and break up with this guy soon, are you? What the—” He swore under his breath. “What an idiot.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“The guy behind me. He can’t be more than a foot or two off my back bumper.”
Mackenzie’s stomach seized up. “What kind of car? Can you see the driver? What’s he look like?”
“Hold on. We’re coming to an intersection. Lemme see if I can tell.” Corey paused for a moment before he continued. “Two dudes wearing sunglasses. They’re in a Jeep—the kind with no doors. What freaks. It’s gotta be like forty degrees out.”
It’s them. But he’s not Sangre Dulce. This can’t be happening.
With the phone cradled against her shoulder, she yanked on her jeans and stuffed her feet into a pair of sneakers. “Corey, don’t ask me why, but you have to get out of there. Keep driving, stay on the main roads and for God’s sake, don’t go home or stop anywhere.”
“What the hell? What’s going on, Kenzie?”
“I’m not sure. But I had a similar thing happen to me the other night. Trust me, Corey, you’ve got to lose them. Hold on a sec.”
She threw the phone on the bed, heard the tinny sound of Corey yelling at her through the small speaker, and grabbed the loft phone. She stabbed out Dom’s cell number, but it went straight to voice mail.
Damn.
“Corey, what’s going on now?” she said as she jammed her arms into the sleeves of her leather coat.
“Oh, shit. One guy is getting out.”
“You’re not still stopped, are you? I told you to drive. Drive. Get away from that intersection and don’t stop at any others.”
“Kenzie, what the hell’s going on?”
“Listen to me. They…they want to kill you, all right? You’ve got to get away from them.”
“Kill? What are you talking about?”
“Just fucking go!”
He gunned the motor—finally.
“Surprised ’em, Kenzie. They weren’t expecting that. Oh, man, he jumped back in. They’re following me again.”
“I want you to get onto I-5 North toward Seattle. Don’t go home. That will give me a chance to figure out something. Please tell me you have a full tank of gas.”
“I’ve got a quarter-tank.”
“Damn. How close are you to getting on the freeway?”
“I’m taking it now.”
“Good. Just keep driving. No stopping no matter what, okay? I’ll call you back in a minute.”
She picked up the loft phone again, but this time pressed the button that connected to the field office.
Please, Cordell, pick up. She knew he was over there but she didn’t want to take the time to run all that way. Goddamn it, pick up.
“Mackenzie?”
Thank God. “Cordell, I can’t get ahold of Dom. Two Darkbloods are chasing my brother Corey. He’s not Sangre Dulce, so I don’t know what the hell is going on. He’s north of Tacoma heading this way on I-5. We’ve got twenty or thirty minutes tops before he gets up here unless they take him out on the freeway.”
“Holy mackerel, they’re usually not that bold.” She heard his fingers clicking away on a keyboard. “They prefer to work in the shadows. Your brother should be safe enough if he stays on the freeway. Here, lemme send Dom an emergency text message. Oh, great.”
“What?”
“Right now Dom’s on Bainbridge Island in a small pocket with spotty cell coverage, but as the data lines run on a separate system…” Mackenzie fidgeted as he rambled on and on about text messages sometimes getting through when a call cannot. “Look,” he said as if she were in the room with him. She imagined he was pointing to the screen. “DeGraff’s team is at the Washington/Oregon border and Foss is near the Canadian border. If he can stay ahead of them, maybe he can drag it out until we can get to him.”
She told him about the gas situation.
“Damn, that doesn’t give us much leeway.”
“If I can get him downtown, can he come here?” The words flew out of her mouth almost as fast as she could form them. “Dom said once that this place is cloaked. I don’t know how that works. Would my brother be able to find it? Would the Darkbloods be able to follow him inside?”
“He’d never find it. Neither could you if you were outside.”
“What if I brought him to the loft?” Mackenzie brought a hand to her head, trying hard to control her desperation.
“Won’t work. It’s cloaked, too,” Cordell said.
“What if I got him close? Would you be able to uncloak it to let him in?”