Race Against Time

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she kept saying.

“Hush, Star! Just run,” Lacey said and looked over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed.

Star stumbled and then screamed, thinking she and her baby were falling.

Lacey grabbed her.

“Stay with us, honey. It’s not much farther.”

The baby whimpered and then drifted back off to sleep. The medicine they’d given him earlier to keep him quiet was working, but it made Star anxious. What if they’d given him too much? What if he didn’t wake up?

Ryker kept a continuous one-eighty sweep of the area in front of them, ready to take anyone down who got in their way while Lacey kept an eye out for who might be coming up behind them. He and his partner had been undercover too damn long to have this screw up now.

Boom!

The baby flinched in Star’s arms but didn’t cry.

A stray cat hissed from behind a Dumpster, then darted off into the shadows as they ran past.

Lacey was bringing up the rear without comment until she suddenly let out a low cry.

“Ryker! Runners coming up on our six.”

Ryker paused and pivoted, his heart pounding. He heard them, too.

“Take Star and the kid and get to the Farmers Market parking lot. I’m right behind you.”

Lacey grabbed Star’s arm.

“We have to run now. Stay with me and don’t look back.”

“Oh, my God,” Star moaned. “I’m—”

“Just don’t fucking say that you’re sorry again,” Lacey said and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her closer into the shadows and lengthening their strides as Ryker darted behind a Dumpster into a crouch. He didn’t have long to wait.

Three men were coming up the alley at a fast clip, but it was the silence they brought with them that was the tipping point for Ryker. If they had been tourists enjoying the fireworks they would have likely been drunk and noisy. Chances were more likely it was some of Baba’s hired guns. He saw them from the side as they ran past the Dumpster and knew one man on sight.

He stood up and called out.

“Hey! Bergman!”

The trio turned in an orchestrated move that would have made the Cirque du Soleil proud, but Ryker was already firing.

Pop.

Bergman went down.

Pop.

Blood fanned out behind the middle man’s head before he dropped.

Pop.

Blood flooded the front of the shortest man’s shirt as Ryker’s last shot tore through the carotid artery in his neck.

Three shots in three seconds without one fired in return. Efficient. Ryker prided himself on efficiency, and now he had to catch up. He ran past the bodies without looking down and caught up with the women just as they reached the car.

Lacey clicked the remote to unlock the doors, then tossed the keys to Ryker, who caught them in midair. He got into the driver’s seat as Lacey put Star and the baby into the back. “Buckle up,” she said and slammed the door, then jumped into the front passenger seat and grabbed her seat belt. “What happened back there?”

“Bergman and two others.”

Lacey groaned.

“Our cover is blown. How did that happen?”

“Who knows, and it’s too late to worry about it,” Ryker said.

“You’re right. Get us out of here,” Lacey said.

Star was out of breath and trembling as Ryker started the car and drove away.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“They’re sending a chopper for us,” Lacey said. “This might have worked better if the need for haste had not been an issue. Now we just have to get to the pickup site.”

The toddler whimpered in Star’s arms. Now that they were settled, she dug into the bag over her shoulder and pulled out a bottle, then smiled when the baby started drinking.

“My poor little Sammy,” she crooned. “Mama’s hungry little boy.”

Lacey glanced over her shoulder at the young woman. At first glance, and in the darkened interior, she looked like a teenager. Lacey gave Star and the baby one last look, then turned around and buckled her seat belt. They were headed out of Vegas with fireworks exploding in the sky behind them. They had a date with an FBI chopper at a GPS location just off Highway 93, and time was wasting.

Lacey kept an eye on the headlights of the cars behind them while Ryker wove through the traffic with professional precision. The farther he drove, the less traffic they met, and the fewer cars trailing behind.

“How far now?” Ryker asked, knowing Lacey was keeping track of the GPS location for him.

“Looks like about six miles,” she said.

He hit the accelerator, moving them faster, anxious to tie this up without anyone getting hurt. But he had a knot in his gut and a niggling concern that this wasn’t over.

The night sky was beautiful, peppered with stars from a heavenly explosion a thousand light-years in the past, while the mountains to the north appeared as a ragged bulwark between the city behind them and the desert landscape around them.

Star glanced out her window and then looked up through the glass sunroof. Her pulse was as erratic as the trip they were on, and then she saw a shooting star.

“Look at that! A star on the run, like me.”

“They burn out,” Ryker reminded her.

The shock of his careless comment scared her, and she buried her face against her sleeping baby’s neck.