I dared to look behind me again. Through the haze of hair blowing across my face, the two bikes entered the end of the lane, gunning toward us.
“Faster!” I yelled at Derrin. “They’re coming.”
“I’m trying!” he growled. “Hold on, put your head down!”
He rounded the corner and then jumped the bike up onto the sidewalk where we proceeded to head right through a restaurant. We crashed through a table that went flying to the side, then zigged and zagged around people, waiters, tables. Broken glass and dishes ricocheted through the air. I kept my head lowered, pressed against his shoulder blades, my eyes shut tight. I didn’t want to see any of this.
Derrin swiftly maneuvered it back and forth and then we were in what sounded like a kitchen and then we were airborn, weightless, and I had no idea where we were going to land. I opened my eyes just after we hit the ground with a jolt, biting down on my tongue by accident. My mouth filled with copper pennies.
We had soared over the kitchen’s backsteps and now were twisting right onto a different road, Calle Santa Barbara, and heading up the hill that lead to most of the tourist apartments on the south end of town. We had a bit more distance behind us now, but the bike wasn’t built for two, especially not someone as heavy as Derrin and it wasn’t made for hills either.
It sputtered, the air filing with the coarse smell of an overworked engine.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” I cried into Derrin’s neck.
He didn’t say anything. We kept going up the curving road, wheels bouncing over rough cobblestones, then a shot rang out. Then another. They hit the stones beneath us. Derrin jerked the bike to the left and another bullet hit a parked car. They were gaining.
“Keep your head down,” he said.
I did as he asked and felt him reach into his shirt. He pulled out a small gun then twisted at the waist. I twisted with him, out of the way. He quickly pulled the trigger, firing two shots, and hit one of the guys. He went flying off the bike and the bike fell to the side, just in time for the other assailant to crash into it.
One bullet, two down.
Despite being scared to fucking death, my adrenaline feasting on my veins, I was in awe.
I swallowed hard, trying to think of something to say to him.
“Buen disparo.” Nice shot.
His eyes smiled at me before looking to road in front of us. “I like it when you speak Spanish, babe.” Then his eyes looked back again and this time they were cold.
I turned my head to look. A black SUV was thundering up the road toward us. They weren’t tourists out for a Sunday drive.
“Fuck,” he swore. “Are you ready to get a little wet?”
I stared at him blankly. “What?”
He whipped the bike to the right and we went thumping down flights of cement stairs, nearly knocking over an elderly couple walking up them.
“Lo Siento!” I yelled at them before I bit my tongue again. At the top of the stairs, the SUV paused then drove off. I knew the road curved down and met with the one we were about to land on. Sure enough, as soon as we had hit the road, the SUV appeared at the end of, turning toward us. Derrin yanked the bike into a condominium driveway then down a brick path that traced the edge of the building, trees and bushes reaching out for us, snagging our clothes and our hair as we whipped through them.
Suddenly it seemed like it was the end of the line. There was a pool and beyond the pool there was blue sky.
“Hold on!” he yelled back at me.
I couldn’t hold any tighter. I let out a cry as the bike lifted off the ground, bounced on a lawn chair and then bounced off the edge of the patio.
We were flying. I kept my head down but my eyes open.
A sandy beach passed underneath our feet.
Then next thing I knew we had hit something hard, cold and my arms were ripped off of Derrin’s waist. Salt water burned my eyes, filled my lungs and nose and I tried to breathe, to swim, but I was sinking, drowning. The cast was weighing me down.
Suddenly a strong arm was wrapped under me and my head broke the surface.
“Breathe, it’s okay,” Derrin told me, gasping for breath just as I was. “Try and swim, I’ve got you.”
I tried to nod but couldn’t. I focused on my breathing and moved my arms and legs as much as I could but he was doing most of the work. When my eyes eventually stopped burning I was able to see where we were.
We were in the ocean, a few meters off the shore. The handles of the motorcycle were just beginning to disappear into the waves, sinking. Beyond that, sunbathers on the beach gawked while people ran to the edge of the condo’s pool area, to see where we had fallen. On either side of us there were outcrops of stone and rock where the waves gently crashed. We’d been lucky. We could have landed on those instead and neither of us would be alive.