Page 18 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

Son-of-a-bitch! Keller slammed both eyes shut as shattered safety glass from Savannah’s side window blasted his face.

Savannah jerked into him like a rag doll. She screamed, “Someone hit us!” then gripped the dash with one hand while her other dug into his forearm.

“You hurt?” he asked, fighting to control the rental.

“I don’t think so.”

“Hold on,” Keller ordered as he slammed the Camaro’s brakes to keep it from slipping down the opposite bank and into the swamp.

This section might not be deep, but he wouldn’t risk getting caught in the tire-sucking mud, not with a monster truck climbing onto the road and dead on his ass.

Damned thing was outfitted with a snorkel smokestack.

“You sure you’re not hurt?” he asked, verifying the panic and anger vibrating off the womanly body at his right.

Empathy had its silver linings. Being able to read Savannah’s emotions the precise moment she touched him was definitely one of them.

And right now, she was as pissed as he was.

She wanted to strike back at whoever’d rammed them, too.

“Just scared. Didn’t see that truck coming, did you?”

“Sure didn’t.” But I sure as hell see it now.

By then, the Camaro had settled back onto all four wheels on the road, but faced the opposite direction.

After crossing the road and charging down the shallow embankment, the truck was in the process of churning a wide half-circle at Keller’s left.

Rooster tails sprayed high behind both rear tires when it gunned its engines and drifted sideways.

The son-of-a-bitch was gunning for a second shot.

The damned thing could easily climb over the Camaro like stink on pig shit.

One more shove like the last, and the Camaro would be on its side in the swamp with Keller and Savannah trapped inside. Not happening.

Dropping the Camaro into low gear, Keller slammed his foot to the metal.

Instant power. The car’s rear-end engaged like a beast. Its racing tires dug into gravel and bedrock.

Oh yeah. All four tires kicked ass while Keller executed a tight U-turn, showed that POS hillbilly truck his backside, then peppered the monster climbing into the center lane with a hefty shot of gravel.

Shifting into neutral, Keller asked Savannah, “Can you drive a stick?”

“You bet.”

“Then slide over here and take the wheel. Get to Sanctuary as fast as you can. Wait for me there.” He gave her no time to answer, just rolled out the door and onto his feet while he simultaneously unleashed both cannons he packed.

Squaring his shoulders, Keller didn’t stop until he stood between the truck and Savannah, poised to kill.

If only she’d done what he’d asked.

Pissed at the fools sitting behind the massive cold-rolled carbon steel push bar on the hefty truck ahead of him, Keller straightened his right arm and aimed at that now cracked windshield.

Two men. Two targets. Two damned good P226 Sig Sauers packing forty-caliber Smith and Wesson rounds. This wouldn’t take long.

“FBI,” he shouted. “Put your hands where I can see them and get out of your vehicle.”

There was no way to get a clear view of the driver from where Keller stood, not that he cared.

Plucky sort though, sitting there with mud all over his ride and revving his engine like he thought he had a dog in this fight.

No hands lifted out either driver or passenger windows, but Keller had time.

These bastards would either comply or go down resisting arrest, he didn’t much care which.

The Camaro had yet to move.

Not wasting time, Keller commenced forward, his pistol on the joker behind the wheel. Firing over the rig, he ordered both suspects again, “I’m FBI and you’re under arrest. Put your hands up and step out of your vehicle. Do it now.”

That elicited precisely what Keller expected.

Gears shifted. The mighty wheels lurched, sewing mud up the rear flaps.

Keller found himself looking up at a rig with three-foot high, heavy-duty, mud-terrain tread monster tires.

A wicked slash cut through the tread on the left tire, a detail Keller stored for future use when he wasn’t about to kill someone.

The truck lurched again. Spinning mud. Taunting him.

Not one to let an insult go unchallenged, Keller charged the damned thing.

Pissed at what this asshat attempted against Savannah, he fired one round through the windshield to make his point, then three into the radiator behind the fancy GMC emblem.

No steam billowed skyward—what the hell?

The truck kept coming. Worse, Savannah was now standing at his elbow. Damn it!

Fighting for her life now, Keller fired both weapons. But nothing slowed the beast barreling toward him. At the last second, Keller lifted both barrels to the sky, grabbed Savannah against him, and together they rolled down the embankment and straight into the swamp.

Landing on his back, he wrapped both arms around her, then crossed his pistols behind her back, ready to shoot if those bastards came after her.

Whimpering, she buried her face in his chest, but Keller had no time to process the protective instincts roaring to life in his soul.

They had to move. “We need to get back on the road before they run us over,” he said.

That produced the proper response from Savannah. Pushing gingerly away from him, she eased to her knees between his legs, then to her feet. And wasn’t she a pretty sight, her face splattered with mud, the rest of her— ?

‘Drenched’ was the word that burst into Keller’s all-male mind. Savannah was dirty and drenched and delightfully wet. Possibly aroused. He certainly was. Her nipples surely were, the nubs clearly defined beneath her skimpy shirt.

Since he was already covered with mud and slime, and he couldn’t get any dirtier, Keller rolled onto his knees and took a much needed moment to get his body to stand down.

This was not the time or place. His suit and shirt were ruined.

His go-bag was still on the back seat of the car where he’d tossed it at the airport car rental garage.

Which was a good thing. At least he’d have clean clothes to change into once they got to Sanctuary. Hopefully, he could shower there.

Like the thought of being naked in Savannah’s shower helped?

Instant images sparked Keller back to life.

Savannah in the shower with him. Water cascading off her brown sugar skin.

She’d melt in his hands. He’d bury himself in her lush, warm body.

They’d pound into each other until the water ran cold and then…

Argh! He had the hard-on from hell straining to get out of his pants. He’d never be able to get back on his feet at this rate. Keller glared at the audacious woman who now stood with one foot on the bank, holding a hand out.

“You coming?” she asked.

Keller looked up at Savannah. The juxtaposition felt right somehow, him on his knees in the filth, her looking like an angel with the bright sun at her six, her gentle, helping hand outstretched to deliver him from evil.

Not that Savannah was big enough or strong enough to lift him to his feet, but she was there.

Damned if those red rosary beads hanging from her neck didn’t add to her exotic allure.

Her fingers fluttered for him to take her hand. “Come on, Secret Agent Man, get your butt moving. The truck’s gone. I don’t have all day.”

At last, Keller could stand without embarrassing himself. Grunting, he took her tiny hand, and gripping it gently, he let her think she’d rescued him. Who knew? Maybe she had.

By the time he’d climbed onto the road, the monster truck was long gone. Bastards. “Are you okay?” he asked the lady climbing up the embankment with him.

“Just dirty,” she replied as she swiped mud away from her nose and mouth only to smear it across her cheek. Talk about plucky. She was one gutsy woman. Disobedient, but courageous.

Blinking to clear the murk out of his eyes, Keller held onto her other hand, hoping to instill comfort as well as dissolve any pain she might have acquired in the fall.

At least this part of the swamp was shallow.

The dirty water came up to his ears. If he could only get his heart to stop pounding.

“I told you to get to Sanctuary,” he huffed as waves of contentment flowed from Savannah to him.

She was doing it again, comforting him. “And leave you to face those creeps alone? You know who they are?”

“No,” he answered, pulling back to see the truth in her eyes. “Do you? ”

Two feminine brows lifted while her forehead filled with those adorable wrinkles. “I don’t and I’ve never seen that truck before, either.”

Like a trusting child, she closed in on him until her cheek melted against his chest.

Instinctively, Keller closed his eyes while his body reacted like a hound dog to the shivering, womanly flesh pressed into his arms. Her heart was pounding as hard as his, and for one fleeting moment, he wished it pounded for a better reason than her fear.

As much as she pushed comfort at him, she couldn’t disguise her adrenaline spike.

As easily as if he’d willed it, a different picture of her riding him imposed itself over his cavalier feelings.

Keller wanted to kiss those lush chocolate lips, now pursed with indignation and sass.

He wouldn’t have minded threading his fingers into all that hair, holding on tight while he… while they…

Aw, hell. Now he was fighting to keep his hands from wandering too low. From grabbing two hands full of her backside and scooping her off the road and into his arms. Gran Mere’s lovely great granddaughter was fast becoming more temptation than he’d expected.

“We should get going before they come back,” he told Savannah, sounding like he’d swallowed a mouthful of that red gravel road.

“Mmm,” she murmured huskily, the lovely vibration of her voice soothing and apparently just what Keller needed.

With the monster truck long gone and Savannah under his arm, he allowed a deep breath.

This road was certainly the one less traveled.

Not a car in sight. Only the birds coming back to life in the trees and—

BOOM! A thunderous tail smacked the muck and mud behind them. An alligator? No, two.

“Get back in the car,” Keller told Savannah as the spiny back of a third good-sized reptile wound its way through the shallow water toward them. “Hur—”

Keller could’ve sworn he’d heard incoming ordnance just as—

BLAM! The Camaro lifted off its wheels with a hiss of flames and spitting body parts.

Turning his back on yet another catastrophe, Keller pulled Savannah into his body.

He hunkered over her, around her, shielding her from flying shrapnel whistling past. She clung to him even as he kept both eyes on the reptiles now on the road, one at his left, two on his right and all headed his way.

Jesus Christ, did everyone want them dead?

Just when he thought things couldn’t get worse, they did.

Another alligator peered over the edge of the road, its short, stubby legs scrambling for solid purchase on the gravel bank.

Only this fourth one to the party was no American native.

This one was a gharial, a long-snouted crocodile that normally inhabited rivers in northern India and Nepal.

The big fellow looked to be nearly fifteen feet long, and as it climbed onto the road, it dragged a thick heavy tail behind it.

Shit. Straightening his arm, Keller fired at the closest alligator. But he missed its eye. The beast halted, annoyed but uninjured. Not even bleeding. It kept coming .

The alligators Keller understood, but gharials weren’t known for hunting humans.

Their preferred diet was fish. The slender, toothy jaws on this beast were designed to sweep from side-to-side through their primary habitat while they fished.

They didn’t hunt land animals, and they weren’t known to attack humans. What was it doing here?

The thing hadn’t slowed since it climbed the bank. Which meant either there were no fish in this part of the swamp and this guy was hungry, or it preferred white meat.

“Get behind me,” Keller growled, not giving Savannah the chance to disobey again. With the burning car blocking the road behind them and the alligators in front, they were trapped. Worried now, he steadied his arm and fired again.

Direct hit. The beast’s jaws snapped open as its left eye exploded.

A roar bellowed out of those cavernous jaws.

When the other reptiles stopped advancing, every hair on Keller’s body stood up with primordial fear.

These four creatures were hungry, man-eating predators.

Their species was more than one-hundred and fifty million years old.

They’d avoided extinction when much larger dinosaurs had not.

He and Savannah were nothing but snacks.

But at least the wounded alligator’s roar distracted its buddies.

They turned, their stubby, lizard-like legs now advancing on it.

Judging the distance, Keller fired again.

Another eyeball exploded into bloody goo, and an all-out feeding frenzy ensued.

Even the gharial attacked the massive thrashing bodies .

Taking one definite step back, Keller pivoted on Savannah. “How far are we from Sanctuary?” he asked, keeping watch over his shoulder.

“’Bout a half mile,” Savannah answered breathily, her eyes frozen on the horrific battle.

The first injured reptile was now fighting for its life, whipping its massive tail at its brothers-in-crime even as they attacked.

The gharial held the wounded reptile’s leg in its jaw even as the injured beast bit down on the first alligator’s snout.

It was a scene straight out of “Jurassic Park,” dinosaurs fighting dinosaurs.

“Run,” Keller told her as he holstered one pistol and grabbed her hand. “Run!”

“But the car,” she yelled as the gharial broke rank, its unblinking, round yellow eyes focused on its human prey once more.

“I said run!”