Somebody is watching us.
He thought of the roadblock between Ace’s house and this one and wondered… had somebody seen them? Had somebody gotten suspicious about this little hidden suburb?
He pulled out his phone and texted Jai first.Keep everybody away from the windows.
Then he texted Ace.I’m twitchy.
Then he texted Brady.Lie on the floor. Now.
He knew how to be calm. He knew how to not panic. But at the thought of Brady, lying on the floor of the camper, his palms grew clammy, and fear sweat trickled between his shoulder blades.
He hadn’t been this scared with his gun aimed at the rapist in broad daylight.
In a lightning-strike moment of clarity, he knew, without a doubt, that he’d never had so much to lose in his life, not even when his life was at risk.
He sidled back around the camper the long way, staying beside the house, and when he came out by the rear, he was facing the garage. The back half of the camper was hidden behind the house, but the front part, the part with the door and the driver’s seat, was open to the street, and because the neighborhood was half finished, the street was open to a lot of desert behind the cul-de-sac, including the slight rise that hid the turnoff from the east.
Someone up on that rise could pick the people on the street off like tin cans.
Eric crouched down as soon as he hit the open side of the RV, staying low when he opened the door.
“Stay down,” he ordered, watching as Brady started to scramble to his feet. Brady dropped immediately, but something of his body must have shown, even for an instant.
And the shooter on the slight rise had nerves like moldy cheese.
They heard glass tinkling as the window over the couch shattered, andthenthe report of the rifle cracked loud over the neighborhood.
“Fuck,” Brady muttered. “Where are they?”
Eric scrambled inside, pulling the door shut after him. “The ridge to the east,” he said. “Pull out your phone and tell Jai to keep everybody in the house and the lights off. They’re obviously after you, and you’re leaving.”
“How do you know it’s me?” Brady asked, but he was staying in the walkway in front of the couch, cramming his back up against the bottom, which was good. There was a lead-lined container full of guns under the couch/convert-a-bed cushions, so even if whoever it was opened up with a full clip, Brady would be safe right where he was.
Eric combat-crawled alongside him, listening for another shot, grateful when one didn’t happen.
The lights are on, he thought.
Of course. Brady had turned the lights on when he entered, like the camper was ahomeor something.
“I’m going to pull away,” he muttered. “As we peel out of here, when you can stand up, turn off the lights, then crouch by the stairwell.” The light switch was on the panel next to the door. “As soon as you can, get back to this spot,” he urged and kept up the combat crawl, disregarding the shattered glass from the first shot even as a pebble bit into his arm.
“What’s so special about this spot?” Brady asked, frowning at his phone.
“There’s a bulletproof container full of weaponry at your back,” Eric told him, pausing to brush Brady’s cheek with his fingertip. He left a bloody trace that he had no time to regret. Fucking glass. “What’s wrong?”
“Jai gave me a thumbs-up and then disappeared,” Brady said. “George texted and told me to wait for it. What does that mean?”
Oh shit.
Eric went from combat crawl to all fours, because that could meananything, and as he crouched next to the driver’s seat and flipped the switch warming the diesel engine up, he wished they’d worked up a signal or something.
God, how long did this take? Five to fifteen seconds, the brochure said. He knew how an internal combustion engine worked, with modifications for diesel fuel. Warm the cylinders, prepare the chamber, wait for the light to go—off!
He cranked on the key, and as the engine turned over, he threw himself into the driver’s seat, killed the parking brakes, and hit the gas.
He liked to think he did a good job as he peeled out, half in the seat and half still crouched next to the wheel. He pulled himself up enough to correct his trajectory, because he didnotwant to end up in the nice military officer’s pool via his garage, and then kept going. The houses at this end of the block were not onlynot finished, they werenot started, only the briefest of outline flags there to showwherethe foundation would have been poured now that the hookups had been established.
He thought briefly about turning left and then hitting the highway, but where would he go? They had roadblockseverywhere, except the vasty bastion of nothingness that was the desert.
