Before he could answer, the fire alarm screamed in the hallway. Jeri rushed to the door and opened it as the intercom in the condo rang. I hurried over to pick it up. “Yeah?”
“Get out, but don’t take the stairs. Use the service elevator and go out the back.”
The line went dead, and I turned toward Jeri at the front door. “Come on. We’ve gotta go.”
We rushed to our respective rooms, me grabbing my shoes, before we hurried out of the condo. Jeri had the forethought to lock the door. I headed toward the service elevator, but he stopped me.
“No. The garage elevator is safer. We can drive out onto the street in two directions in case someone is at one of the exits. Let’s go.”
Jeri grabbed my hand and tugged me down the hall to a single elevator that went to the garage below the condo building. I hit the button at least ten times, and when it finally opened, thankfully, it was empty.
I pushed the button for the garage. When the elevator stopped at the bottom level, we both rushed out.
Jeri tried the car doors until he found an old white Ford pickup that was open—it belonged to a construction company doing work somewhere in the building. Reaching under thedash, Jericho pulled down the wires. “Hurry up and get in, Red.” No surprise—the other door was also unlocked.
I got into the passenger seat before the engine revved, and Jeri hopped in next to me. “Buckle in tight.”
I did as he said, and when Jeri raced up the levels of the garage to the dual exits, I closed my eyes. It felt like the stolen truck was airborne when we exited the building, and the honking horns from oncoming traffic gave me no comfort.
Jeri sped through the streets of Bethesda to the I-495 on-ramp and merged into traffic, not slowing down at all. “Where are we going?”
“My house.”
His house?Where the hell was that?
“What?We’re going to your house in a stolen truck? I need my computer, phone, and clothes from the condo, Jeri.”
“You need to stay alive, Red. Take a breath. We’ll work this shit out, I swear.” He continued to check the side mirror as he moved around the slower cars.
“God, please be careful. I’m too young to die.”
I’d never ridden in a vehicle speeding so fast in my life. The trees looked like matchsticks as we flew along the Beltway. “Maybe you should slow down a little?” I didn’t want someone to kill me, but I also didn’t want to die in a one-car crash on I-495.
Jericho’s steady gaze shifted from the side mirror to the rearview mirror, and then, the windshield as if he were outrunning the bad guys, which I guess he might have been if someone figured out it was us in the stolen white work truck.After a few more miles, he took his foot off the accelerator and allowed the truck to slow of its own volition.
“Where’d you learn to hotwire a truck?” The shaky sound of my voice revealed my overwhelming fear of dying in a fiery accident.
“Trucks, cars, motorcycles. I can jack nearly anything. I once hotwired a bus in Mumbai, but there was so much reckless traffic on the roads that I had to abandon the damn thing and run for it. It’s a useful skill I picked up, thanks to Uncle Sam’s thorough training.” He relaxed in the seat and put his right hand on the console as his left hand casually draped over the steering wheel.
“You learned to hotwire a vehicle from your training in the Army?” I started to laugh at the absurdity of his statement. Uncle Sam was teaching young men and women to jack cars? That was hysterical.
“Oh, you’d be surprised by the shit I learned in the Army.”
No doubt.
Jeri’s cell phone rang, though I couldn’t see it. He pulled it from the pocket of his jeans and glanced at it before handing it to me. “It’s Schatz. Will you answer it since I’m driving?”
I glanced at the screen to see the name scrolling across before I connected the call and put it on speaker. “Hey, Jeri. Where are you?”
“We’re going to my house. What the fuck happened? Austin and Dominic were supposed to be watching out for us?” The anger in Jeri’s voice wasn’t a surprise, and I relaxed. For half a second, I thought maybe he’d set it up to take me somewhere in the boonies to kill me.
“Bruno—I mean, Austin—was in the kitchen heating up dinner for his husband, Dominic, when some weird fuckers came in and threatened to shoot Dom if he didn’t tell them what unit youwere hiding in. Seems Sean’s usual sedan driver was happy to take a bribe to give your stalkers your schedule.
“Anyway, they held a gun on Dom, which was their first mistake because Austin loses his mind when he thinks Dominic is in danger.
“It was Dom who tripped the fire alarm on your floor to alert you. It was his voice you heard on the intercom. Good call taking the garage elevator,” Schatz said.
“Well, I stole a truck, so I’ll have to talk to the police about that. My truck is still in the parking garage. I don’t know if they know I’m the one with Sean, but I didn’t want to gamble on it.”
