Page 113 of Fierce Pursuit

I opened my eyes just in time to see a black Mercedes pull up alongside us, and the back window rolled down to reveal the barrel of a gun pointed right at me.

The car I was in sped up, pulling ahead while the gunman fired two shots, shooting out the window behind me, showering glass down over me and Oleg.

I screamed, covering my head with the bag of money as I tried to stay low.

Oleg yelled something I couldn’t hear over the roar of the wind.

The car jerked to the side again as the driver slammed his foot down on the gas.

The Mercedes wasn’t so easily deterred.

They exchanged shots with Oleg while I strapped myself to the seat, clicking my seat belt in place, and then gripped the top strap to help me hold on.

I slipped my other arm into the straps of the bag andused it as a shield. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, I didn’t think, but it would help shield me from glass and whatever else was flying around in the car.

Everything was happening in slow motion.

My lungs burned with a scream as the car jolted to the side and the driver reached back with a gun in his hand to join Oleg in shooting through the now missing rear window.

The return fire hit the side of the car with a loud bang that sounded as if it were punching holes into the metal of the frame.

The car swerved, and I screamed again, trying to stay as low as possible in the seat, cowering under the large canvas bag.

I could smell the blood. It clawed at the back of my nose while I desperately forced the bile burning up my throat to stay down.

Oleg was screaming profanities in Russian while he reloaded his gun and returned fire over and over.

I felt rather than heard the right rear tire be shot out and suddenly we were spinning out of control, flying over several lanes of traffic.

By some miracle we didn’t hit any other cars before we slammed into the guardrail, sparks raining down on the bag, and then the world flipped upside down as we tumbled end over end.

More sparks from the grinding metal scraping the guardrail and the asphalt showered down on us until we landed in the grassy area next to the road and the car finally stopped when it slammed into a tree.

“Marina,” someone shouted.

It sounded so far away, the ringing in my ears muffling everything.

Red.

All I saw was red.

The red of blood covering the shards of broken glass on the ceiling below me, the red of the leaves floating down around the car, taking their sweet time to hit the ground, and even a few embers that still glowed from the sparks.

“Marina, say something.” The voice sounded closer, but I still couldn’t figure out who was speaking.

The ringing in my ears was too loud.

The world had stopped moving, but my head hadn’t caught up with it yet.

There was too much adrenaline in my veins, too much panic, too much shock to make sense of anything other than the single glowing red ember that faded in and out on the leather seat in front of me.

I watched it, unable to take my eyes off of the glowing red until it faded into nothing. It took a few minutes, or maybe it was only a second, for me to blink and be able to look around. The driver was still alive, coming to, shaking his head, trying to clear the shock.

“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” another, closer voice said.

Kostya.

He came.

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