be easy to spot any strangers in town.”
He went back over and sat down. Pine joined him.
He looked across the table at her. “I’m sorry for all this.”
“I guess you had to do what you had to do. Just like my mother.”
“And now what will you do?”
“I will do what I have to do,” said Pine firmly. “Will you take me back now? I’ve got a lot to think about and I can’t do it here.”
When they went back down to the garage, Pine said, “You mind if I drive?”
“No, but why?”
“I feel like I need to be in control of something right now. Otherwise…”
He passed her the keys. “I understand.”
On the drive back to Andersonville, the two didn’t say a word.
Until the shots rang out.
Chapter 62
PINE’S FIRST INSTINCT was to pull her Beretta Nano from her clutch purse. Her second instinct was to keep hold of the steering wheel and start taking evasive maneuvers.
“Jack, are you okay? Jack!”
She turned to see him slumped back against his seat, his face ashen. He turned to the side and vomited, his breathing accelerating. She saw the spread of red across his shirt.
Shit.
She steered the Aston Martin well off the road, opened his shirt, and used her wrap to stanch the blood from the gunshot wound. It was in his upper torso on the right side. Lot of stuff to mess up in there, she knew, but at least the shot hadn’t hit him directly in the heart or the head.
She leaned him a bit forward and felt along his back. There was no exit wound.
Surveying the area for where the shots had come from, she got on the phone and called Laredo. He answered on the second ring and she told him everything he needed to know.
His only response was, “On it.”
They weren’t that far outside of Andersonville. She hoped it was close enough.
She looked over at Lineberry, who had grown still. “Jack! Come on, Jack, hang in there.” She felt for his pulse. It was weak but still there.
“Jack, hang with me. Help’s on the way. Just hang—”
The shots sailed no more than an inch above her head. She ducked down and pulled Lineberry with her.
Pine was about to pull her gun and fire back, but then she decided not to.
She heard a car engine start up.
Okay, that was interesting and told her a lot.
She could smell Lineberry’s vomit commingled with the sweet humid Georgia air and her own adrenaline-fueled sweat.
She opened the driver’s-side door, slipped off her heels, and dropped to her knees, using the car as a shield.
The headlights appeared about a hundred yards from her position. She couldn’t tell what type of car it was. And she couldn’t see the driver.
She slipped the Nano from her purse. She had eight shots; she hoped they were enough.
She used the side of the Aston Martin as a fulcrum point and aimed her gun at the oncoming vehicle. They didn’t know she had a weapon. For all they knew, both she and Lineberry were incapacitated. The shots fired her way might have been a way of trying to ferret that out.
That was why she hadn’t fired back earlier. She would have had nothing to aim at. Now she did.
The vehicle was gathering speed.
Hold your fire, Pine. Hold it…She moved a strand of hair away from her right eye. She exhaled a breath, grew still, physiologically perfect to hit what she was aiming at, just as she had been taught.
The driver apparently decided to just go for it, because he accelerated and what she could now see was a large SUV barreling down on them, ready to finish the job, apparently.
Pine waited until the truck was less than twenty yards away.
Her first shot hit the windshield right in front of the driver. The second shot blew an even bigger hole in the windshield at the same spot. She moved the barrel of her Nano just a bit and fired twice into the passenger side. Then she shot a hole through the front grille and then took out the right front tire. She had two shots left and she aimed to keep them in reserve.
With the first shots, the SUV had swerved to the right and then the left before stopping dead about ten yards from her.
She waited. They apparently waited.
Her Nano was aimed right at the truck. Anyone stepping from it, she would shoot down.
Minutes ticked by.
When she heard the sirens Pine almost screamed in relief.
The people in the SUV must’ve heard