” he said. He took his radio off his belt and showed it to me. “Remember how all the radios suddenly stopped working at the museum?”

I nodded.

He rotated the radio to show me the Rexortech logo on the back.

“Oh my God.” I thought back to that day when the techies had swarmed all over the White House. “
Everything
is Rexortech. The radios, the phones....”

“Kerrigan’s people control it all.” Kian shook his head, sounding almost impressed. “They blocked the radio signals from the Secret Service guys inside the museum. That’s why no backup ever showed up: no one outside knew anything was wrong until it was too late.” He cast another glance at the camera. “We have to get off the street.”

“Why can’t we just go to the White House?” I asked. “Call the Secret Service, have someone come and pick us up.”

Kian shook his head. “Not yet,” he said.

“Why?”

He put his hands gently on my shoulders. “Just let me figure out what’s going on first, okay?” He had a look on his face I’d never seen before: not just worry, more like sick fear. As if he really, really hoped he was wrong about something.
What isn’t he telling me?

As we stood there staring at each other, it began to rain: I’d forgotten about the brewing storm. It started as just a few heavy drops but, within seconds, we were in a full-on downpour. The rain was freezing, the sort of big, heavy drops that soak right through your clothes. There was no shelter in the alley so Kian pulled me to his chest and wrapped his suit jacket around me. His warmth was welcome but we were still both quickly soaked.

Kian looked up and down the alley then at the camera, making a decision. “Okay,” he said. “Come on.” He pulled off his jacket and draped it over our heads as a makeshift umbrella. It would also hide our faces from the surveillance camera.

I fell into step beside him. We slipped arms around each other’s waists, our hips brushing, and that made me feel better. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“Somewhere out of sight,” he told me.

We turned onto the street and I felt the back of my neck prickle as we passed the camera. I imagined a roomful of operators somewhere scanning the camera feeds, computers flashing up alerts as they locked onto my face. If I looked up, if I stumbled on the wet sidewalk and the jacket slipped from my shoulders....

We walked for three blocks like that. After the first block, it was impossible to get any wetter but we got steadily colder and colder, the chill seeping right to our bones. We finally stopped outside the sleaziest place I’ve ever seen. Only three of the five neon letters in the
MOTEL
sign were working.

“Wait here,” Kian told me, pushing me into a dry spot beneath an overhang. “They might recognize you and I don’t want anyone to know you’re here.” He hurried into the tiny motel office.

It was several minutes before he reappeared with a key. “Sorry,” he said. “They weren’t used to renting rooms for a whole night.”

I made an
eurgh
face and followed him along a passageway, up a rusty metal staircase and to a cheap wooden door. And then, at last, we stepped out of the rain.

I hadn’t realized how tired I was until we were safe. The jacket slithered down my back and fell in a wet heap on the carpet and I just collapsed against Kian’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight, resting his chin on the top of my soaked hair. “It’s going to be okay,” he told me. “It’s going to be okay.”

But when I shifted position slightly, I felt his body stiffen in pain. I pushed back from him and looked in horror at his wounded arm: he’d been hit by a bullet outside the museum but, like my exhaustion, he’d been blocking out the pain until now.

I helped him peel off his soaked shirt. The rain had made the blood spread into a pink stain right across his left arm. When I got the shirt off, I could see the ragged wound that stretched across his bicep.