faintly. The muffled sound of her trying to say something through whatever they’d used to gag her. It was one word. “Help.”
I called out to Foxx. Maybe the two of us pulling could open the door. “Get over here!”
“No, you come here!” he said.
I stepped around to the side of the van to see him lifting the guy he’d pulled out. Foxx was putting him over his shoulder. He didn’t have to explain why.
The smoke billowing up had turned into flames. The engine was on fire.
Cars only explode in the movies if the flames reach the gas tank, and it’s near empty. Fire plus fuel plus compressed air equals boom.
“Go ahead, get him out of here,” I said. “Get yourself out of here.”
“Where’s Sadira?” he asked.
“Still inside.”
Foxx looked at me. It was all in his eyes. Your call, Reinhart. Only we both knew what I was going to do.
“I’ll come back to help,” he said.
“Don’t you dare.”
I ducked down and climbed through the passenger side window, the flames now shooting through the air vents. I didn’t know what I had, seconds or minutes. The fire could rocket into the fuel line at any moment.
I called out Sadira’s name yet again, the back of the van so thick with smoke I could barely see.
But I heard her. Even with her mouth gagged she was able to make enough noise.
Everything was upside down. I was climbing on my knees along the ceiling of the van when I found her lying against the far side, one leg clearly broken. The other was bleeding from a huge gash above the thigh. She could barely move, her hands still tied behind her back.
I pulled the gag off her mouth. They’d used a ripped bedsheet. She was about to say something, only there was no time for conversation. I cut her off. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” I said.
There was no going back the way I came. The front of the van was now completely engulfed in flames. The blaze was coming right for us.
I turned to the back door. The same door I couldn’t open. It was the only escape.
Reaching for my Glock, the dos and don’ts of point-blank firing echoed in my head. Aim completely straight to avoid ricochets. That’s what you do.
But don’t shoot what can’t be shot.
That meant the hinges. Too much metal. Too thick. No, the best chance was targeting the latch where the door locked. If I could knock that out, my feet could do the rest.
Shielding Sadira, I emptied my clip in a half circle on the edge of the door. All I could do now was kick as hard as I could.
The fire was scorching my back as I angled myself as if doing the leg press at the gym. The way the door had buckled, I needed to aim low.
C’mon, feet, don’t fail me now …
CHAPTER 108
I WAS just about to kick when I heard the sound. Even before I saw what it was, I knew who it was.
Foxx was back. With a crowbar. He’d jammed it in below one of the hinges, prying open the door with one massive pull. There was a reason he was a gym rat, and it wasn’t so he could look good in front of a mirror.
“What took you so long?” I said.
“Maybe because you almost shot me?”
So much for the buddy-movie banter. The flames had overtaken the back of the van. Foxx made a beeline for Sadira, helping me lift her into my arms. She was in so much pain, and my running with her was only going to make it worse. But there was no choice. There was no time.
In that same buddy movie, the van would’ve exploded at the very moment we were out of harm’s way. Only this wasn’t the movies.
No, the moment I reached the ambulance came and went without any explosion. I gently placed Sadira on a waiting gurney, two EMTs immediately taking over.
I turned to Foxx, with a nod back at the van about a hundred feet away. I even cracked a smile. “Whatta ya know, the gas tank was full.”
BOOM!
The van exploded into a fireball, the sky above it filling with a massive cloud of thick black smoke and flames. Score one for the movies.
I watched for a moment, briefly entertaining the thought of Foxx arriving with that crowbar a little later than he had. When I turned back to the ambulance, the EMTs were lifting the gurney to load