Chayton (19 page)

Anton.
There was no mistaking his wayward dark hair or the hook in his nose. His gait was that of a man hell bent on a mission, which was typical where Anton was concerned. Dressed in a suit, as were his henchmen, he gave off the air of someone important and of means.

Spinning on a heel, Kate dashed for her purse and her keys. She stuffed a few clothes into her bag, leaving the rest, and all but flew out the door of the hotel room.

Forced to go on the run with little notice, just like the last time, she headed for the back staircase instead of the elevator. Counting off how much time it would take Anton to convince the hotel clerk to give him her room number, and the ride up in the elevator, she figured she had perhaps eight minutes to make a clean get away.

Thank God she'd been staring out the window. If not, Anton would have had her cornered in her room.

Descending with as much speed as she dared, the bag banging against her hip, Kate hit the back door and darted out into the waning daylight. It was a risk to run to her car, which was parked several rows over from the white sedan in the same lot, but she had no choice. The car was her best chance of escape.

At the driver's door, she fumbled the keys and nearly dropped them.

“C'mon, Kate. C'mon',” she whispered. Finding the right key, she slid it into the lock and opened the door.

“Hey!”

Kate didn't so much as glance in the direction of the shout. Anton must have left one of his henchmen outside. Starting the Camaro with a roar, she reversed out of the parking space, almost clipping the thigh of a man who was suddenly
right there
at her window.

“Hey!” He banged a fist on the window and grabbed for the door handle.

Kate reversed faster, wheeling around so far that she almost hit the car behind her. Jamming the car into gear, she shot forward, leaving the henchman running after her bumper.

Periphery picked up two more men—Anton and his other accomplice—dashing
out the doors of the hotel.

Damn.
Damn.

This wouldn't give her nearly the head start she needed. Turning onto the street with a screech of tires, she stomped the gas and shot away from the parking lot. Just as she took a left turn—against the light, God help her—she saw the white sedan shoot out of the lot in the rearview mirror, fishtailing as it roared onto the road.

Missing an oncoming car by a narrow margin, Kate got the Camaro going in the direction of the highway, which was a mere two blocks ahead. She swerved onto the onramp, picking up speed quickly.

Merging with traffic, heart pounding in her chest, she got on the gas again, pushing the speed limit and more.

Kate knew she was going to have a tough time losing Anton on the freeway. His driver was probably a lot more aggressive behind the wheel than she was. It didn't slow her down. Catching up to traffic, she veered between cars, trying to make Anton's white sedan—several lengths back—lose sight of her. If she could get off the highway again without him seeing her, Anton would probably waste precious miles chasing thin air while she took cover elsewhere in the city.

There wasn't enough traffic at this time of day to make it happen. And the white sedan was coming up fast, blowing past an SUV, a Corvette and a beat up old truck.

Somewhere behind the sedan, another car was speeding through the maze of traffic, swerving in and out and even into the emergency lane.

More of Anton's thugs. She imagined both cars boxing her in and forcing her to the side of the road. At the very last second, when the final offramp for the city flashed ahead, Kate cut across all lanes, causing several cars behind her to brake hard, smoke curling off the asphalt. The vehicles wound up sitting cockeyed in the road until the drivers recovered and slowly started forward again. With such chaos, Anton and the other SUV were forced to slow down.

Speeding down the offramp, nearly out of control with the gas pegged down, Kate fought the wheel and barely made the corner at the stop light. The back end of the Camaro swung wide, and Kate clenched her teeth, prepared for impact. Shooting forward, maintaining control by a hairsbreadth, Kate frantically searched for somewhere to hide the car. Horns honking in the distance behind her let her know that Anton was still coming.

Taking the first right, she got onto a service road that ran parallel to the freeway. It was an older road, with several potholes that bounced her around inside the car. Buildings fell away, leaving just stretches of golden desert instead of a city.

In the rearview, the white sedan gained on her.

She hadn't lost Anton at all.

Even the black SUV had almost caught up to the sedan, giving Anton the advantage of two cars against one.

Kate got on the gas again, holding onto the wheel with both hands. She didn't like going this fast, hated the way the landscape whipped past in a blur out the windows. It felt too much like the edge of control could be lost at any second.

The gauge tipped past ninety. Ninety-five.

From a scrub bush on the side of the road, from the right, something darted onto the asphalt. All Kate saw was a glimpse of a long tail and fur. A scream erupted as she turned the wheel and stood on the brakes, sending the Camaro into a hard fishtail, and then onto the dirt and gravel.

Her world tipped hard to the right as the front wheel dipped into a shallow ravine, and then she was spinning. Tumbling, as if someone had tossed her and her car into a dryer, bouncing over and over like weightless toys.

. . .

“That has to be them.” Chayton, sitting forward in the seat of the SUV, gripped the dashboard while he watched a cherry red Camaro peel out of the hotel parking lot. A white sedan followed, careening recklessly into traffic.

“I agree. Who else would be driving that chaotically from this particular hotel,” Mattias said from the back seat.

Leander, behind the wheel, got on the gas even though the light at the intersection was red. He dodged an oncoming car, got held up by a pedestrian who decided to cross after the speeding sedan, and finally had a straight shot down the road. He picked up speed as the cars ahead ducked through traffic, nearly causing a collision at the next light.

Chayton hissed. “If only I had her phone number. We've got to catch that other car.”

“I'm trying, old man. I'm trying.” Leander ran another red light, forced to slow down so
he
didn't cause an accident as well. Once he got onto the onramp, he picked up speed, gaining quickly on the sedan.

“How do you want to do this?” Mattias asked.

“I'm not sure. Disable the white sedan for sure. But we don't know if Anton or his driver is armed, which makes it riskier.” Chayton had seen at least two people in the white car as it shot out of the hotel parking lot. Other than that, he wasn't sure how many more men might be in the back seat thanks to the tinted windows.

“There might be more men in the back, too,” Mattias said, as if reading Chayton's mind.

“Yes. But we've got to get him off her tail.” He considered the situation as they merged onto the highway. “Why don't we ram him? Try to pick a spot where he's not too close to her, or too close to other traffic.”

“That's probably our only option. If we shoot out the tires, we're going to have the police here a lot sooner than we'd like,” Mattias added.

“We'll be lucky if someone doesn't call anyway,” Leander said, veering around a slower moving vehicle. He sped up again, gaining on the sedan. “So, ram it?”

“Yes. Try to just make them spin out, rather than drive them totally off the road.” Chayton checked his weapon, assuring himself the safety was off and a round was in the chamber. In the back, Mattias did the same.

“All right, as soon as we pass these—what the
hell!
” Leander cursed as the Camaro suddenly cut across all the lanes, forcing other cars to slam on the brakes or collide. He hit the brakes, too, cursing as he narrowly missed the Corvette.

“She's getting off the freeway! And there goes Anton, right behind her.” Chayton threw out his own curse as Leander corrected and sped after the sedan. At least Anton or his driver had also got caught up in the sudden braking of so many cars, forcing him to slow down. It helped the SUV close the distance.

“Catch up as soon as you can, Leander, and get Anton off her tail. She's getting desperate,” Mattias said, hanging onto the front seat with one hand.

“Working on it,” Leander said. He spun into a turn at the light, then barreled down a service road, making up good ground between the SUV and the sedan.

“Good, good. We'll get him right up here,” Chayton said. He was tempted to lean out the window and shoot the tires out
anyway.
They were leaving the town behind and the chances of coming across other cars on this road were slim. Chayton wasn't sure where the road ended, but he wanted to get Anton off Kate's bumper before she had to make any more hard decisions.

The next thing he knew, the Camaro was fishtailing in the road, then
off
the road, and into a shallow ditch.

“
No
!” he shouted, as the Camaro dipped, then caught air and rolled, the velocity forcing two rotations before miraculously landing hard on all four wheels. The crash happened in a world that had slowed to a crawl for Chayton, seconds ticking by like hours. The thud-and-snap of metal preceded a final slam into the desert, dirt kicking up from the impact.

The sedan, following the Camaro at a high rate of speed, braked hard, sending it into a spin. Slamming into a light pole, the hood popped open, the entire passenger door crumpling toward the middle of the vehicle.

It was an ugly series of accidents, scarring the otherwise calm day with armageddon-like noises.

Leander brought the SUV to a halt on the side of the road with a bark of tires on asphalt. Chayton was moving even before the vehicle came to a complete stop. He threw open the door and jumped out. “Call 911,” he said before he ran for Kate's smoking car.

Just for a moment, Chayton hoped they were all wrong, and this
wasn't
Kate's car. Or, if it was, maybe someone else had hopped in and Anton pursued because he thought she was the driver. Those and many other thoughts tore through his mind as his boots thudded from the road onto the dry desert dirt. He didn't want to arrive and find Kate dead. Whatever else they needed to work out, Chayton didn't want this to be the end. All he could remember was her fire the night he'd met her, the care she took with his stitches, the way he sometimes caught her looking at him. The passionate night they'd spent in bed. He remembered the gazes they'd traded in the moonlight that said a lot more than words ever could.

“Chayton, Chayton,” Mattias said when he caught up. Holding onto his elbow, he brought Chayton to a halt.

Chayton met Mattias's eyes. He knew what his friend was going to say before he said it.

“Do you want me to go first?” Mattias asked.

Chayton glanced at the Camaro. He couldn't see the driver from this angle, or whether there were passengers. No bodies littered the ground, and for that he was thankful. He wasn't sure how he would handle it if he came upon Kate mangled and unrecognizable. It would be the last way he remembered her, he knew, whatever he found there.

“Yeah, yeah.” Chayton hung back as Mattias jogged around the corner of the car toward the front. Somewhere behind him, he could hear Leander on the phone with emergency services. Without having to look, he also knew Leander was checking on the status of the other car's occupants.

“Chayton!” Mattias called. “It's Kate. She's alive.”

Running around the end of the Camaro, Chayton came up on Mattias's flank. The prince, bent down near the driver's window, pried at a deflated air bag. He could see Kate, strapped into the seat with her belt tight across her body, head lolling to the side. Unconscious, not dead. A little blood trickled from her hairline and her cheek was discolored with the start of a bruise. She was in much better shape than he thought she'd be. Chayton bent down, reaching in to smooth a lock of hair gently away from her temple. The strands, wet with blood, stuck to her skin.

“Kate, I'm here. Can you hear me? We've called emergency services and they'll get you out. Just hold on. Hold on, baby.” Chayton thought she looked pale and fragile, but then, he reminded himself, anyone in this predicament probably would. It didn't mean she was dying.

The crunch of shoes on dirt announced Leander's arrival. “Anton's dead. No question. The guy in the back seat, too, but the driver's hanging on. Barely. Rescue should be here shortly.”

“Good, good. She's alive but unconscious.” Chayton knew better than to move her before the ambulance and other rescue workers got there. A small part of Chayton mourned the missed opportunity to deal with Anton himself. The other part only felt relief that Anton was gone, a threat to Kate no longer.

In the distance, sirens began to wail. Soon, fire trucks, ambulances and police cars sat scattered on the road. Rescue workers struggled to free Kate and the lone survivor of the sedan crash. While Chayton hovered at the backs of the rescuers, he heard snippets of conversation from officers behind him.
No seat belts worn in the sedan. The survivor was lucky. Airbags. Name is Kate Fair----. Pursued. Hotel. Hospital.
The words and sentences ran together, overlapping until he drowned it all out. Mattias and Leander answered what questions they could, filling in the police about the situation. Chayton could do nothing but watch as rescuers pulled Kate's body out of the Camaro, her thin frame secured to a board.

“I want to ride with her,” Chayton said, following the personnel to the open back doors of the ambulance.

“Sure, sure. Hop in,” one of the EMTs said.

Chayton called back to Mattias and Leander, letting them know where he was going, then climbed in.

Hunkering down in the tight confines, he stayed out of the way while the EMTs hooked up monitors and took vital signs. Keeping her alive en route to the hospital.