“Come on!” Harper shouts at me from the door.
I don’t waste any more time. I haul ass across the small living room to follow her out onto the gravel driveway.
“Why the hell do you have a gun?” I shout as we run toward her car, where Bruiser is standing by the open passenger door, mouth dropped open.
“All Texas women carry a gun,” Harper says, sprinting toward the driver’s door.
No arguing with that logic.
“Not your car,” I shout. “Let’s take mine in case they’re tracking yours.”
She nods, stopping mid-sprint. “Good thinking. Bruiser, follow him. He’s a friend. He’s your—” She breaks off, shoving the gun in her purse. “Uncle,” she finishes lamely.
The boy just nods and runs to join us as I motion them across the street.
I unlock the Jeep and we all jump in, Bruiser clutching a book to his chest as he and his mom get in the back seat. She grips him to her side as she buckles both of them in.
“Go, go!” she shouts.
I go.
I hit the gas pedal, mind racing furiously as I calculate all the new variables that have entered the equation. Then toss them all out again.
We’re in chaos-land, remember, dumbass? It’sallvariables.
So I have to focus on priorities.
There’s a man back there with a gunshot in his ass, plus some sort of danger that Harper’s caught up in that involves Silas and probably some very bad people who were powerful enough to have insiders at a Texas penitentiary. Not to mention there are sirens in the distance, so somebody heard the gunshots and called the cops.
Which means?—
“We’ve got to ditch the Jeep,” Harper and I conclude at the same time.
A police car rounds the corner down the road in front of us, lights flashing.
“Get down,” I instruct, doing my best to look like a normal, calm, collected driver as I watch Harper in the rearview mirror put her hand behind Bruiser’s head and urge him to duck down in the back seat while the cruiser’s still a ways down the road.
By the time it passes, I hope I look like any other John on a lunch break.
“Tell me you have a plan,” Harper says from where she and her son are still crouched down in the back seat. “Do you have a plan?”
“Toss your phones out the window, for one, in case he’s tracking them.”
“Dammit, I should have thought of that,” Harper says.
“Dollar in the swear jar,” her son whispers.
Harper huffs out a little laugh. “Sorry, slugger. You’re right. Do you have your phone on you?”
“No,” he says.
She pulls out hers, rolls down the window, and tosses it.
“I don’t have another car to swap to.” I check all the mirrors. “So I say we hide this one in a garage and wait for backup.”
“You have backup?”
“I have backup.”