Driven

by Robert J. Crane

  Angel spun us in a drift around the next corner, tires screaming their displeasure, or else having a rubber orgasm—either way, they were loud. I readied myself as we came around the turn for my two-second window of shooting glory.

  We drifted the one-eighty. Tires screamed. The enemy car was coming up the turn.

  “Screw you, you soldier of fortune sons of bitches.” I unleashed. Quantity over quality.

  I stroked the trigger eight times. Looked straight down the barrel.

  The SUV’s front windshield exploded. Holes in the hood started smoking.

  And it kept coming.

  “Well, shit,” I muttered. This was not my night for aiming.

  “Running out of space,” Angel said tightly. I looked up.

  She was right. We were on the roof, only one more turn before the garage came to an abrupt end.

  “Any chance you can give me a little more time next turn?” I asked. She didn’t answer. I could see the thought racing through her mind. “Pretty please?”

  She grunted. Best response I figured I’d get. She was concentrating.

  I was a crack shot once upon a time. Under ideal conditions, I could take the head off a human at half a mile with my current setup. While I was stationary and the wind was fair.

  At fifty miles an hour on a turn, against a fast moving target in shadow …

  Well, I wasn’t quite as good.

  I did a mental count. The mag was good for thirty. I figured I’d gone through half.

  This time, I was determined to blow through the other half. I got a fresh mag ready for speed reload. Clenched it in hand as I steadied my rifle.

  Set up the shot. Readied for the turn.

  “Here we go!” Angel announced her turn. A round of fire from the SUV peppered her side of the car again.

  Angel let out a grunt of pain. I saw blood darkening the leg of her jeans and more spreading along her side, marring the light shirt she wore.

  “Shit, you okay?”

  We jerked into the turn, car shuddering. Her hands were clamped on the wheel. “Fine,” she gritted out.

  That damned sure didn’t look “fine” to me, but I had shots to make.

  The AR roared in my hands. I unleashed hell, aiming for the dark shadow in the driver’s seat.

  Muzzle flash lit the night. Our car spun sideways.

  In seconds, the concrete support rail demarcating the ramps blocked my view of the SUV. But it was still tearing up the concrete path toward us, as near as I could tell from the noise.

  Our car tilted a little as we came out of the turn. Angel’s hands were slackening on the wheel, but she grunted and spun us around. Shifted the car into reverse, backing us up using the little camera on screen.

  We skidded, the proximity sensor warning us about the lack of space to run behind us with a loud dinging.

  And the cartel SUV came around the last corner and stopped.

  “Nowhere to run.” I had the AR up, pointed at the SUV. I knew I’d pegged the driver multiple times; my shooting wasn’t so bad I wouldn’t have clipped the bastard at least a few rounds after an entire mag emptied. I finished my combat reload and left the round I had in it chambered. There was one bullet left in the old mag. “Driver’s a meta, I think. Maybe a phase shifter or something.”

  “Hm,” Angel said, mostly a grunt. I could tell she was fading fast. I didn’t know exactly how badly she’d been hit, but I suspected that if her wounds weren’t fatal, they were at least going to cause unconsciousness while her body tried to heal itself. She looked at me. “Bet you didn’t think it’d end like this.”

  “Stay with me here,” I said, looking in the scope this time as the SUV came to a stop. Something about what she said tripped my déjà vu trigger, but I didn’t have time to worry about spooky feelings now.

  “Been with you … all this time,” Angel muttered, and gunned the engine. The proximity alert flared again, and she shifted the car back into drive. “Let’s … play chicken.”

  I checked my seatbelt, just in case. Checked hers, to be sure, in case she couldn’t. “Okay,” I said.

  Light flared down on us from above. The faint sound of a chopper’s rotors reached my ears through the shattered windows.

  Angel glanced up. “Cops … or Adoncia?”

  “It’s the cartel,” Jamal’s voice squawked from my pocket. “No police copters in your area.”

  “Let’s give them a show, then,” Angel said as the chopper started to descend on us. It was probably a few hundred feet up, and with us pinned in place by the SUV—which we couldn’t displace, not with a Miata—we were properly stuck.

  “Hey, maybe we should—” I started to say, but Angel revved the engine again, super loud, as the chopper swung down into view. It was coming down low, like they were going to drop someone off on the garage roof, descending to a hundred feet above the deck, then fifty, then—

  Angel hammered the accelerator and released the brake, her teeth gritted together, blood seeping through. The helo was only about forty feet or so off to our left, over the side of the garage roof and descending by the second. It’d be landing in moments, or at least putting itself in place to drop cargo—which I could see from here was a bunch of dudes with big guns and tactical gear. They were aiming at us, and I started to lay down some suppressing fire, but Angel swatted my gun away.

  “No,” she said, and the moment passed, the car roof occluding my view of the chopper as it descended to our left.

  We raced toward the SUV, which came at us in turn, furiously tearing its way up the parking deck. Angel was watching it intently as the space between us cut down to thirty feet, twenty—so fast I could barely keep up even with my meta reflexes—ten—

  Angel jerked the handbrake, swerved right, and swung the back end of the car around just as the SUV swerved slightly left. The back end of our car drifted in a one eighty, reminding me of a baseball bat swinging at a pitch.

  In this case … the ball was the SUV.

  The back end of our car slammed into the SUV and diverted it sideways at high speed. It crashed into the concrete barricade that surrounded the roof of the garage, mangling the hood and flipping the back end up—

  It did one flip through the air and collided with the helicopter, and an explosion lit the night as they both went crashing down just over the edge of the garage deck.

  “Holy shit,” I said as an orange glow lit the night, a fireball mushrooming its way up over the side of the deck where the SUV had vanished, then fading as it fell to the earth six stories below. “That …”

  “Yeah.” Angel slumped against the seat. “Gonna need a …” She was blinking her eyes. “Uh oh.”

  “‘Uh oh’ what—?” I started to ask. Didn’t need an answer by the time I got that much out, though, because the question answered itself.

  Another cartel SUV was waiting just down the parking deck, in perfect position to start a game of chicken, except …

  This time we were facing the wrong damned way.

  Angel started to put her hands on the wheel, and I started to turn around, gun in hand.

  Neither of us made it in time.

  Someone stuck their head out the window of the cartel SUV, and a beam of ruby red energy lit the night.

  Adoncia.

  The laser speared our Miata as Angel hit the gas. We lost the rear wheel on my side to the attack and lurched sideways before the car had a chance to realize it had been damaged. Angel tried to control it, but we spun and slammed into the concrete barricade on the side of the garage as another beam of light sliced down into the front of the car, cutting the engine off.

  The impact was devastating, my gun slamming into my shoulder as well as the airbag, which popped instantly against the superhot barrel. I was jerked forward and my head hit the dash as the front end of the car dissolved in an eye blast.

  And as for me … my vision faded to black as the pain wafted away.

  I crashed into unconsciousness.

  CHA
PTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Angel

  Four Years Ago

  Miranda’s office was in one of the tall buildings downtown, and the flight there took only moments in Sienna’s arms. The cool air filtered around Angel, and her mind raced as they flew. “Over there,” she said, nodding to it in the distance, as Sienna altered their course to carry them toward the indicated building.

  The landing drew looks and stares from people who were walking through the concrete park where they came down. Angel could hear them, that sort of hushed conversation, the thousand fingers pointed skyward, the “Look!” invocations of voices exclaiming their surprise at seeing an extraordinary event unfold.

  Angel was being carried by the world’s first superhero.

  Her.

  A simple restaurateur from Houston.

  It was almost too much to believe.

  The landing was soft, almost a simple step down. Sienna just drifted her down until Angel just stepped off gently. Sienna herself landed a moment later, her heavy boots making a slight clunk against the pavement.

  Angel looked up—and up. Miranda’s firm was not small, and they had several floors of this building set aside for their use. Looking into the immense glass and steel lobby, she felt herself take a very subtle gulp.

  “I’m not feeling your pulse or anything, but I get the sense from your general, ‘Shoulders so tight you could use them to bend steel across,’ demeanor, that you’re not looking forward to this confab with your cousin,” Sienna said. “I know, I know. I’m a keen observer of the human condition.”

  Angel swallowed and found that her mouth had dried out during the flight. She hadn’t even noticed. “How … do I even tell her that I think her new boyfriend tried to kill me?” She turned to look at Sienna.

  Sienna just blinked a few times, like she was chewing through the information looking for an answer. “Uhh …” she finally said, “y’know … I’m probably not the person you want to ask for advice on this one, because I’d probably just come out and say it as bluntly as possible, no tact whatsoever. I’m the sort who, if a limb needs to be removed, I’m gonna get the hacksaw and go to work, anesthetic be damned. I’ll just ignore your screams until I’m done, but I’ll be fast.”

  Angel swallowed another dry mouthful of nothing, and it felt painful. “I’m suddenly very thankful you’re not a doctor.”

  “That’s really not in my blood,” Sienna said, and then nodded toward the building lobby. “Come on. You can start thinking up a way to explain this to her while we’re in motion, because time’s a wasting.”

  They walked inside, the massive, four-story interior of the building looming above them. It was normally an inspiring sight on the occasions when she’d visited Miranda at her office for lunch. Now, though …

  It just felt intimidating.

  They passed through in a flash, into the elevator and up, up as though being flown by Sienna to their destination. Soon, too soon, the doors dinged open, and Angel stepped out on wooden legs, finding herself in the receptionist area of Miranda’s law firm, toddling her way up to the receptionist uncertainly as lawyers and clients buzzed around her in a blur of motion that she couldn’t focus on. Now it felt like the world had sped up, conversations taking place around her becoming a dull roar that she could barely hear over the fluttering thunder of her own heartbeat.

  Somehow she managed to make herself clear to the receptionist, who spoke as though she was underwater, nodding at Angel’s request, and calling back on her headset into the deep labyrinth of offices behind her. She nodded at Angel, said something about waiting a minute, and then went back to looking at her computer screen.

  Angel just stood there and blinked. She looked back to Sienna to make sure she was still there. As though she might have run off or vanished like a dream.

  “You know the way?” the receptionist asked, looking up at Angel.

  Angel thought about it a second. She used to. “Uh … yeah,” she said, and went forth, the receptionist indicating she should enter the maze.

  Angel did as instructed, and somehow, dazedly, found her way through. The possibilities raced in her head—Miranda would call her stupid, tell her she was wrong, that she was mistaken, that surely Jorge had not—

  “Angel,” Miranda said. She was waiting outside her door, smiling. A hitch came into her expression, though, as she saw who trailed Angel. “This is … unexpected.”

  “You ain’t heard nothing yet,” Sienna muttered so low Angel had doubts Miranda—or anyone else, for that matter—heard it.

  They were inside and sitting in what felt like a second, and yet … it must have been minutes. Angel’s legs ached, twitched, desired to move, to run, to get her the hell out of here, yet Miranda sat before her, talking pleasantly to Sienna, the subject of their conversation utterly lost on Angel. A look of concern was working its way up on her face, but she was just chatting amiably, as Miranda did …

  “Jorge tried to kill me,” Angel finally rushed out, putting a swift end to the pain of waiting. It came out in a jumble, of course, and killed whatever conversation Miranda had been having with Sienna rather abruptly.

  Miranda just stared. And stared. And finally blinked. “Oh,” she said.

  Angel just stared at her, waiting further response. A nervousness gnawed at the lining of her stomach. Surely there would be more. A fierce denunciation, an angry retort that, no, it couldn’t be that—

  “If you say he did that, I believe you,” Miranda said, getting to her feet, looking distractedly around the small office. “His business interests … they seemed a little … strange, honestly. I got a weird vibe from them, but …” She shook her head. “I guess I tried to ignore it because he seemed so … nice.” She closed her eyes. “God, I feel like such a fool.”

  “Well,” Sienna said, “trust me when I tell you that you don’t have the monopoly on bad judgment of men you date. Not even in this room.” And she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I mean … just being brutally frank, I came within about five minutes of losing my virginity to a soul-sucking incubus who later tried to kill me, so … whatever this Jorge guy is up to, at least you didn’t … uh … do that.”

  “I didn’t lose my virginity to him,” Miranda said, staring a little wide-eyed at Sienna, “I did sleep with him, though.” She put her hand over her forehead. “Why … why would he do this, though?”

  “I overheard him say something about cross-border trafficking,” Angel said, a shot of relief running through her now that she’d realized Miranda believed her.

  Miranda believed her. That was a load off.

  Miranda made a grunting noise and fell back in her chair, which squeaked and rolled slightly upon impact. “He’s a drug lord. Of course.” She pulled her hands from in front of her eyes. “All those different companies he had me set up … they’re fronts. Probably for money laundering.” She closed her eyes again. “How did I not see that?”

  “Going out on a limb and guessing it’s because he was a smooth talker,” Sienna said. “And charming, I assume? Those types are always charming, the ones that are trying to manipulate you. They only show their real face once they stop getting what they want.”

  “How are you involved in this?” Miranda asked, sweeping her hair back out of her eyes. It had been loose in a cute style around her face, but the downside was that now it was probably obscuring her vision. “I thought you were in charge of the … office of metahuman law enforcement or something.”

  Sienna stared off into space for a moment before answering. “Ya know … Office of Metahuman Law Enforcement would be a lot better name for my agency than the current one. O-em-el-Eee. Hell, capitalize the T in enforcement and we could be OMELET, which is very much a name I could get behind, cuz my stomach is really growling. Skipped breakfast getting down here … no time for Denny’s and a Moons Over My Hammy …”

  Miranda stared at her. “But … why are you here?”

  “Oh, it was no big,” Sienna waved her off. “I
was in San Antonio anyway on a case, so, when your cousin manifested and the cops called me about the whole thing at her apartment with the murder attempt and all, I just jetted down—uh, well, flew down. No jet involved—”

  “Wait, so—sorry,” Miranda looked from Sienna to Angel. “You are okay, right? I mean, you look fine, other than looking stressed from the restaurant—”

  “Oh, wait, this grey-faced, shoulders-of-steel thing is her normal state?” Sienna was looking at Angel now, too. “Jeez, I assumed it was tension from being bushwhacked by killers and then having to tell you that your boyfriend was all murder-y. Damn, girl,” she said to Angel. “You gotta loosen up.”

  “I—wh—I have responsibilities,” Angel said lamely.

  “Also, did she say you have a restaurant?” Sienna asked. “Because—again—skipped breakfast.”

  “She’s an amazing cook,” Miranda said. “She makes the best tamales I’ve ever had.”

  Sienna smacked her lips together. “I … could really go for one of those right now.” She looked right at Angel. “Can we continue this conversation at your restaurant? Or somewhere else with a fully stocked kitchen?”

  “I …” Angel started. “I think the restaurant is probably the only place with a fully stocked kitchen that I could use right now. But … Jorge knows about it—”

  “Perfect,” Sienna said, rising. “We’ll all go to the restaurant and have breakfast. Lunch. Whatever.”

  Miranda’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “But … Jorge knows where the restaurant is. If he’s after her, he’s going to come there—or send someone looking for her there …”

  “Even more perfect,” Sienna said. “We can set up an ambush.”

  Miranda’s jaw dropped. “But … if he’s trying to kill her … isn’t that kind of walking right into his trap? Giving him what he wants? Shouldn’t we hide out somewhere—”

  “Until this all blows over?” Sienna quirked an eyebrow up at her. “I dunno, let’s work that idea through. You ever do much reading about drug runners—let’s just go and make a leap here, please don’t call me racist cuz I’m just connecting dots—his name is Jorge, he works in Latin America, he’s involved in running drugs across the border, and placed a hit on your cousin. He probably works for a cartel. Yes?”