My shots hit the passenger side mirror, leaving it dangling by a cable. Bright bursts of light flash in the darkness as our pursuers fire again, falling back a little to get a better shot at our tires.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
Theo’s curses furiously as the left side of the car dips this time. We’ve lost both our back tires, and I can feel the drag. Despite the revving roar of the engine, our speed slows.
With a feral scream, I squeeze the trigger two more times, then duck as the cars behind us return fire.
“Look for a side street,” Marcus barks at Theo, firing off another round. “We need to get off this drag before they box us in.”
A bullet whizzes through the broken back window before Theo can answer, clipping his arm. He lets out a grunt of pain, and the car jerks sideways as he loses his tight grip on the wheel for a second.
“Theo?” I scream over the chaos around me.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Fuck!”
Just ahead of us, another street intersects the one we’re on. It looms into view too late for Theo to make the turn, but as we fly past it, another car engine revs.
A dark sedan barrels out of the darkness, T-boning the two cars that are following us. Metal screeches as the two cars sideswipe each other, pressed together by the force of the third car’s assault.
They skid sideways, and one of them is forced off the road entirely, nearly rolling as it hits the small ditch that runs along the road’s shoulder. The other ends up half on and half off the road, and the silver car comes to a stop in the middle of the road, its hood bent and contorted.
Sudden silence falls as the roar of engines fades and the pop, pop, pop of gunshots dies away. Theo screeches to a stop, glancing over his shoulder at the wreck behind us.
“What the fuck?”
“Whoever that was, were they aiming for us?” I ask, my voice sounding thin and strained.
“I dunno.” He shoves open his door. “But we need their car. The hood’s crunched, but it’s got four working tires.”
I open my door too, scrambling out along with the men. Theo pops the trunk, and Marcus grabs a laptop bag out of it, not even bothering to shut it again. The expensive fabric of my dress drags on the dirty asphalt, but I pay no attention as we all run back toward the site of the crash.
Groans rise up from the car that was directly hit by the silver one, and a second later, the barrel of a gun pokes out through the smashed up window. Several shots ring out, and a bullet whizzes by my head.
“Fuck! Get down!”
Marcus doesn’t take his own advice, racing ahead of us with his arm braced straight out, firing several shots toward the vehicle and forcing whoever’s inside to duck out of sight.
The silver car is in the middle of the road where it stopped after colliding with the other two. Theo was right. The hood is banged up, but I hope like hell it’s still drivable.
With Marcus and Ryland covering us, we reach it quickly. Theo yanks the door open and grunts.
“Dominic Roth. Son of a bitch.”
The dark-haired man is slumped over the wheel
, blood trickling down the side of his face. I don’t know if he’s alive, and I honestly don’t care right now. All I care about is getting the fuck out of here. More shots are flying toward us, making me certain that the occupants of both other cars survived the crash.
Others will be coming. Victoria and Adrian are still out there, and neither of them will be sitting this fight out. We may have lost them in the chase, but they’ll do whatever they can to track us down.
Theo seems to be of the same mind I am, because he doesn’t even check for a pulse. He just shoves Dominic’s limp body over onto the passenger seat, then gets behind the wheel.
Ryland wrenches open the back passenger door and helps me inside before he and Marcus slide in too. Marcus rolls down the window and fires another shot at the crashed vehicles as Theo whips our stolen car around and heads down the side street it emerged from.
The engine whines pitifully as he lays on the gas, but even though wisps of smoke rise from beneath the crumpled hood, the car doesn’t give out. He leaves the headlights off, turning onto another street, then another, until I have no fucking idea which direction we’re driving. I trust that he does though, leaving the navigation to him as I turn to look out the back window.
Little cuts pepper my skin from the shards of glass that littered Theo’s back seat, but I barely feel the sting. The back window of this car is intact, and I peer out onto the dimly lit street behind us.
“There’s no one.” I let out a shaky breath. “We lost them.”