Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc 7)

“Sounds good.” Destiny whipped the car around a hairpin curve.

Ethan hoped the other car would go off the road, but it too had a skilled driver, and stayed on their tail. He leaned out the window, trying to steady his hand enough to hit something while the car was jolting over rocks or into ruts every few seconds. He fired, mentally crossing his fingers, and felt a rush of primal satisfaction when he saw the other car’s windshield explode.

But the car kept coming at them. Just as he took aim to fire again, he heard another shot, followed almost instantaneously by a second bang. Their enemy had blown out their tire.

Destiny didn’t panic as the car began to skid toward the cliff. Nor did she yank on the steering wheel, which would have made it worse. Instead, she took her foot off the gas and steered into the skid, obviously meaning to gently guide the car away from the edge once she had it under control. Even in the midst of the danger, Ethan couldn’t help admiring her cool under fire.

But she was faced with an impossible task. There wasn’t time to regain control of the car. It fishtailed, hit a rut, and skidded over the edge.

“Brace!” Ethan shouted as the car tumbled through the air.

An instant later, it landed with a tremendous crash, shattering the windshield. The force of the impact made him lose his grip on the Sig Sauer, which went flying through the broken windshield. Ice-cold water flooded in as the car began to slowly sink down. In the second it took him to realize that they must have fallen into a river or lake, the water inside the car was up to his ankles and rising.

He turned to Destiny. A fear colder than the freezing water gripped him when he saw her slumped over the steering wheel. If she’d been shot…

He felt for her pulse, and was tremendously relieved to find it strong beneath his fingers. Ethan lifted her gently, and saw blood dripping from a cut at her temple, and a matching smear of blood on the steering wheel. She must have hit her head in the crash.

The water was up to his thighs now. There was no time to waste. He unsnapped her seatbelt and his own, climbed on to the hood of the car, and lifted her into his arms. Her lower body was soaking wet and cold, but the rest of her was still warm.

He crouched atop the hood, looking and listening. By the bright light of the moon, he saw that they were in the middle of a lake in the woods, with trees obscuring the road they’d skidded off. As far as he could tell, they were as impossible to see from above as their enemies were to see from below. But the fall had been short, so it might not be hard for them to climb down.

Ethan desperately wished for a weapon, but the Sig Sauer was at the bottom of the lake and his own gun was in the locked trunk of a car that was sinking fast. He could retrieve his gun or get Destiny to safety, but not both. At least, not both before the car sank. Ethan took the keys out of the ignition and stuffed them in his pocket. He’d get her to shore, then dive for his gun. He looked for her purse in the hope of finding her cell phone, but it looked like her purse had also been thrown through the windshield when they’d crashed.

Carefully, he draped her across his shoulders. With his left arm, he held her arms and legs across his chest. Then he slipped into the icy water and began to swim, keeping himself more-or-less upright so she’d stay as dry as possible. She probably already had a concussion. It would be bad if she got hypothermia on top of it.

Ethan reached the shore, shivering. Maybe he should be worried about hypothermia. Well, if it came to that, he could make a fire by rubbing twigs together. Maybe. His wilderness survival training, not to mention his actual wilderness survival experience, had taught him that you could generally hike to somewhere with matches in the time it would take to light a fire without them.

He hurried into the woods until he was far enough in that he was sure he couldn’t be seen from either shore or above, then laid Destiny down on a bed of moss and checked her again. The dappled moonlight showed him that the cut on her temple had stopped bleeding, and when he put his ear to her chest, he could hear that she was breathing steadily.

Relieved, he straightened up and considered his options. Scoop her up and start hiking? Leave her here, run back to the lake, dive for his duffel bag, and cross his fingers he got it out before the enemies returned?

It was only then that he realized that he didn’t even know who the enemies were. He’d fallen back into combat mode so easily that it only now struck him how weird the whole thing was. They weren’t in a war zone, and gangs didn’t hang out in the middle of nowhere. He and Destiny didn’t have anything valuable, so far as he knew, except maybe the car. But carjackers wouldn’t shoot out the tires. Ethan didn’t have any personal enemies, at least none who’d try to murder him rather than punching him in the face, and he couldn’t imagine that Destiny did either.

But she was a bodyguard. She might have made some impersonal, work-related enemies. And then there were the gangsters Ellie was going to testify against. She’d told him they’d all been arrested, but had they really? Murdering the brother of a witness seemed like the sort of thing that could happen with organized crime, to send a message about the price of testifying.

Destiny’s eyelashes fluttered. She put a hand to her head, then struggled to sit up. “Owww.”

Ethan lifted her gently, letting her lean against his chest. Softly, he said, “Take it easy. The car went into a lake.”

Destiny also spoke quietly as she asked, “The people shooting at us—where are they?”

“No idea. Gone, I hope, but I’m not counting on that. Any idea who they are?”

She shook her head, then winced. “Might be the same gangsters who went after your sister. But we’ve got other enemies. Where’s my Sig Sauer?”

“At the bottom of the lake. Sorry. I could dive for it. But I think it’d be easier to get my gun. It’s in my duffel bag. Which is also at the bottom of the lake, but in the trunk of your car, so it’d be easier to find.”

“And my purse?”

“Also at the bottom of the lake.”

Her eyes widened in alarm, and her hand flew to the neckline of her low-cut dress. She felt around her left breast, then pulled out a packet of pills sealed in plastic. Destiny peered at them, shook them, and looked relieved when she saw that they were still dry.

“What are those?” Ethan asked.

From her expression, it was obviously some private medical thing. Before he could withdraw the question, she said, “Female problems. You don’t want to know.” She stuck the pills back into her dress—into her bra cup, he realized belatedly—then felt up her right breast.

“Ah-ha!” Destiny pulled out a tiny black thing, fiddled with it, then stuffed it back into her dress and grinned at him. “It’s a mini-pager. Waterproof. I just sent an alarm to the entire agency. We should get some backup in…” She glanced upward, and an odd expression crossed her face. Then she shrugged, apparently trying not to laugh. “Possibly very soon.”