So I kept moving, my eyes glued to Priest as he finally made it to the garage. He reached around the corner and when he lifted his arm again, I heard a series of even louder pops as he shot out of the broken window.
“Stay low, Milan. Come toward me,” he said as he shot.
I tried to keep moving, but turned to look over my shoulder and saw nothing in the yard. No happy squirrel and little birds that had been playing there moments ago. No shooter. But the bullets still came.
“Come on!” he said.
His voice broke the spell, and I moved as fast as I could so close to the ground, my legs and arms soon groaning from the strain of the unfamiliar position.
“We’re going into the garage. Watch out,” he said.
I moved past him and toward the garage door, but when I reached for the knob, I felt his fingers on top of mine, which trembled so badly I doubted I would have been able to open it.
But his were steady, and he turned the knob and pushed the door open and, still crouching down, he went to the passenger side of the car.
He opened the door and then quickly pulled himself inside. A moment later, the car flared to life and I saw him gesturing toward me, now in the driver’s seat.
I tried to mimic his crouch walk and as quickly as I could made it to the passenger seat. I pulled my body in, and then jumped when I heard another pop. I started at the car door, not wanting to believe what I was seeing, but there was no denying it.
There was a bullet hole in the door, and now, I finally realized, more shots coming toward us.
“Close it,” he whispered.
I pulled the door closed and at the same time, Priest began to reverse. He didn’t wait for the garage to open and instead accelerated as fast as he could, slamming through the sheet of metal.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
I listen to the sounds and knew that it was bullets raining into the car.
I wanted to scream, wanted to do something, but I didn’t do anything but wait, staying next to him frozen. He accelerated, drove fast, as fast as any car I had ever ridden in.
Soon, there were no more pings.
Priest
“Are you hit?” I asked Milan as I sped down the road faster than was reasonable, but not giving a fuck. I needed her away from danger, needed my heart to stop pounding so hard it threatened to punch out of my chest.
“Um. I—”
“Are you hit!”
I yelled this time, needing the answer more than I wanted to not to upset her.
“N-no,” she finally said.
I glanced at her quickly and then back at the road. Hearing her words had slackened some of the tension that gripped me, enough that I could ease my foot off the accelerator and try to come up with what I would do next.
I’d fucked up and bad. Had gotten distracted by Milan and let myself get comfortable, allowed myself to believe that at least for a time, the safe house was safe.
Fucking stupid, and if I hadn’t been so fucking preoccupied, I would have never allowed myself to be lulled.
But I had, and the results had been disastrous.
It was a miracle she hadn’t been hit.
It was a crime she had been there in the first place.
My crime, one that I would make amends for.
For now, though, I had more practical matters to consider.
I turned the car into a parking lot, stopped, and then looked at Milan.
“You good?” I asked.
A stupid question. How could she possibly be?
But she nodded, faintly at first and then with increasing vigor. Still, I searched her eyes, but other than her dilated pupils, an uncontrollable side effect of the adrenaline that probably still coursed through her, she looked fine. My heart slowed just a little, the roaring gallop now more of an intense race.
“Change of plans,” I said.
“I’d imagine so,” she replied, giving me the hint of a smile.
That helped, further cracked the icy tension in my gut. “We’re on foot now. I need to regroup.”
“I guess it’s not smart to drive around in a car with bullet holes in it,” she said.
“No,” I replied. I left out the rest of the sentence, though, the part where I wondered if it wouldn’t just be bullet holes that gave us away.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked.
“We go there,” I said, nodding toward the train station at the other end of the block.
“From there?” she asked.
“A few stops. Then we lay low,” I replied.
“Then let’s go,” she said.
We were out of the car and on the train in under ten minutes. I hated being out in the open like that, exposed, on every camera, but there was no other choice. I led Milan onto the first train that arrived.
We rode for over two hours, switching directions and routes at random intervals. If whoever pursued me had access to the train’s cameras, I was even more fucked, but this was the best alternative. We had bought some time.