Keeping Secret (Secret McQueen) - By Sierra Dean Page 0,10
my request.
Okay, I thought, what’s the worst that could happen?
With the gun now empty and the driver of the other car no longer returning fire, the weapon was hampering me. I dropped it through the open car window and used my good arm to hold myself steady, then yanked my feet back, freeing them from the trap of the steering wheel.
Which was the precise moment the Corolla chose to strike again.
Brigit released the gas and hit the brake, stopping the car with a hard lurch, and I slid from the window, falling fast towards the pavement. First my knees caught the edge of the window, then Brigit wrapped her hand around my ankle, keeping me from falling farther. I took a short breath and felt the blacktop under the crown of my head, so close it was a hair shy from cracking my skull.
We had stopped, but the Corolla was still veering out of control, and when it hit the front end of the BMW, it sent off an explosion of sparks and kept moving ever closer to where I was dangling. I winced, turning my face away from the burning points of light. My own car lurched, wheels spinning, and we were reversing again.
The smooth, cold driver’s side door of the Corolla skimmed by me near enough I could have tasted the metal if I stuck my tongue out. In the next moment it tipped onto two wheels and flipped onto its side before tumbling into the ditch with a scream of metal against concrete.
Brigit stopped the car, and it rolled slightly as she shifted into park. When she released my ankle, I slipped and had the foresight to brace myself for impact before I could smack my head on the road. My knees went over my head, and I did a sloppy somersault before coming to a rest next to the car.
Brigit’s head appeared through the window, excitement replaced with terror in her wide eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Kellen’s white face wedged between the driver’s headrest and the window, staring down at me in wonder. “I was sure your head was going to be smushed.”
I ran a hand through my hair, the straight strands now a tangled mess with a new chunk missing where the bullet had grazed me. The severity of what had just happened began to sink in, and I plopped onto the ground, staring at the two girls as if I’d never seen them before.
“Can someone call Lucas?” I asked, an unfamiliar tremor in my words.
Kellen nodded with too much enthusiasm and whipped out her cell phone.
If someone wanted me dead, I might not be their only target.
Dominick Alvarez wasn’t a very imposing figure. He was slight of build and barely taller than me. With his mussed blond hair and twinkling blue eyes, he usually looked more like a rebel angel than a werewolf king’s bodyguard. But watching him now, as he prowled the area around the crash site with an almost scary focus, I saw a whole new side of him.
The predatory side.
He had gone up one side of the road and down the other, sniffing the air and periodically bounding into the ditch, only to return a moment later empty-handed. I think he wanted to be the hero, coming back with a bloodied villain to lay at the feet of Lucas and myself. He looked more and more disappointed every time he came back with nothing to show for his efforts.
Lucas sat next to me on the dented, battered hood of my BMW. The yellow paint had been scraped away, the front bumper hung loose, and the whole front end up to the driver’s door was scarred and almost shredded.
That should have been my face.
Although I wasn’t cold, Lucas had insisted on draping a blanket around me, along with one of his strong arms. I’d found a comfortable spot nestled into the crook of his shoulder, and I was calming myself by breathing in his familiar musky fragrance, a smell unique to him that made me feel safe.
“Did you notice them following you past the city limits, or did they pick up your trail outside New York?” he asked. There was a fine, simmering rage in his voice he was obviously trying to keep buried but couldn’t manage to hide from me.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t see them?”
“No, I wasn’t looking for a tail. We were having a nice drive until the guy rear-ended us. He didn’t even have his lights on until then.”