“Why don’t we swap info first?” Gretchen suggested. She knew by now that something was off—no matter what color their car really was. She wanted to push this to the breaking point.
She hated to admit it,
but the Marshals weren’t that cool. No one would be that excited to just meet some of them.
“We’re sort of... between insurance companies right now.”
“Just your driver’s licenses, then,” she said. “Because—and golly, I sure don’t mean to be rude—your car really did a number to my bumper. Not to mention my partner’s head.”
The two men traded glances.
Something in the air seemed to change. Gretchen felt her muscles clench up.
“Well, now that I think about it,” the first man said slowly, “I guess we do have a kind of insurance.”
Behind her, a car door swung open, and Cooper’s voice broke the tense silence: “Is everybody saying ‘gee whillikers’ and stuff like that, or am I losing my mind?”
Gretchen couldn’t control the relief that washed over her. She even felt her muscles relax—she was still ready to spring into action, but she was no longer locked-up and rigid with tension. He just sounded so reassuringly normal and familiar, like he was as bemused as she was at the cutesy, corny innocent act these two were putting on and all of this was just a joke that they were sharing.
The eruption of gunfire was almost like the punchline.
Gretchen drew her weapon. “Cooper, take cover!”
She ducked behind the open car door and was already shooting back, but all her return fire seemed to be going wild, way off the mark. Her scores on the range had always been just about perfect, and she’d never had a problem in the field.
She had no idea what was going on. Her vision was fine—until she looked at the two targets she was trying to hit. Then all bets were off, and it was like she was peering through a kaleidoscope. Everything was swimmy, fractured into separate pieces of light, and the view made her feel sick to her stomach.
She couldn’t back away from this. Cooper was counting on her. She squinted hard into the face of the mass of swirling colors and tried to pull them apart into separate shapes. It gave her a headache so bad it was like rusty teeth were sinking into her temples, but she could almost get it—
Then she tumbled forward, dry-heaving onto the ground.
She had a split second’s awareness that the whole top half of her body was now sticking out from behind the cover of the car door, and then Cooper grabbed a double-handful of her coat and pulled her back to safety. His face had gone ashen. He turned around, pressing Gretchen between him and the car, shielding her with his body. They were both crouched and shaking
He was so warm.
“I can’t see,” she managed to say. “I can’t see them at all.”
“Neither can I.” He leaned forward, resting his forehead briefly against hers. With his hands still cuffed in front of them, this was probably just the easiest way for him to comfort her; she couldn’t even know that it meant anything to him. But the intimacy and tenderness of it shook her to her core.
This was a bad time to be shaken to her core, considering the situation. She tried to clear her head. “If we can’t hit them, we can’t fight. That leaves flight.”
“Flight,” Cooper repeated. He looked almost wistful. Then he nodded, back to normal again. “Got it. You get back in and I’ll follow you.”
“They’re running!” one of the men yelled, and the barrage of gunfire only intensified. The dizzy, muddled part of her vision got closer and closer as she heard footsteps grate across the snowy asphalt.
The shooters were coming for them.
“Don’t wait for me,” Gretchen said. She moved in a duck-walk towards the driver’s side door.
Cooper completely refused to get in before her. He was still covering her, making sure any bullet meant for her would have to go through him first.
She slammed the car door behind her and saw Cooper fling himself in the backseat.
Something was strange about all this. Well, everything was strange about all this, but there was something that was on the tip of her tongue:
The men in the car had her in plain sight before she’d been able to get behind the car door. Unless they were the world’s worst shots, they should have killed her by now. And they weren’t the world’s worst shots. She wasn’t riddled with bullets, but the car door was. If it hadn’t been reinforced for law enforcement work, it would have given up the ghost already.
These men were perfectly good shots—which meant that she hadn’t been who they were aiming at.