Protecting Dallas

Goddamn it, this is crazy…

It was crazy. The streets were full of cars, the sidewalks teeming with people. I could hear the screech of the Jeep’s tires are it tore around Village Center Circle, nearly rising up on two wheels as we bore down on it.

Dallas’s expression was all grim determination. She was slipping between gaps in traffic. Drifting from lane to lane. Every move she made was within inches of disaster. At this point I was afraid to even talk to her, for fear of breaking her concentration.

Holy shit we’re gaining.

Coming up on the Jeep’s side, our bumpers were growing dangerously close. I pulled my sidearm from its holster. I didn’t even know what I was going to do with it…

Dallas brushed the hair back from her face with one quick movement. Her expression was livid. I saw her lips curl back in a snarl, and suddenly I knew what she was going to do.

“Dallas, NO!”

She yanked the wheel viciously, and there was an abrupt and irrevocable connection. Our bumper bit hard into the back of the Jeep…

… and it turned perpendicular to the road going seventy miles per hour.

HOLYSHITTTTT…

I gasped in horror, watching as the vehicle’s tires caught. It flipped sideways, end over end… cartwheeling through traffic like some hellish projectile, shedding bits and pieces of metal and plastic along the way.

She pumped the brakes, and we both lurched forward. The Jeep kept on flipping, over and over again. Spurred on by sheer momentum, and the fact it had practically been torn sideways in the span of half a heartbeat.

“FUCKERS.”

I glanced over at her as we skidded to a halt. Dallas’s eyes were wild and venomous. And they didn’t contain even the slightest bit of remorse.

“Dallas…”

She didn’t respond, at least not right away. I’d seen looks like hers on the battlefield. Looks on the faces of allies and comrades who’d lost people before, and who were now exacting some kind of payback for their loved ones.

“DALLAS!”

She barely reacted as I took her hand. I placed it back on the steering wheel.

“We have to go,” I said. Traffic was already piling up around us. In a few moments, we’d be boxed in. “NOW, Dallas!”

She blinked rapidly a few times, and I had her back again. Turning quickly onto the shoulder we zoomed away, riding the curve. We took the first exit, just in time to avoid the lights and sirens: a half-dozen or more emergency vehicles, racing toward the scene of the accident.

My phone started ringing the second I pulled it out again. I punched the speaker button.

“Tell me something good.”

“Can’t,” Austin called back, loud and low. I could hear the disappointment in his voice already. “We lost em’.”

Twenty-One

DALLAS

The ride home in the back seat was leather and shadow. All gunpowder and steel, sweat and adrenaline.

Oh yeah, and blood.

Maddox was sporting three separate bullet wounds, but thankfully not one of them was even remotely life-threatening. Two of them were superficial; parallel scratches at the edge of one deltoid muscle. The third was a hole blown clear through his shoulder, but the bullet had entered and exited above the bone, but beneath the muscle.

“Lucky bastard,” Kane sneered, from the front seat this time. Austin drove, while I kept pressure on the injury.

“He’s always lucky,” said Austin with a chuckle. “Remember that time in Kosovo…”