pointed out. “Wes, can you could move right behind Chapman’s SUV to make us a hard target to hit?”
“That’d be a brilliant idea,” Wes agreed as the SUV slammed into Kyla’s side of the Prius almost knocking them into the concrete barrier separating them from the other side of the road. “Unfortunately…Chapman isn’t going to let us get behind them unless we’re willing to come to a complete stop, which would make us an even easier target to hit.”
Kyla leaned forward to look through the windshield and immediately wished she hadn’t. The drone was so close she could make out every single detail, right down to the blur of the propeller in the back of the thing. If it hit their car, it would kill them all, even if the warhead didn’t go off.
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” she muttered, returning her attention to her laptop, her fingers clicking so fast she was surprised they weren’t smoking. Pushing down on the ENTER key, she jerked her head up, eyes locked on the fast approaching drone. “Done!”
“It’s not going down!” Wes slowed her Prius even though he had to know it wouldn’t help. “Why isn’t it working? Did you shut down the wrong GPS network?”
“No. But the drone might have to be without a valid signal for a certain period of time before going into shut-down mode.”
“How long?” Wes asked urgently.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Fifteen, maybe thirty seconds.”
“I hate to point this out, but we don’t have thirty seconds,” Andrew said from the back seat.
Kyla eyed the rapidly closing distance between them and the drone. The thing was only a couple hundred feet away. She’d messed up and they were screwed because of it.
Then in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the drone started to flutter and tumble. Unfortunately, it still came right toward them.
Cursing, Wes steered her car into the side of the SUV, keeping the truck from turning aside as the drone came down and crashed right into the front of it. The SUV pitched nose down, the rear of the vehicle coming up fast until it flipped end over end. As Wes sped past, Kyla turned in her seat to keep an eye on the big vehicle.
A split second later, Wes slid the Prius to a stop, jumping out as it came to a shuddering halt.
“Stay in the car,” he shouted before reloading the weapon he was carrying and darting back toward the SUV.
Kyla stayed put for all of five seconds, then opened the passenger door and slowly followed after him while at the same time hanging back and letting Wes do his thing. Even if there wasn’t much she could do to help him, she couldn’t let him go into danger by himself. The past few hours had hammered home exactly how she felt about him, something she’d be telling him the first chance she got.
The SUV was smashed to pieces, every window shattered and the remains of the drone embedded in what was left of the engine compartment. There was blood on the windshield and the man behind the steering wheel wasn’t moving.
Stavros stumbled out of the back, blood pouring from the wound in his shoulder and a huge gash on his forehead, the small machine gun in his hands chattering violently as he shot at Wes.
Kyla screamed as Wes hit the asphalt in a fast roll, then came up on one knee to put three bullets through Stavros’s chest. She started forward only to stop again when Chapman appeared from the far side of the SUV. He popped off several shots with a handgun before turning to run toward the harbor less than a hundred feet away.
Wes raced after the man, yelling at him to stop, that there was no way for him go. Kyla darted forward stopping behind the remains of the SUV as Chapman reached the edge of the harbor. She held her breath when he turned and aimed his gun at Wes, but thankfully, Wes was faster. His two bullets hit Chapman and the man tumbled backward into the bay. She stood there for a couple second, watching as Wes moved closer to the side of the road and looked down at the water.
Owen and Andrew caught up to her as Kyla reached Wes’s side. She wrapped her arm tightly around his waist as they all stood there, staring down at the rough water splashing against the concrete retaining wall that ran along this part of the harbor.