Trying to lift my head up was like doing a pushup with Shaquille O’Neal standing on my back. I wondered if I had a concussion or something. That damn ringing in my ears!
Even still, I didn’t have time to worry about that. I needed to get to my bike. I made it to standing, but was hit with a wave of intense dizziness. Bending over at the knees, I took a few deep breaths. “You can do this, Ryder.”
I patted around in my jacket for my phone, but it was gone. All I had on me were my bike keys and the hair tie from Gerard Way. What a strange combination of things to have in an emergency.
I’d left my bike over by Russell’s car, but first I needed to figure out where I was. They couldn’t have dragged me too far, so chances were I was still pretty close to the motel.
Sure enough, there it was, about a hundred feet behind me. My boots crunched the gravel as my eyes got adjusted to the darkness. I sure the hell hoped I wasn’t too late. There was no way of knowing what time it was or how long I’d been unconscious. The moon was just starting to rise, which meant that it hopefully was still early.
As I got close enough to where I’d left my bike, I noticed that the car was still there, too. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad news. I also saw some broken glass and a curtain laying on the ground near a tree that hadn’t been there before.
Across the street, the party appeared to have died down. I thought about going over and rounding up the rest of the Outlaw Souls to help me out by the water tower, but frankly, I didn’t want to waste the time. This was something I was going to have to do on my own.
* * *
I rodelike a bat out of hell across the desert toward that water tower. Seriously, I was going so fast that my bike actually caught air a few times. The whole time, I just kept praying that I wasn’t too late and that I’d get there in time to stop El Diablo from loading Lily and Paige and Bailey onto a plane to South America.
It wasn’t until I got closer to the water tower that my eyes picked up a light in the distance. It was really faint and small, but it was definitely a light. I headed my bike out that way.
The ringing in my ears had been replaced with the throaty sound of my bike engine. The light got closer and closer, and then suddenly stopped. Whoever it was must have heard my bike and turned off the lights. That’s okay. I was close enough to find it anyway.
The full moon was just over the mountains now, and that definitely helped things. I was getting pretty close when I saw the unmistakable sight of tail lights. The lights had been from a car, and that car was leaving!
Just then, in the sky, I saw the lights from a small airplane coming down toward us. Good. GOOD. That meant I wasn’t too late. I just had to catch the damn car before they had a chance to load the girls and Paige onto the plane.
I cranked it up and went even faster. I didn’t dare look down at the speedometer, but it felt like I was going faster than I’d ever gone before. I started to think about what to do once I caught up with them. I probably didn’t have the handgun on me anymore, as whoever knocked me out probably took it with my phone. I might still have the switchblade in my boot. It was gonna be old-fashioned hand to hand combat. I had no idea how I was gonna do it, but failure was not an option here.
The brake lights on the vehicle came on, which meant they were stopping. There would be no way for them to load people onto an airplane without stopping the car and getting out, so I’d been ready for this.
Just as I’d suspected, the plane flew low over our heads, circled, and then landed in a makeshift air strip in the middle of the desert, and stopped facing the same way it just came. I figured I had about five minutes tops to deal with however many people were in the car and on that plane. My sister and Bailey weren’t likely to be much help, and I didn’t know about Paige’s fighting skills, but I didn’t imagine they were great, so I was gonna have to channel my inner Jackie Chan and take on all of them at once.
I’d taken Tae Kwon Do as a kid, and never really imagined I’d use it in real life.
As soon as I got close enough, I jumped off my bike and ran to the SUV. The plane was idling and there were two guys that came out of the plane speaking Spanish. It was hard to see in the dark, but I think that El Diablo was the only one in the SUV, other than the girls and Paige. One of the girls must be laying down, though, because I could only see the shadows of two of them in the back seat.
The side door to the car opened, and El Diablo grabbed someone from the inside of the car. This was my moment to act.
“El Diablo! Stop!” I yelled, not because I thought he would stop, but to act as a diversion. Since there were three of them and one of me, as far as I could tell (there might be others in the plane or the SUV) I figured it was best to just pick the guy closest to me and circle around him so that the others were directly behind him.
The guy in front was tall and skinny and was wearing some kind of black jacket and a baseball cap. The guy behind him was really big, like a linebacker. He was the kind of guy who was strong, but not fast. El Diablo was facing Baseball Cap, and had Bailey out of the car, trying to hand her off to him.
I got a good running start and slammed into Baseball Cap and then did a roundhouse kick to Diablo’s face. Linebacker then came running toward me, and I dodged him, and ran in a circle, in front of Baseball Cap again. When he got to his feet, I grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him to me, swinging him down to the ground in front of Linebacker.
“Ryder!” Lily called to me from the car.
“Stay there!”
Bailey wisely climbed back in the car and shut and locked the doors.
Diablo roared back to his feet at the same time Linebacker lunged for me. I dodged out of the way, and ran around to the other side of the car, using it as a shield.
I bent down to feel in my boot for my switchblade and it was there. But if I had a weapon, they probably did too. I needed to stay on my toes.
“Let them go, Diablo,” I said, brandishing the switchblade.
“Like hell I will,” he said, and he lunged for my knife.
I dodged, but twisted my ankle on some uneven ground and fell backwards, right into Linebacker. I heard Baseball Cap running back to the plane, likely to get a gun of some kind. Time was running out.
