As fast as it started, the shooting stopped. Jes heard the thud of booted feet as Damien and his buddy made their escape.
Jake was up and running after them in a flash. Jes followed, racing past where Evie was huddled over Henry, crying, through the kitchen, and out the back door. As she leaped off the back step onto the well-manicured yard, she heard Forrest tell the Robinsons they were Metro Police and to stay where they were.
Jes was a fast runner, but Jake easily outpaced her, reaching the wrought-iron gate leading out of the garden a good ten strides before her just as the roar of an engine filled the alley behind the row houses. Her heart sank when she sped out of the gate and saw Jake standing there staring at a dark gray SUV barreling away from them, a little boy’s panic-stricken face pleading with them from one of the side windows. A part of her wanted to shoot at the fleeing vehicle and try to take out a tire, but with the boy in there, she couldn’t take the chance.
She wanted to scream in frustration. By the time they got back to their car, the SUV would be long gone. And so would that poor little boy.
Knowing they had to try, Jes shoved her pistol in its holster. She was about to race back to the Robinsons’ when she heard the purr of another engine somewhere farther down the alley. It was immediately followed by a thud and a yelp of complaint. She stopped and turned to see Jake climbing on a motorcycle that was already running, the man who’d apparently been riding it a moment earlier standing there beside him, his mouth hanging open in shock.
“I’ll bring this right back—promise!” Jake shouted over his shoulder at the guy as he pulled the bike up beside Jes and slowed to a stop. “Hop on.”
Jes barely had time to wrap her arms around his waist before he was gunning it, speeding down the alley so fast the cars parked along the side of it were nothing more than a blur.
“You know how to drive this, right?” she shouted over the roar of the bike’s engine.
“We’re going to find out,” he shouted back, pulling out onto the main road and racing off after the rapidly disappearing rear lights of the SUV.
Chapter 8
It took a few seconds for Jake to figure out the Triumph motorcycle’s gear shift pattern, but once he had it down, he was able to really put on the speed. The cars around them honked their horns and more than a few people leaned out their windows to shout obscenities at him, but he didn’t give a damn. Catching up with that SUV and the little boy those assholes had kidnapped was the only thing that mattered.
“How are we going to find them in all this traffic?” Jes yelled from behind him, squeezing him so tightly he could hardly breathe. “They could have gone anywhere.”
Every time she moved her body with his as they zipped from lane to lane, he felt her muscles flex and tighten. He’d be lying if he didn’t say it was distracting as hell, but he forced himself to focus.
“Every car has a unique scent, based on age, what kind of fuel it uses, how well maintained it is, and what kinds of fluids are leaking out and how much. As long as they don’t get too far ahead of me, I should be able to track them.”
“Seriously?” she asked, the amazement obvious in her voice.
Jake chuckled and twisted the accelerator, steering the motorcycle down the middle of two lanes of traffic that had come to a near standstill. As he followed the vehicle’s scent almost directly south, it occurred to him that they were heading back toward the Blackwall Tunnel. Good. The traffic in there would slow down the SUV for sure, giving him and Jes a chance to catch up.
As they sped along the A12, Jake replayed the shootout at the Robinsons’ in his mind. The way Damien and that other jackass had sprayed bullets around the place without any concern about where they might end up was cold-blooded. Clearly, they weren’t concerned about collateral damage. The way Damien had ripped that little boy right out of his mother’s arms confirmed they were only interested in getting what they wanted.
Jake couldn’t believe how close he, Jes, and Forrest had come to being shot. Although, if he was being honest, he’d mostly been worried about Jes. That’s why he’d scooped her up and protected her with his own body and pretty much left Forrest to fend for himself. It was a shitty thing to do, and luckily Forrest was okay, but his inner wolf had taken over, and there was nothing he could have done to stop the beast.
Not that he would have changed anything about how he’d reacted. Protecting Jes had felt like the right thing to do. Sort of like the way it felt to have her arms wrapped around him right then.
“Is that them?” Jes yelled, pointing over his right shoulder. “Just now going into the tunnel?”
He looked and saw she was right. The gray SUV was about two hundred yards away, casually traveling in the right lane…as if they hadn’t shot up the Robinsons’ house a few minutes ago.
“That’s them,” he confirmed.
“What’s the plan?” Jes shouted.
“I’ll slip up beside them, and you put a couple rounds through their rear tire,” he shouted back over the echoes as they entered the tunnel only a couple car lengths behind the SUV. “Hopefully that will put them into the wall of the tunnel, and we’ll be able to smash in the window and grab the kid while they’re still shaken from the crash.”
Jake was glad he couldn’t see Jes’s face right then, so he wouldn’t have to see the doubt there. Because yeah, the plan was lame AF. He could think of half a dozen ways it could be done better. A sniper round to the driver’s head, a truck positioned just ahead to block in the SUV, another vehicle T-boning the SUV just as it left the tunnel. But all of those options required people and coordination time they didn’t have.
He stayed to the left of the SUV as he moved closer, tucked in behind a small panel van so Damien and his buddies wouldn’t see them. They were only a single car’s length back when he felt Jes reach for her weapon.
Then everything went to hell.
Jake didn’t know they’d been spotted until the rear window of the SUV exploded and automatic weapon fire sprayed the unsuspecting van in front of them, a BMW sedan to the right, and asphalt all around them.
Shit.
Jake slammed on the brakes—nearly putting the big bike in a nose stand—just in time to avoid the panel van that swerved to the side and bounced off the tunnel wall in a shower of sparks and concrete chips. Too close to even attempt an evasive maneuver, he held his breath, waiting for the careening vehicle to spin around and smash the motorcycle and them like a bug—or for one of the vehicles following behind to run them over in a blind panic.
