Page 22 of Remote Access

"Shit!" Quincy jumped to his feet and ran around the van. He threw himself at the guy and landed hard, his elbow skidding on the pavement. Ignoring the sting, he sat on him and punched, then grunted when a knee slammed into the middle of his back. That distracted him enough to get a cast across the face. Lights exploded behind Quincy's eyes and he punched blind, glad to hear a grunt when his fist hit flesh.

But that cast came back and hit his shoulder. Holy hell, it hurt. Quincy rolled off the guy and jumped to his feet, his vision clearing only to see Lane lean out of the back of the open van.

“Hey asshole,” he yelled.

The guy, who was also standing again, turned and Lane squeezed a can, throwing a stream of liquid on the guy's raised cast. The air filled with the acrid scent of lighter fluid. It startled Hayrick's man long enough for him to stop his momentum. His eyes flew open wide over his bandaged nose.

"Let's see how you handle this!" Lane cackled and clicked a long lighter on the guy before he had a chance to move.

The cast burst into flames.

Hayrick's man squealed and patted at it with hisbarehand, then ran toward the corner of the row of storage units. He slammed the cast against the brick, the flames only growing bigger. He screamed and started beating his arm on the wall over and over.

Quincy winced.

"Hurry!" Lane hissed. “He's got most of the boxes already loaded and it looks like he'd planned to burn what he doesn't need." Lane tossed cans of lighter fluid out of the back of the van. "The keys are in it. Let's go!"

Lane hurried to the front of the van and Quincy jumped into the back and held on to the open door just as Lane hit the gas. The van lurched forward and Quincy watched as Hayrick's man jumped around, trying to beat his cast off. Quincy pulled the doors shut and Lane took a sharp right. Quincy fell over onto boxes, grasping around for something solid to hang on to. A strap of some kind hung from a bar overhead so he wrapped both hands around it and held on as Lane drove like the hounds of hell were after them.

Sirens sounded in the distance, so they probably were.

Adrenaline raced through Quincy along with a huge dose of utter shock. "I can't believe you set that guy on fire."

"He was beating you with that fucking thing. It pissed me off.” The van pitched again and Lane cursed. “I spotted a great place for us to hide earlier, so I’m headed there. How's your face?"

"Jaw hurts but it's not broken."

"Good. I'd hate for you not to be able to kiss me anymore.” He snorted as he took a road that had a lot fewer streetlights. “It was pretty funny. The way he screamed and started beating his arm on the brick. Stop, drop and roll didn't even enter his mind."

"Would that even work with lighter fluid and the material in that cast?" Quincy choked and laughed, his hip knocking over boxes as the Lane took a hard right turn. “I still can’t believe you thought of that.”

“Hey, he was the one with all the lighter fluid. And his intention to burn things proves there are electronic files somewhere. I’m guessing Maine. You ever gone there?”

“No.”

“It’s deep in the woods off a bay. Probably as secure as Fort Knox. Well, not for me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “But we got a lot more files, I’m happy to say. Hayrick will be livid! Think the cops got that guy?"

"You mean if he didn't burn up?"

"You shot him. Twice. I set him on fire and half that cast was off before the cops got there. I'm pretty sure that guy's name is Rasputin because he just won't die."

The sound of sirens grew louder.

“Uh oh,” Lane murmured. “Time to take a detour.”

“How do you know where to go?”

“I spotted a section of warehouses perfect for hiding a van on the way into this town, and if I’m right, the side streets should lead us right to it. If I speed up on this main road, we’ll be in trouble. As it is, there’s bound to be a camera somewhere that caught this van. We’ll have to ditch it.”

He wrenched the steering wheel and the van skidded into a turn that had Quincy cursing and dropping to the floor. He should have climbed over the boxes right away.

“Hold on!” Lane yelled as the vehicle thumped over something. The thief cackled and wrenched the van another direction, hitting another bump. “If I wasn’t worried about the sound, I’d be yelling ‘Speed bump!’ and hitting the horn three times. Quick, which movie?”

“I have no idea,” he growled as he grabbed onto a sliding box. “I can see I’m going to have to watch a lot more movies if we keep hanging out.” Quincy came to his knees and started squeezing through the narrow space between the boxes.

“We going to be hanging out longer, cop?”

“Not if you kill us in this van.”

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