Page 20 of Velvet and Valor (Platinum Security: Shadows of LA #4)

“That’s because it is,” he winces. I notice he has red abrasions all over his wrists. Those cuffs didn’t come off easily.

“Are you double-jointed?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “Well, not in the conventional sense.”

His eyes grow distant, and there’s a ghost of old pain in his gaze when he speaks.

“We were in the mountains of Afghanistan chasing down some guy whose name I couldn’t hope to pronounce in a terrorist compound.

Intel told us it would be lightly defended.

It was anything but.” Axel’s gaze darts to me and softens slightly.

“Fortunately, our CO figured out the mistake and ordered us all back into the chopper. My friend, Charlie Nash, he…he took a dozen rounds in the back two steps from the copter.”

“Oh, Axel,” I say, my heart shattering like glass for him. “That’s so awful.”

“I grabbed his arms, and I held on as the copter lifted off. I wouldn’t let him go, even when my CO was screaming at me to. He was dead. I knew he was dead, I just…didn't want to leave him behind.”

Axel’s expression sobers, and his eyes return mostly to the present.

“Anyway, it was a good ten miles to a safe place to touch down. By the time we got there, the damage had been done. I tore up my hands, bad. Needed two surgeries to correct it, but on the bright side I can slip out of cuffs no problem.”

I look at his wrists. They have to hurt like hell. No problem my foot!

“Does it hurt?” I ask softly.

“Nah,” he says, grinning.

I sigh and my shoulders slump.

“Yeah, they hurt,” he says. I look up and see that the grin is gone. “Bad, sometimes. Especially when it rains.”

It isn’t much, but he does shove the door open a little further, to let me in. I feel warmth spreading through my core, but then I remember we're sitting on the side of a gravel road with two dead bodies.

“Um, should we get out of here?” I ask.

“Hell yes,” Axel says. “I’m driving.”

“This isn’t even a cop car,” Axel says, sliding behind the wheel. “No radio, no computer. These guys are total amateur hour.”

“They fooled you enough to get you into cuffs,” I point out.

Axel opens his mouth, jabbing a finger at me, ready to mount a defense. But it dies in his throat, and his gaze.

“Touché,” he says, starting up the engine.

I buckle up as he tears around in a swift, hard turn. The SUV comes up on two wheels as we sail around the bend and back onto the main road.

“Slow down!” I snap.

“Sorry, this thing’s got a lot more ass than I thought it would,” Axel says, shifting down. “Somebody’s been modding around under the hood. I think this thing is turbocharged.”

“I’ll just pretend I know what that means.”

“It means truck go fast,” he says with a mad cackle, taking us around a sharp bend in the road. The trees get perilously close. “Woohoo, I’m going to have to buy one of these!”

“Axel, you’re freaking me out,” I say, grabbing the Jesus handle over my window and hanging on for dear life.

“I know,” he says.

“So, stop!” I demand.

“I can’t,” he says.

Anger boils inside of me.

“And why not?” I say stiffly.

“Because if I slow down, the other fake cops will catch us.”

“What?”

I twist around in my seat as much as I can and crane my neck until I can see out the rear window.

At first, there’s nothing but the road, partly obscured by a plume of dust. Then, another SUV, much like the one we’re in careens around the bend.

I can’t make out who’s inside it, but it’s obvious they’re trying to catch up in a hurry.

“Are you buckled up?” Axel asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Good. It’s about to get a whole lot freakier. Sorry.”

Axel shifts up and the trees blur past in a verdant rush. I feel myself being pressed into the seat from the tremendous acceleration. He shifts up again, and the engine growls like Godzilla. I can feel it throbbing so hard it vibrates the entire car.

“Where is it?” he growls. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?” I ask. “The exit?”

“No,” Axel says. “The gear! It’s got a six-speed gearbox and–there we go!”

The engine still growls, but it doesn’t sound so labored. The trees are really blurring past, and the car is shaking a lot. I’m afraid we’ll shake right off the road and plunge down a mountainside.

“Found it,” Axel says. “Man, I thought old Renaults were hard to shift! Who designed this Gearbox, the guy from the Saw movies?”

“Jigsaw,” I say, peering behind us.

“What?” Axel says.

“Jigsaw. That’s the guy from the Saw–never mind. Axel, they’re getting closer.”

“What?” He looks in his mirrors and curses. “Great. They must have a custom turbocharged engine, too. Well, that’s fine.”

“How is that fine?”

“Because now our vehicles are equal, so it all comes down to skill.” Axel beams a smile at me. “And I’ve got this guy cold.”

“Oh good, the frat boy is back,” I mutter to myself.

“What?”

“Never mind, just try not to get us killed.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Despite Axel’s bravado, his face is a mask of gritty determination. He keeps the wheel in nearly constant motion as he guides us down the steep mountain road snaking in and out of pines. At one point we come around a bend and a hairpin turn is just right in front of the bumper.

Axel grabs the handbrake, pulls it back and throws the wheel hard to the right. The front end of the truck doesn’t move much, but the back end slides out wide. I scream, thinking we’re toast, but the truck glides around the sharp turn like a figure skater at the Olympics.

“Yeah,” Axel says as the car is pointing straight ahead once more. “Women have the little black dress; men have the handbrake turn.”

His fancy move gives us some ground, but not much. Maybe fifty feet. The road dips into a deep valley, then shoots back up the side of a steep foothill. The SUV’s engine grumbles angrily as Axel jams on the shifter, trying to find the right gear.

“Come on, come on,” he growls. “Who in the hell makes you cross over to fourth, then third, THEN fifth just to—”

A sharp, wrenching sound accompanies a hard bang beneath the truck. Smoke billows out of the exhaust and steams from the radiator grill. I can feel the truck lose power as our acceleration slows.

“You broke it,” I groan.

“I didn’t break it…okay, I broke it.”

“So now what? Should I get out and push?”

“It might help–”

I’m thrown against my seatbelt so hard it digs into my torso.

The airbags explode, keeping my face from shattering but knocking me silly all the same.

All of a sudden, I’m tossed about in my seat belt, my already-sore head bouncing off the window glass so hard it shatters. My head and the glass, I think.

Only when the SUV skids across a steep, grassy slope on its roof do I realize we’ve been knocked off the road. I get the briefest glimpse of an approaching river before the truck slides right into the water.

Water gushes through my broken window, filling the cabin.

The truck sinks, putting my head below the surface.

Upside down, I struggle to find the latch to my seat belt.

I can’t see anything! The water is so cold, my hands are already going numb.

I don’t know if I can work the release even if I manage to find it.

The air inside my lungs burns, screaming to escape. It’s not lack of air that makes you feel like you’re suffocating. It’s the inability to expel carbon dioxide. I learned that from a movie script.

I have enough time to ponder the irony of that before the air explodes from my agonized lungs at last, water rushing in quickly to replace it. My hands scrabble at the seatbelt release. I’m fading. I can feel myself fading.

Is this how it ends?