Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,89

saw two bikes coming toward her. The riders were anonymous in their helmets and heavy jackets, but all four tires gleamed with newness.

She put her bike into a skidding spin and laid rubber on the asphalt as she raced back to the highway.

Two more bikers were coming up the highway toward her. There were still stretches of potholes, but Kelsa stepped on the accelerator pedal and kept her foot down.

They'd been waiting for her, watching for her. Had Raven's enemies learned to track the medicine pouch?

However they'd done it, they had her now. With power streaming from the newly charged battery, the bike she rode could hold the distance between her and her pursuers. But where were the other five?

Kelsa discovered part of the answer when two more bikes appeared on the road coming toward her.

The darkened helmet shields concealed their faces, but the thought that they might be innocent travelers never even crossed her mind.

The cutaway slope of the hill closed off one side of the road, and if she swerved into the forest the thick brush would stop her in minutes. Was that what they wanted?

Kelsa headed straight toward them. How could they stop a speeding bike? Besides shooting her. Or shooting one of her tires. Or driving her into a tree, or off a cliff, or...

Just before she reached the bikers she swerved off the smooth surface, too swiftly for them to intercept her, riding not into the woods, but up onto the slope where the hillside had been carved away.

It was almost a forty-five-degree angle - too steep, the dirt too loose - but she was going so fast that sheer momentum took her several yards up the slope, with rocks and dirt spitting from under her tires.

The handlebars bucked as the front wheel began to turn, but Kelsa fought with all her strength, holding the wheel straight as the bike skidded and slithered back down to the road - beyond the oncoming bikers.

She shouted aloud in triumph, in gratitude at still being upright, in motion. Her heart was hammering in her chest. Her father would have killed her for pulling an idiotic stunt like that.

All six bikers were behind her now, and she sent power screaming into the wheels and shot ahead, ripping around the corner...

Then slamming on her brakes as the border post appeared.

It was almost a quarter mile away, so Kelsa had time to slow to a speed that wouldn't trip the sensors. She had little to fear from the bikers here. U.S. state border stations were formidable; the national stations were full of armed, trained guards. She was safe from mayhem, as long as they were in sight.

She was also riding a vehicle that wasn't registered to Elizabeth Stayner, carrying a large bag of cash she couldn't account for, and a highly illegal plastic gun.

She would almost rather have faced the bikers.

Kelsa took her place in one of the five lines of cars waiting for the scanners. The station was busy - there were seven cars in front of her, and the line of RVs and trucks waiting for the big scanners was even longer. Not many people were waiting to pick up walk-across passengers. Whitehorse was a long way back, and there were no large cities near the Alaskan side of the border either, but a handful of cars occupied the designated parking lots on either side of the walk-through gate.

Many of those drivers had abandoned their vehicles, taking advantage of a small park, with benches and a stream, that had been built to showcase the big WELCOME TO ALASKA sign.

That welcoming sentiment was somewhat diminished by the twelve-foot steel-ribbed fence that ran downhill on the stream side and up the hillside to the right, continuing out of sight in both directions.

Two cars pulled in behind Kelsa before the bikers rolled decorously around the curve and took their place in line. Clearly they'd known where the border station was. Had they used the time to ditch their weapons? And where were the other three? Out burying their drug stash in a place that could be reached from the Alaska side of the border? Or were they already on the other side, waiting for her to cross?

Raven had been wrong. Recharging the battery with solar sheets had cost them too much time.

"Hello, bitch." Kelsa jumped, but the low, fierce voice didn't come from behind her. It came from the small screen on the bike's display. "Punch the contact button. We need to