“They’re swollen,” he murmured. “I’d say I’ll be gentler next time I kiss you, but I’d be lyin’.”
Her breasts heaved as she sucked in a sharp breath at his words.
Driving back to the exit to get on the highway lulled him into a sense that everything would be okay. He’d get Pippa safe. Even the weather was cooperating, the deep gray snow clouds breaking up to create an expanse of white sky.
As they entered the roadway, he checked his side mirror—and spotted a vehicle flying up next to him. He braked but not before they were cut off.
Pippa gasped and braced a hand on the dash.
He saw the driver of the other vehicle raise his arm. In a blink, Ross assessed the danger.
“Get down!” he barked to Pippa.
She folded in half as a volley of bullets sprayed his truck. He whipped out his weapon to defend them. Roman hit the gas and zoomed by in pursuit. Ross’s phone buzzed.
“Where the hell did they come from?” Roman demanded.
“No fucking clue. I’m hanging back. I can’t put my ward in the line of fire.” No sooner did the words leave his mouth that he glanced in his rearview to see another vehicle bearing down on him. Roman took off after the shooters in a high-speed chase, which left Ross on his own.
“What’s going on?” Pippa cried.
“Don’t lift your head. Stay. Down.” He stomped the gas to outrun the asshole coming at them from behind. All his tactical training kicked in. He gauged distance, speed and calculated the velocity of his bullet.
“Ross!”
“I’m handling it. Just do as I say,” he commanded her.
Up ahead Roman and the other car were engaged in a rolling shootout, and if Ross didn’t get the hell away from this other pursuer, he’d be in the same situation with Pippa.
“Hold on.” He hit a speed of eighty. Then eighty-five. The vehicle kept up. Why had he agreed to take this highway? On a back road, he’d have side roads to jump on and lose this motherfucker.
Pippa’s labored breathing reached into his brain and snapped his focus to her.
“Take slow breaths. You’re hyperventilating.”
“Wynton, what’s your status?” Roman’s voice came at him.
“Holding my own. Can’t shake this guy off my tail.”
“Try to cut across the median and into the eastbound lane.”
“Never make it through that deep snow. I’m going to take a shot,” Ross said.
Pippa issued a strangled cry.
If he could hit a tire, he’d make a getaway.
He also ran the risk of being shot in return.
“I’ll get you first, you bastard. Come on.” He let off the gas, dropping back to allow the pursuer to catch up. As soon as he had the car within firing range, he hit the brakes. The truck went into a skid, the back end fishtailing to the right as they started into a donut.
“Oh God!” Pippa screamed.
Ross had a perfect shot. He’d never fired through a windshield before, but he’d seen it demonstrated. His stare jumped between the rear tire of the vehicle to the figure in the driver’s seat.
The truck continued in its skid, but he had control. As they swung past the vehicle, he fired.
* * * * *
Pippa had never hyperventilated in her entire life. Not when she was on that swinging bridge over a precipice during her time in Asia and she realized just how deep her fear of heights ran. Not even after her attack in the airport, though she’d been dizzy from breathing so hard.
The truck seemed to spin. Then she realized it really was spinning on the roadway. If being out of control wasn’t scary enough, the shots Ross fired made her blood run cold in her veins. She lifted her head to see him firing straight through the windshield.
“Get down!”
She dropped her face to her knees again, fear an icy cloak. She started to shiver.
More popping sounds had her heart stalling in her chest.
“They’re shooting at us!” she cried out.
Ross said nothing—he was engaged in a battle for their lives. He brought the truck out of the donut with all the ease of a stunt driver. Which way was which? Without her vision, for all she knew, they were facing backward on the road.
“Holy shit!” he burst.
“What’s happening?”
“Stay down! Roman drove that other vehicle off the road and it just flipped about eight times.”
“Is Roman okay?”
The man’s voice projected through Ross’s speakers. “I’m fine. Even the jaws of life can’t help that bastard, though.”
“I have to get us out of this situation.” Ross’s voice was tight.
Next thing she knew the vehicle surged forward, picking up speed by the second. Terror had Pippa clinging to the seat, her fingers aching from holding on so tight.
She wished she could see what was happening. Anticipating them flipping eight times like that other vehicle, or Ross being shot, tore her apart with terror.
A whir of a window going down stood the hair up on her nape. Freezing air rushed over her.
Ross fired five shots in a row. “Yes!”
She couldn’t resist jerking upright, danger or not. She swept her gaze over the roadway to see they were facing forward, and the other vehicle zigzagged all over the place before leaving the road.
The vehicle hit the snow humped on the side from the snowplow and launched upward. Flipped. And continued to roll.
“Hell yeah!” Roman exclaimed as he spotted the victory.
She threw a look at Ross. His jaw clenched into a steel vise, but he didn’t speak or look her direction.
“I have to get us the fuck off this road. Roman, get us on a better route.”
“Got it. Follow me.”
As Ross drove by the wreckage, she turned to try to make out any survivor.
“Did you…shoot the driver?” Her voice wobbled.
“Yes.” How he slipped the syllable out between his tight jaw, she had no clue.
“How did they find us? What is happening?”
“Pippa, give me your phone.”
Her eyes widened. Her phone?
She scrabbled in her bag and held it up. “Why?”
“Hand it to me.”
“It’s my personal device. I don’t think anyone—”
The blazing fury in his eyes stopped her.
Gulping, she held out the phone. Was it possible someone was tracking her through it?
He dropped it to the floor by his feet, jerked his knee upward and then crushed her phone under his boot. Several stomps later, he reached down and lifted the busted remains. He opened the window and hurled it out.
The cold air worked another shiver through her, but so did the truth of the situation.
More lives than her own were on the line. She’d put Ross, and Roman too, in danger. In her crunched pose, she had no idea what the roadway must have looked like, but she pictured them using their vehicles like steel horses. In their younger years, Ross and his brothers used to race, and she could still see them galloping fast and furious across the fields.
“Do you think they were tracking me through my phone?”
“Most likely.” He glanced toward her feet, where her computer bag sat.
Panic rushed through her. “No way. It can’t be my computer too—it’s secured with top level passwords and my thumbprint. Nobody could enter it. Not even MIZR.”