“Georgina!” I yelled.
Gamma tossed the open box toward me and slammed our SUV into reverse.
I fumbled for the box in mid-air and caught it by the tips of my fingers. Blood rushed in my ears, deafening me, but I kept my eyes peeled, myself grounded.
The approaching vehicle followed us, the driver hidden from view by the dark of night and tinted windows. But it didn’t stop coming.
Gamma screeched backward, turned the SUV in a circle and tore off down the road. She maneuvered evasively, drifting the car around corners at high speed and putting distance between us and the pursuing vehicle.
But losing them wasn’t so easy. The pop of bullets hitting the windows and doors of our car sounded, and I slipped my pistol free from its holster, and held it, waiting for instruction from my grandmother. As the senior spy in this operation, she would instruct me.
Thankfully, our car was bulletproof.
Gamma skidded around another corner, the SUV hot on our tail, and entered Main Street.
“It’s going to get rough,” she yelled, as the car with blacked-out windows pulled up alongside us. “Get ready for contact.”
The pursuing SUV careened toward us.
Gamma leaned into the steering wheel, pulling it toward the truck to ram them back, but the point of impact was off center. Our car spun sideway and crashed into a shop off Main Street. The airbags popped, and the tinkle of breaking glass the last noise I registered before the interior of the car faded to black.
“Charlotte. Wake up, darling. Charlotte. Can you hear me?” Pain erupted in my cheek, and I opened my eyes.
My grandmother had pushed the airbag out of the way and held her gloved hand aloft.
“Gamma?”
“Georgina,” she corrected. “Never forget your cover. Now, get out of the car. We’re on fire.”
I unbuckled myself, and tried my car door, but it was buckled inward from where we’d struck a lamppost. The flicker of fire and the smell of acrid smoke sent a jolt of fear down my spine.
“Climb out on my side.” Gamma had already kicked the driver’s side door open. She stood on the sidewalk and held out a hand. I accepted it and clambered to safety, my stomach lurching and a headache sprouting behind my eyes.
“Where?” I turned in a circle, searching for our attacker. “Where?”
“Gone,” Gamma replied, and snatched the balaclava off my head. She tossed it into the burning vehicle then removed her gloves. “Gloves off. Bulletproof vest too. Anything that looks suspicious. The cops will be here soon. We have to go.”
I did as she’d said, tearing off my spy gear and throwing it into the burning vehicle. “Shoot! The serum!” I started toward the truck, but Gamma caught me by the arm.
“Leave it. It’s not worth your life. That plan is shot anyway. Dr. Briggs is being watched.”
The distant whoop of sirens came, and Gamma and I ran off down the street, away from the burning wreckage and the shredded front of what had once been the Curl Up ‘n Dye salon. We darted around the corner—well, Gamma darted, and I limped at my fastest—and ducked into an alley.
We traveled in silence, keeping to the shadows whenever a car appeared in a road, and climbing over fences where necessary. Finally, we stopped in the park, and I dropped onto a bench under a Pecan tree.
“Ten minutes to catch your breath. Then we’ve got to move. Do you have a concussion?”
“No, I don’t think so. If I do, it’s mild.” I probed my temples and winced. “Mild. But I can keep moving.”
“Anything broken?”
“No. You?”
“I’m fine, Charlotte.” Of course, she was fine. Gamma was practically a bionic woman at this point.
The distant sirens drove home what had happened, and I looked up at my grandmother, suddenly feeling about ten-years-old again. “What now?”
“We’re going back,” Georgina said, “to Dr. Briggs’ home. I didn’t just lose a custom-made SUV for nothing. If whoever’s doing this doesn’t want us near Briggs, then we’ll be darn sure to find out what it is they’re trying to hide.”
“It’s Kyle. It’s got to be.” I rolled my shoulders and stretched my neck, probing it with my fingers too. “We should have stopped and fired at them.”
“And risk your cover and mine?” Gamma asked. “I’m not leaving Gossip for anyone, let alone the waste of flesh and bones that is your ex-husband.”
I nodded.
She was right. Evasive maneuvers were the best option in that situation. Perhaps if we’d lured him out of town but that hadn’t been an option.
“Ready?” Gamma asked.
“Ready.”
19
The powder blue car that had been parked outside Dr. Briggs’ home was gone, and the house itself was deathly still, shrouded in darkness. Not a single light was on in its windows, though the houses surrounding displayed light and the odd blue flicker of a TV behind drawn curtains.
“The front door’s open,” I whispered.
“Noted.” Gamma crouched beside me in the front yard. We were hidden behind a tree still wearing all black though we no longer had our bulletproof vests or guns.
Do we still go in? This is dangerous. Unproven territory. We don’t have any back up.
“You can stay out here if you’d like, Charlotte. It might be an ambush.”
“As if I’d let you go in there by yourself,” I hissed back. “I’m not letting you risk your life for me.”
“That’s what grandparents do,” she said.
And it came back to me then.
In the crash, when she’d been slapping me awake, my grandmother had called me ‘Charlotte, darling’ rather than just Charlotte. She wasn’t the most emotive person, but Gamma loved me dearly as did I her.
“Plan of action?”
“Breach through the back of the house,” Gamma said. “The front entrance could be a trap.”
“Agreed.”
“On my count.” She counted down three on her fingers then formed a fist, her hand pale by the sliver of moonlight peeking through the clouds in the inky black sky.
We crept along the side of Briggs’ house and around to
