“No,” Harris remarks. “This really isn’t me.”
10
BRADLEY
The black sedan breaks the silence around us with a loud screech of brakes as it jolts to a stop at the top of the road just beyond the bend. Beside me, Frank gives a subtle nod without looking up from the device in his hand.
Zira’s text was exactly what I was waiting for. It didn’t matter if she was to text me and tell me to fuck off, to phone me and tell me to get fucked, or even commit to my command and tell me when the next robbery was. All Raven needed was a connection, and that opened up the second Zira sent that message, turning her phone into a beacon for us to track. Getting my team into position then became dependent on exactly where she was going and a light assumption that she was telling the truth about moving the diamonds.
Judging by the two masks staring out at us from inside the car, she was telling the truth, and we hit the jackpot. The Arlecchino mask, I’m assuming, is Zira, and the Bauta mask sitting next to her must be Harris.
Jackpot.
Behind me, Cassian, the Jack of the Suit, sighs deeply and stretches his arms upward until his shoulders pop. “What do you want to do?” he asks.
“We have a team moving in behind them,” I reply quietly. “No one moves, not yet. Not until I know they can’t back up on us.”
“Alright.” Relaxed as always, Cassian leans back against the hood of the SUV and crosses one ankle over the other. “The girl is the Arlecchino, right?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Cool mask.”
“If you like that sort of thing.”
“Who doesn’t like Carnival?”
I bite back a smirk as Frank gives me another subtle nod. The team behind the sedan have pulled into place, trapping our targets between us. I step forward and every guard around me tenses, primed for any kind of attack.
“Get out of the car,” I say, raising my voice just a fraction. “We have you surrounded, and it would save you some embarrassment if you just get out of the car now rather than having us drag you out.”
My voice carries easily in the night air, seemingly igniting a heated discussion in the car. The Bauta mask is rocking back and forth, waving one hand around, while the Arlecchino mask thrusts one hand toward us and argues back. We wait in silence, and part of me hopes they’ll make this easy. No one gets hurt if they make this easy.
The Bauta mask snaps toward me, and then he yells something that sounds like a sharp, electronic screech. Whatever it is makes Arlecchino flinch and her shoulders droop. As she turns back to face me, the headlights blink once, then the car roars back to life and she slams down on the accelerator. The car races toward me at top speed as Cassian yells behind me, but I don’t move. I stare down the car, and when it’s a few feet away, she wrenches the steering wheel to the side. The sedan screeches past me and flies onto a makeshift dirt path leading deeper into the forest.
“Fuck,” I mutter, watching the red taillights vanish into the trees. “They never make it easy. Let’s go!”
We all pile into the nearest SUV with Frank driving and Cassian taking the front while I slide into the back. My ass is barely on the seat when the car lurches forward and Frank races after the fleeing sedan, with several other of our vehicles in hot pursuit.
“They have to know they’ve got nowhere to go.” Cassian braces one arm against the dashboard to fight against each lurch as we drive over uneven ground.
“Desperate people do desperate things,” I reply. “Is there anywhere they can go from here?”
Frank’s focused on driving, so Cassian taps his fingers on the dashboard to bring up a satellite view of the area. There’s nothing for miles except woodland, some streams and rivers and a few hills.
“No,” Cassian murmurs. “Although it’s a mystery why they even came out this way in the first place. If they continued on the road we were on, they would have reached a hiking trail, but that doesn’t make sense. Why would you bring diamonds out here?”
“If they even have the diamonds on them,” Frank says through gritted teeth. “I only counted two in the car.”
“Same. Two still unaccounted for.” Gripping the back of Cassian’s chair with both hands, I narrow my eyes as the jolting taillights of the sedan gradually grow clearer through the trees as we get closer.
“Look.” Cassian taps the screen on the dashboard. “There’s nothing out here except this.” Two swipes of his finger and the map zooms in.
“What is that?” I ask. “ Cliff?”
“Mmhmm.”
“So they’re either going to drive off or crash into a wall, I can’t tell.” Leaning back, I pull out my radio and quickly relay the information to the other cars so that no one accidentally kills themselves. Just as I finish speaking, the car in front of us slams on its brakes, and Frank follows suit a second later. The sedan skids to one side as it drags to a stop, the wheels spinning out of control in the dirt. By the time the car finally comes to a stop, we’ve slowed enough so we won’t hit them, but the two masked individuals have already fled the car by the time Frank stops the SUV and we’ve climbed out.
