Page 53 of 2nd Strike

I can’t let them go. No way. She’s already lived for years under a fake identity. If they leave now, who knows how long they’ll be underground.

From behind me, a car door slams. Has to be Charlie. Excellent. She’ll know what to do. While Susie heads to the other side, I peek at my approaching sister.

“Hello,” she calls. “Anita?”

Susie/Anita’s head whips around, her gaze pinging from me to Charlie. Me to Charlie. Me to Charlie.

Whoopsie.

Should’ve definitely coordinated with big sis on this one. We’ve just blown our hand and my breath quickens. Do something.Stop them.

My vision blurs from the adrenaline storming my system and I force a breath. If I don’t get myself under control, the panic attack will take me down.

No.

Susie picks up her pace, rips the door open and guns the engine.

In seconds, they’ll be out of the driveway and by the time Charlie and I get back to the car, they could be gone.

Gone, gone.

My skin is absolutely on fire as I look at Charlie, still a good thirty feet away. No help there. The sound of Susie’s transmission shifting gears drowns the chaos in my head. She’s going. Right now. Taking Jon and leaving.

I do the only thing I can.

I jump into Susie’s backseat.

23

Charlie

“What the ever livin’…?”

I’m so stunned at what I just saw, I don’t react for a heartbeat.

Then I wish I had my gun.

To shoot Anita’s tire and stop her from running away. Or maybe my sister for her fool brain, knee-jerk reaction.

Better yet, myself for putting us in this situation in the first place.

I haul ass, running alongside the car down the block, as if I can somehow stop Anita—Susie—with my bare hands. I yell and pound at her driver side window, ignoring her grim determination not to look at me, the fear I see in Jon's eyes, and the fact my sister is reaching forward from the backseat to grab the woman's shoulder.

Susie hits the gas and no matter how hard I run, I can't keep up. I stand in the middle of the road, raise both hands and scream my lungs out for three seconds.

An engine revs behind me. JJ.

Bless him all to pieces.

He shoots up next to me, slams on the brakes and throws open the passenger door. "Get in!"

I'm halfway into the seat when he takes off, the inertia slamming my door shut. I strike the dashboard over and over again with my fist as we give chase. “What the hell is she thinking?"

“It's Meg," JJ replies, as if this explains everything.

It does, actually.

Ethan grips the back of my seat, leveraging himself forward to watch as we streak through suburbia. I wish I was a fly inside Susie’s sedan and could hear what Meg’s saying to her.