The word was no sooner out of his mouth than the sound of screeching tires made him look up sharply. The van’s grip on the road gave way as it careened around the very turn she’d just described. It teetered on two wheels and looked like it was going to settle back down onto all four when the right front fender clipped a parked car.
The van went airborne, sailing in a slow motion half roll a good thirty feet through the air. Then the front end hit the ground and the entire van snapped into a fast log roll, flying down the street sideways, flipping no less than six complete revolutions. Debris spun off in every direction. Jeff braked hard, dodging pieces of flying metal, swerving violently in and out among the litter. And then he was past the van.
He looked back over his shoulder and saw a man crawling out through the passenger’s side window. As Jeff opened the throttle once more, he glimpsed the guy in his rearview mirror, limping over to the nearest parked car and smashing the butt of a rifle through the car’s window. Those guys weren’t done for yet. Whoever had survived the crash was going to hot-wire a car and come after them.
“The van crashed. But they’ll procure another car and give chase. Where are you now?”
“Going into a residential area. A slum, actually.”
“Keep calling your turns.”
“Roger,” she replied.
“How close are you to him?”
“I’m practically riding the back of his bike. A hundred yards, max.”
She sounded distracted.
“He just took a right. First street past a crab shack. Red crab legs painted around a name on a white sign. Begins with a W or an M. Sorry I didn’t see more.”
He was amazed she was catching the details she was, what with driving like a bat out of hell, the darkness, and the adrenaline of the chase.
As the neighborhood deteriorated around him, Jeff cursed under his breath. Barbados, for all its wealth, had a few pretty rough areas. He didn’t know whether to fear for Kat or for the locals if she got into a scrape in this neck of the woods. Either way, he emphatically didn’t want her alone. “Can you slow down a little?”
“Not if you don’t want me to lose this guy. And by the way, he’s small in stature. Lean. I’d estimate five foot seven at most, maybe 140 pounds. Great balance. A hell of a motorcycle rider. Black clothes, black ski cap, black gloves. Lemme see if I can get close enough to see his face.”
A pause followed.
“Left at Old Joe’s General Store. Looks like a little neighborhood market.” And then she announced, “Third right after that, maybe a hundred yards past the store. It’s a dirt road. No landmarks or sign. Be careful, it’s narrow.”
Then she said, “He just looked back over his shoulder. Caucasian.”
Even this much information was a major breakthrough for the investigation. But Jeff would rather bag the guy and be done with it.
And then the sound of a gunning engine behind Jeff made him lurch. And swear. Looked like he had the crazy commandos on his tail now. He risked a glance back. They were still well behind him, no more than a pair of headlights in the distance. For now. Bastards were no doubt following the giant rooster tail of dust he was throwing up. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. At least there was grim relief in the fact that now they’d chase him and not her.
Jeff flew down the road, pushing sixty miles per hour, keeping an eye out for the turn ahead.
“He just went up a set of stairs on his bike. I’m going on foot.”
“You can’t catch him on foot!” Jeff exclaimed. “Go around.”
“I can catch him if he doesn’t have a back tire.”
She cut him off. “Too late. I just took his bike tire out. Our boy’s on foot. I’m closing.”
“Don’t engage him. I repeat, don’t engage!” Jeff shouted into his mike.
No answer. Damn, damn, damn!
He slowed to take the next turn, and that engine behind him got a whole lot louder all of a sudden. The gunmen were going to catch him fast at this rate.
There was the first turn. He screeched around the corner, skidding violently. He slammed a foot down on the pavement, saving himself from a nasty wipeout. He righted himself, and accelerated with a screech of tires. Old Joe’s. Old Joe’s. C’mon, c’mon.
There it was. He took the corner way faster than he ought to have. One street. Two streets. Brake. Skid wildly around the third corner…Up ahead he spied their car, parked at an angle across half the narrow street, its driver’s side door open.
He pointed the moped up the steps beside the vehicle, banging up their bone-jarring length. He burst out into an alley. Looked left and right. There. In the distance. A familiar dark, running figure disappeared around a corner. He pointed the moped that way. His back tire was getting soft. Didn’t like that flight of stairs, apparently.
He turned the corner and looked around this new alley frantically. His heart dropped to his feet. Two figures ahead, up high, racing across a rooftop. Crap. The Ghost and Kat were climbing now. He didn’t stand a chance of following them up there. He rode along below them, trying to hear them above the wounded sound of his moped. It was no good. The bike was getting too difficult to control. He ditched it and took off running.
“Talk to me.” He panted into his mouthpiece.
“Heading north,” she bit out. She sounded like she was exerting herself pretty hard.
He made the next turn to head north. He passed a couple of tough-looking locals smoking weed in a doorway, but he went by so fast they hardly had time to react.
“Damn, this guy’s agile,” Kat complained. “He’s jumping gaps.”
“Don’t fall,” Jeff retorted in alarm.
“Huh.”
The alleys got darker and narrower and dingier. He dodged sleeping goats and startled the hell out of himself when he narrowly avoided drop-kicking a chicken, who proceeded to take extremely loud umbrage at being awoken.
All of a sudden, intuition washed over him, certainty as real as the dirt beneath his feet.
“Where are you, darlin’?”
Nothing.
“Click if you’re running silent.”
He waited. And waited. Nothing. Dammit! Even if she’d gone to ground and was hiding, she should’ve been able to ease a hand up to her throat to give him a lousy click on the radio to let him know she was okay.
Purely following his gut now, he slowed to a walk. It was a bitch to control his breathing, but he forced himself to breathe light and quiet. He thought he heard a scuff ahead. He raced toward the sound, pausing in the shadow of a doorway and easing around the corner.
Aw, hell.
He spotted two grappling figures teetering on the edge of a rooftop.
He took off running for all he was worth. “Hey!” he shouted at the Ghost.
One of the figures glanced up, startled. And then…oh, God…the fighting pair overbalanced. And fell, plummeting toward the ground two stories below.
“Kat!” he shouted frantically.
Chapter 11
The Ghost lurched in her grip and it was just enough to throw off the razor’s edge of balance they both wavered upon. Kat only had time to register dismay before the two of them launched into space. The ground rushed up from below. She twisted to take the impact on her left hip and shoulder. But then something
