Page 8 of One Cry Too Loud
“You don’t know that,” I said. “First off, we don’t know that it was Joe. We also don’t know for a fact that Joe is Nefarious, and if he is, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t have been able to find her himself. You said it yourself. He’s better than you. Even if he did this, it isn’t your fault.”
“It is,” she said, tears staining her face again. “He wouldn’t have found her because he wouldn't have known to look. He never knew I was pregnant. I hid it from him. He didn’t know Cindy existed. She was safe from him.” She lowered her head. “Safe until I got her involved.”
“Holly, it’s-”
“Oh my God,” Nate said from beside us. Though I was deep in a moment with Holly, desperate to try to make her understand that she wasn’t the cause of any of this, the urgency and shock in Nate’s voice pulled my attention along with my eyes.
“What?” I asked, seeing the terror on his face.
“That truck,” he said, his features lit by the glow of headlights. I looked in the direction of his face and saw a silver box of a vehicle tearing toward us. “I don’t think it’s going to stop!”
And Nate was right. In the next few seconds, that truck would slam into this building, sending us scattering. I had to move quickly. I had to movenow.
CHAPTER 6
There had been many times in my life when I had to act quickly. In fact, if I really stopped to think about it, there would probably be just as many days in my life that included this kind of thing as there were without it. All of that was to say that, at this point, my mind barely needed to register the danger for my body to react to it.
I jumped toward Holly. Sure, there were two other people in this room, and there might have even been an argument to be made that VanPelt was the smarter person to save. He was, after all, the billionaire funding all of our missions these days. I wouldn’t be making that choice, though. Holly was my friend. Holly was one of the sweetest, kindest, and most ferociously capable geniuses I had ever met in my life. More than that, she was a woman. And though my grandfather had been dead for years, I had little doubt he’d spin in his grave if he knew I left a woman to fend for herself in a situation like this.
Besides, VanPelt saw the car. He knew it was coming. He had time to react.
My body slammed into Holly. I pushed her out of the way, knocking her against the wall and then sliding to the floor. It didn’t happen an instant too soon. As soon as I felt the Englishwoman against me, I heard the horrible and unmistakable noises of shattering glass, twisting metal, and screeching brakes.
More than hearing it, I felt it. I felt the heat coming off the engine. I felt the glass as it showered over us. I felt Holly’s heart beating like a fist trying to break free from her rib cage, pounding so hard that it shook my own chest.
An alarm began to blare through the area.
“Are you okay?” I asked, looking down at her.
Her entire body shook. Her face, always a touch pale, was ghostly white as she opened her mouth to answer me. “What-What happened, Jack?”
“ A car,” I said, swallowing hard. “A car slammed into the shop.”
“A car?” She asked. She was dazed. She was in shock. Her words came out so confused that I had no doubt that she really didn’t understand what I was saying. “Why?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, pushing myself upright. “It might have been a coincidence, but I doubt it seriously.”
I grabbed Holly’s hand and pulled her up. While I was doing that, my eyes scanned the area, looking for Nate. VanPelt popped up on the other side of the car. He had cuts and scrapes across his face, but he was standing up straight. So, it seemed to me that all of his injuries were just surface.
“Go to the back room,” I said to Holly, pointing to the area where she’d come from a few moments ago. “Stay there until I come and get you.”
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head, her entire body still trembling. “I need to stay. I need to help.”
“I can do that,” I answered. “Right now, I just need you to get to safety. I’m not sure what’s going on here yet, and until I do, keeping you out of the line of prospective fire is my number one priority.”
I pulled her toward Nate.
“You good?” I asked.
“Better than my vase,” he muttered, looking over at the already ruined art project. His tone and the steadiness of the way he moved toward us told me that, while Holly was in shock, VanPelt was definitely not.
“Take her to the back room,” I said, speaking over the blaring alarm. “Keep her there, and both of you stay awake until the ambulances get here. Given the fact that there’s an alarm, I doubt they‘ll be much longer.”
“And what about this?” Nate asked, looking past me and at the car. “This was intentional. It has to be.”
“You let me deal with that,” I said, grabbing my gun, and pulling it from it’s home on the holster on my hip. “Now go.”
I turned, confident that they’d do as I said, and moved toward the car. The airbag had gone off. So, I couldn’t see whoever was in the driver’s seat. I had no idea if it was some poor old lady who’d lost control of the car or some masked bastard who’d slammed into this building in an attempt to take the three of us out.
