Wings to the Kingdom (Eden Moore 2)

“Get out,” Pete backed Orin up. “Hurry up. ”

Ryan’s hand lost its grip on the vinyl seat, and he pitched forward. “I need help, man. What are you doing? What do you want?”

Orin reached in and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him forward—though only by a few inches.

He wasn’t a huge kid, but he was solid and scared. He put his hands out to brace himself—to make himself as big as possible so as not to be dragged out of the cab. One leg thrust up behind him, and he snared his foot around the steering wheel.

“Goddamn it, come out now!” Orin commanded, but the kid wasn’t having any of it.

Ryan peeled Orin’s hand off his shoulder and jammed his own fist into the other man’s face. It wasn’t a punch, exactly, but the closed-fingered shove hurt enough to make Orin mad.

Pete stood aside while they wrestled, the wounded boy getting enough adrenaline to put up a decent fight against Orin, who was trying to juggle the shotgun and his own agenda. Years ago, Pete had watched his mother try to shove a large, violently reluctant puppy into a small carrier to go to the vet. This looked just like that, but in reverse.

He might’ve laughed if he weren’t getting worried.

The kid in the truck didn’t seem too impressed by the gun, and he was fighting like it wasn’t even there in the cab. It could’ve been that he was still in shock from the wreck, but Pete thought he looked beefy, like a boy who’d spent a lot of time outside. If he was the kind of kid who was used to being around guns, the sight of one wouldn’t have intimidated him into complacency.

“Pete, you son of a bitch,” Orin swore.

Pete wanted to bash the other man’s head in for using his name, but he answered, “What?” anyway and took a step or two closer.

“Help me out here, man. Or are you just going to stand there?”

Ryan had not noticed the second man until Pete spoke, and the sudden knowledge that he was outnumbered made him more desperate. He flailed harder, and righted himself

so that his legs and arms both were facing out, kicking and swinging.

“Help!” he yelled. “Somebody help me!”

Orin yelled back, “Shut up!” as if it made any difference.

The radio was blaring still, turned up way too loud and way too hard on a station that played nothing but music Pete hated to hear.

The kid was thrashing like a hooked bass, and Orin was on the verge of losing the gun in the fray or of having it go off in his face—Pete wasn’t sure which was more likely. Either way, another car could be along any minute, someone may have heard the wreck and called the cops already, and the kid knew Pete’s first name.

This was turning out to be a very bad idea—right up there with running cars to Canada.

“Orin”—he used the name for retribution’s sake—“this is bad. Forget it, we’ll think of something else. ”

“What’re you doing…using my name for, you fucker? You think he can’t hear you or something?” He got another grip on Ryan’s shoulder and was forced to drop the gun in order to keep it. The fat-barreled thing clattered to the ground beneath them, but didn’t fire. “Cover me, you useless bastard, cover me!”

Orin had a pair of good handholds then, one on each of Ryan’s shoulders. All it would take was one good backwards heave and the kid would be successfully birthed from the vehicle.

The DJ came on as a song ended, and he chatted merrily about concert tickets while the struggle raged. Pete wished to God the kid’s hip or knee would knock the radio in and shut it off.

“Get him out, man. Get him out and hurry up. ”

“I’m working on it!” Orin bellowed, and Ryan shouted over them both for help from anyone within hearing distance.

“This is gone bad, Orin. It’s gone bad. If you can’t get him out, let him go, for Christ’s sake!”

The suggestion enraged Orin and invigorated the bleeding kid, who wrenched himself back into the cab and kicked against everything that appeared in the passenger’s side door space.

Orin blasphemed something unintelligible and snared one whipping ankle. He braced one of his legs against the seat and the other against the truck’s frame and lunged back for all he was worth, which was maybe two hundred pounds—which was enough to get him halfway to where he wanted to be.

Ryan’s legs and most of his ass came sliding out, but he still hung on to the gear shift, to the window frame, to the seat belt—to anything he could hold.

“You’ve almost got him!” Pete said, but wasn’t sure whether or not to be happy about it.