Page 6 of Puck
“Careful, he might like it.”
I couldn’t help a little snicker from escaping. “Dammit, you’re right.” I grinned at her. “Colbie Danvers.”
“Layla Harris.”
While Layla and I were talking, Puck was shooting, the AK-47 barking intermittently, and then after a moment the sound of shooting stopped. I glanced in the rearview just in time to see the SUV behind us rotate sideways, the windshield riddled. It skidded sideways, then a tire caught and it rolled, metal crunching and glass shattering. I returned my attention to the road ahead, a four-lane thoroughfare that could have been in a neighborhood outside New York City, except for the fact that the street signs were all in Cyrillic.
There was a lot of sniffling and whispering and clinging happening among the other women in the bus, with the notable exception of Layla, the other three women, and myself. Hope blossomed—we’d gotten rid of our pursuers, which hopefully meant we were home free—I glanced in the rearview mirror again and felt my stomach clench. The SUV was visible in the distance, overturned and smoking . . . but there were two more on our tail, their windows opened.
I heard gunfire, felt thunks and clunks as bullets smashed into the back of the bus, and then the windshield in front of me spiderwebbed even more as several holes smashed through it. More thunks, smacks, dings. And then aPOP!and the steering wheel jerked to the right as the back-right tire blew, and the bus swerved across the centerline.
“They popped a tire!” I shouted. “Hold on!”
I fought for control, jamming the brakes and trying to wrestle the huge vehicle back into the correct lane before oncoming traffic smashed into us.
“Swing around!” Puck shouted. “Pop a U-turn—wheel it over hard and floor it!”
I didn’t follow orders well, never had and never would. But for some reason, when Puck barked that order at me, I listened without thinking twice. I let off the brakes, hauled the wheel hand-over-hand all the way to the right and floored it. The bus slewed around awkwardly, tipping dangerously, the diesel engine roaring in protest. The front tires hopped the curb, and I had to let off the accelerator momentarily to avoid plowing into a tree. The instant the nose of the bus was clear, I floored it again and heard the cracking chatter of Puck’s AK-47, drowning out the screams and crying of the other women. Layla was bracing herself in the door opening again, feet against the doorframe, one hand on the handle, the other hand extending the pistol. The lead SUV in pursuit swept past us, tires screeching as it tried to pull off one of those cool-looking brake turns. It didn’t quite manage the maneuver, though, spinning around too far—which provided Layla a perfect opportunity to crack off a trio of fast shots. Her aim was damn near perfect, it looked like, holes peppering the passenger side window and turning the driver’s side opposite red—the SUV bolted forward, out of control, and smashed into a wall surrounding a construction site.
“Goddamn, Layla!” Puck crowed. “That there was some good shootin’, Tex!”
Layla threw herself backward into the bus and put her back to the side of my chair, reaching up with one hand to push forward the lever that closed the door. Another burst of firing from Puck—I checked the mirror and saw that the last SUV had been incapacitated, the engine smoking, the windows along the entire length of the vehicle riddled with holes, gore visible on the opposite side of the interior.
The flat tire was flapping, the rim scraping and grinding, pulling at our momentum and making the steering wheel wobble and shudder.
“Can’t keep this thing on the road much longer,” I said, as Puck moved back toward the front.
“No shit.” He scratched his scalp with a fingertip as he searched the road ahead. I heard sirens, somewhere in the distance. “We gotta make ourselves scarce.”
“Sounds like the police are on their way.” I glanced at him. “Couldn’t we just pull over and wait for them?”
Puck stared at me like I was crazy. “Number one, these guys probably own the cops. Number two, even if the cops were honest, we just killed a bunch of people, and even if was in self-defense, that’s still a bunch of questions I don’t have any easy answers for, and number three, we’re in a foreign country which we entered illegally with no documentation, and number four, I don’t speak fucking Russian.”
“Well, yeah, that much is obvious. The driver was talking about you right before he pulled over. They figured out that you’d tried to replace some guy named Anton.”
Puck eyed me. “You speak Russian?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. And Mandarin.”
From the other side of Puck, Layla piped up. “Her name is Colbie Danvers.”
“Because I can’t introduce myself,” I remarked, shooting her a glare.
Layla just shrugged. “Just introducing my friends to each other.”
Puck looked from Layla to me. “Wait, you two know each other?”
“Nope, we just met,” Layla said. “But we’re kindred spirits.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that’s us, Anne Shirley and Diana Berry.” When both Puck and Layla just stared at me, I shook my head in disgust. “Anne of Green Gables?”
I was still driving, trying to keep the bus mostly straight as I searched our surroundings for somewhere to pull over.
“Never read it,” Puck said. “Not really my thing.”
“What, reading?” I snorted. “Color me shocked.”
“Actually, Puck has a PhD,” Layla said. “Pull in there.” She pointed at a road that was somewhere between a side street and an alley—a narrow, crumbling lane between rows of buildings.