Page 89 of Love at First Sighting
Carter nods and rolls up his window. His engine rumbles over “Cut to the Feeling,” and he gains some distance between himself and Brad.
We weave back down onto straight roads and residential streets, and Brad’s car pulls up alongside Carter’s. Then Bradraises a gun and fires it into the other lane. This looks like something right out ofAngel City Noir, where they’re using blanks, but I know this is real. Their guns are real, and Carter is being shot at. Bullets ricochet off Carter’s side window, leaving a spidery crack in the glass. One more hit and it might shatter, and he’ll be vulnerable all over again.
Carter weaves around a car in front of him and speeds away from Brad, allowing me an in to get right next to him. I paw beside me in the front seat and hunt forsomethingI can throw at Brad’s car. I grip one of my water bottles by the handle and open my window. With a single harsh toss, it flies through the air and strikes Brad’s front windshield with a deafening aluminumdong. A cascading crack spreads through the window.
I reach back over and grab another bottle and hurl it at his car again. Another crack ripples across his back windshield, and I calculate that with another bottle, I can break the window entirely. I throw athirdone at the car. If we’re on the news, I’d kill to know what the commentary is.
The window shatters and Brad weaves. He notices he’s losing his target and speeds up, too. I rev my engine and my car glides across the road. I ram the front edge of my car into the other PIS car. We’re getting closer to the station and I need to make sure Brad doesn’t make it there with us.
I speed up to drive beside him. He rolls down his window and the silver barrel of a gun emerges from the darkened front seat. Shit. I sincerely did not think this through. He cocks the weapon, and his focus is on his aim, not on the road. He doesn’t see the way Carter brakes hard with a screech of his tires. He backs up, sharp and tight, to takespace on Brad’s other side. A gun barrel emerges fromhiswindow, and Carter fires before Brad can.
The front windshield shatters into tempered glass fragments that fly into my passenger seat. The gunshot sends Brad into a panic as Carter speeds up again and crosses in front of him.
I’ve never been shot at before. The danger here is so real, and as much as I don’t like being part of it, I can’t let Carter face it alone, either.
I tail both of them, and as we turn a corner, I pull into the other lane and swing a wide loop to hit Brad from the side. His car slams into a fire hydrant and more glass shatters. Carter jerks to a stop. The front bumper of my car is bent to shit, but nothing’s on fire. Car alarms blare and I might have to go to the chiropractor, but Brad isn’t going anywhere.
I pull up beside Carter and parallel park in a spot with the spare time I have. It doesn’t look like we’ve attracted any news helicoptersyet, so we’re lucky to not have the extra eyes on us. But backup can’t be far behind Brad. I dive out of the car and into the rain.
“El!” Carter shouts over the car alarms, the spraying water, and the underappreciated Carly Rae classic “Boy Problems.” He’s stepped out of the car, gun resting on the roof so he can aim while I cross the street to reach him. Brad’s still working his way out of his car, whose door is bashed in and bent out of shape. Carter pulls me behind the body of his car and gets on his knees with me.
“Jesus, thank god you’re okay,” he breathes. “Thank god you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. We did a car chase!” I say. “We did a real LA car chase!”
His eyes are wide and horrified. “You think this iscool? None of this was safe driving, El!”
A shot rings out across the street and hits Carter’s car with a metallicding. He grabs my arm and shoves me lower before peering over the side of the car and firing back.
“Where did you get a gun?” I ask.
“Weapons locker at the office. I’m beginning to think I didn’tactuallyfail my weapons test.” Another bullet ricochets off the hood of the car and Carter hisses a curse under his breath. “Dammit. El, I need to get back to the office. I think my dad made a backup of his file and it’s down in the bunker.”
“Okay, I’m coming with you.”
“El,no. I need to do this alone and you’ve already gotten into enough trouble.”
“Boss,” Brad bellows into his car radio. “Your boy’s intercepted her. Heading toward the office. You better hurry up.”
Carter’s expression goes blank.
“We need to go,” I tell him. “If the file’s at the office, we need to be the first ones there.”
“Fuck,” Carter groans. He looks back over the hood of his car and fires another shot as Brad charges us. One of his bullets strikes Brad in the lower leg. He lets out a sharp yowl and drops to his knees. At least he isn’t going to follow us. Not well, anyway.
Carter jumps back.
“Ohshit.Get in the car, get in the car, get in the car, oh my god,” Carter mutters as I slip into his passenger seat. There’s another shot and I duck for cover, but it ricochets off alamppost. With a sharp screech, we’re back on the road and heading for the station.
When we pull into the parking lot, it’s empty and the rain is coming down harder. I’m hoping the rain brings traffic to a halt so we might be able to get in, find that file, and be done with this before Marcus even gets here.
“Okay,” Carter starts, stripping off his jacket. Rain thunders on the roof of the car. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We don’t have much time and I have to find a wayintothe bunker. So we’re going to split up. I’ll head to Marcus’s office and find the override commands, and you slip in to the bunker and find the file for me. It’s going to be in one of the employee handbooks. The 1995 one.”
“Are you sure that’s where it is?”
Carter pulls out a folded note. I don’t need to know what it says to understand. “No, but it’s one last helpful hint from my dad. I trust it. Plus, it’s the best chance we have.”
It still sounds like suicide and I don’t want to risk losing him, but it makes sense. He knows this place far better than I do, and he took the security systems down the night we banged on his desk, so I trusthim.
