Bee reminded Oliver to buckle up.
‘Badasses don’t obey the rules, Mom.’ He clicked his seatbelt on. ‘Just because the fuzz says you have to wear your seatbelt doesn’t mean we gotta listen to ’em.’
‘The fuzz?’ Malika snorted. ‘You’re dumb, bro.’
‘You’re bro, dumb.’ Oliver stuck his tongue out at her. ‘I’m a badass.’
‘A dumb badass.’
‘Children!’ Bee snapped. ‘I need quiet to work.’
Oliver said, ‘What kinda work? Adam’s just driving to the hangar right now.’
‘Yes, but I know where the hangar is. I’m, like, the map person. The guide. The … navigator! I’m the navigator!’
‘The navigator is like the least badass position on the Enterprise, Mom. Don’t be so excited.’
‘Hey,’ Adam said.
Bee smiled at him, shot a finger gun. ‘Hey yourself.’
But two little lines had formed between his eyebrows.
She dropped her hands in her lap and let herself feel really stupid.
He gestured at the rearview mirror and clutched the wheel with both hands. ‘Friends of yours?’
She looked at her mirror. It was a fair question. Three Harley Davidson motorcycles weaved in and out of traffic. She’d grown up in a small town overrun by her uncle’s motorcycle club. But that MC was long gone now, even though she’d done the best she could to keep them safe. Os was an expert at finding weak points and using them for his own advantage. He’d learned hers quickly and pressed on it often.
‘White guys on Harleys?’ Bee shook her head. ‘Oh, that’s never a good sign.’
‘Oliver and Malika,’ Adam said, his voice a calm, commanding rumble, ‘get down on the floor behind our seats.’
Malika frowned out the back window at the approaching motorcycles and did what she was told without argument. ‘Come on, little badass. Let’s make ourselves comfortable on the floor.’
‘Aw, man,’ Oliver groaned and yanked Hogarth down with him. ‘If I gotta lie down here, you do too, Fatso.’
Adam pulled her gun out of the glovebox, his elbow brushing up against her.
She swallowed over the lump in her throat. ‘They’re probably not here for us.’
‘Probably not.’ He rolled her window down and set his gun-holding hand on her knee.
An older man rode up next to the passenger window, his long white beard catching the wind and fanning out behind his head.
Bee pressed her back against the seat as hard as she could.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ Adam said without looking at her, his full attention on the road in front of him. One hand relaxed on the wheel, the other clutched around the gun in her lap. She could barely hear him over the wind screaming in through her open window.
She inhaled deeply through her nose. It shook over her lips when she released it.
Long Beard McWhitey held up a .38 Chief’s Special outside her window.
Adam jerked the car hard to the right and fired.
Bee screamed, guarding her face with her arms. Burning gunpowder clung to her forearms, and the bullet exploded in her eardrums.
The side of the car smashed against the bike. The bullet hit the driver. He and his bike went down, skidding off to the shoulder of the road.
‘Is he dead?’ Oliver called out from underneath the dog.
Bee bobbed her head, wincing at the wreckage in her mirror. ‘Yeah, probably.’
‘He wasn’t wearing a helmet,’ Adam said. ‘You should always wear a helmet on a bike, Oliver.’
She grabbed her hand rests. ‘None of them are wearing helmets! Why?’
The biker on their left opened fire. Bullets pierced through the air, sailed across the inside as he sped along the length of the car.
Adam grabbed the back of her neck and shoved her face down into his lap. Bullets flew over her head and out her empty window. He forced her hard against him, the fabric of his slacks against her cheek, his zipper on her nose.
‘Oh God,’ she said to the lump under her chin.
He fired his gun with his free hand, sending the rider down.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked when he let go of her.
She covered her open mouth with her fingers, breathing hard. ‘Yeah, um. Uh.’ Never better, she thought, her throat dryer than it had ever been in her life. She swallowed, her hand moving to cover her neck. ‘Yep.’
The rider behind them fired three times. The second bullet shattered the rear window. The third whizzed through the windshield. It tore a hole through the glass, leaving cracks like ice over a frozen lake beginning to thaw.
Adam slammed on the brakes.
The bike hit the trunk with a thud. The biker rolled over the top of the car, screaming as he went. The screaming stopped when he hit the road in front of them.
Bee slid forward in her seat so hard her seatbelt engaged.
‘Olly!’ she gasped. ‘You OK?’
‘Dog butt! In my face!’ He wrapped his arms around Hogarth and tried to take in an anus-free breath. ‘So gross!’
‘I’m fine too!’ Malika called out from somewhere underneath Oliver and the dog. ‘Thanks for asking, Boss!’
Adam put the car in reverse. He craned his neck to look in the empty space where the window used to be. The bike that had crashed into them screeched across the asphalt, sparks flying, their bumper pushing it to the side.
Cars honked and swerved to avoid them. One guy yelled at them in Spanish, his middle finger raised.
‘Oh,’ Bee shouted, ‘I’m so sorry us trying not to die has minorly inconvenienced you!’
Adam sped up, steering the car through oncoming traffic backward.
An eighteen-wheeler laid on its horn.
‘Truck!’ Bee yelled.
‘Truck?’ Oliver demanded.
‘Hold on!’ ordered Adam.
‘To what?’ hollered Malika.
Adam yanked the wheel, spinning the car all the way around until they were face to face with the approaching truck. He floored the gas and sent them backward on to the grassy median, missing the eighteen-wheeler by mere feet.
It blared its horn in one long, angry burst as it passed by.
He shifted the car into forward and merged into traffic, now traveling the opposite way they had been.
‘Everyone all right?’
Bee checked to make sure she hadn’t swallowed her tongue. ‘Mm-hum,’ she said, panting hard. ‘I … yeah. Yeah. Oliver?’
‘This dog is too fat,’ he groaned, his upper body hidden by Hogarth.
The dog looked up at Bee, content and oblivious.
‘I’m gonna need a raise, Bee,’ Malika said. ‘You really don’t pay me enough for this.’