The Assignment

Chapter 16

I nearly had to remind myself how to breathe while Joey hurried to find a car we could steal. The early morning air was chilly and I was shivering in my baggy T-shirt. Joey had pulled me through three rows of vehicles, both of us constantly ducking at the sound of bullets screeching passed us. Numerous windows had been shattered and some of the glass shards had landed on us. I had several bloody cuts on my right arm, as did Joey.

He yanked on every door handle he passed, hoping Marty had forgotten to lock one, but it seemed the car salesman had all his bases covered.

"What are we going to do?" I frantically asked Joey.

The Cadillac sped across the street and over the median, barely missing T-bone collisions with four sedans. The vehicle lurched up onto the grassy hill in front of Marty's Car Mart, flattened a bush, and plowed into the red Ford Focus. The impact shoved it into the Ranger parallel to it. Cadillac Man forced his way between two more vehicles, the Cadillac's push bumper effectively shoving two smaller cars out of its way. Now covered in bullet holes and beaten up from collisions, the Escalade looked like it had been through hell and back.

"Joey-" I started to whisper.

He shushed me with a hand over my mouth. We were hunkered down behind a white Tahoe and we could practically hear each other's hearts thundering out of our chests.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" Cadillac Man taunted, scanning over the car lot.

He'd dawned a ski mask, probably to avoid being caught on Marty's security cameras. It made him look like someone who would hang out with Freddy Krueger.

"There's nowhere to hide, Jessica," he laughed. "I'll find you. I'll shoot up every car here, if I have to, but I will find you."

I tugged at Joey's shirt sleeve, pleading with my eyes for him to get us out of there. Surely, he had a plan! He was Joey! He always had a plan!

He leaned real close to me, whispering in my ear where no one else could hear us. "The traffic noise is just loud enough to mask any sounds we'll make getting out of here. Follow my lead."

Joey shrunk down closer to the ground, where no one would be able to see us through the windows of the vehicles we were passing. I mimicked every move he made as we crept toward the backside of the lot. Joey would wait for Cadillac Man and his two partners to look a different direction, and we'd rush passed the gaps between two cars.

We finally made it to the edge of the lot. There was one more vehicle and a row of shrubs between us and a neighborhood about fifty yards away. The plan was to make it to that neighborhood and either find a car there, or find somewhere to hide in someone's backyard or house.

"Come on now! We ain't got all day, you little bastards!" Cadillac Man yelled.

"Yeah! Stop wasting our time, Officer!" Another man shouted. "Give us the girl!"

"Joey, they're looking over here," I whispered, tugging at his sleeve again. "They're going to find us!"

He shook his head. "Keep quiet."

There was a metal wheel lock lying on the cement beneath the car in front of us. Joey reached under and grabbed it, eyeing the narrow row between cars we'd just sneaked through. He grimaced like he was unsure of himself, but gave a good underhanded toss. The lock hit a truck roughly six car lengths away.

We breathed a sigh of relief when the armed men turned back in the direction of the noise, thinking that's where we were.

"You won't get away making noises like that," Cadillac Man laughed. It was an awful sound.