Playing for Keeps by Cherry Adair Page A

and the sun blazing down on his head as if holding him in place. “Da-aaaa-ni!”
    Squeezing the trigger of his automatic, he laid cover fire as he ran like his life depended on it. He got one man, clambering out of the diesel, in the chest, the next in the right shoulder. As he ran by, he scooped up the fully loaded AK-47 from the fallen guy and sent a barrage of bullets toward the truck holding Donovan and more of his men.
    He kept firing, using both weapons, until the Sig clicked empty. He tossed it aside and reached for the door handle, still letting bullets fly with the assault rifle.
    Danica yanked on the lock, pulling up on the button, then she flung open the driver’s-side door, shouting, “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” He got off a kill shot over the door, then climbed in, slammed the door, and peeled out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel, Donovan’s bigger truck right behind them.
    “Are you hit?” he yelled over the sound of gunfire.
    “I’m fine. Turn left.” Dani, his quiet, pacifist, glorious Dani, turned around to kneel on the cracked leather seat and started firing out the back window. The glass shattered and splintered, then fell off in a sheet. No safety glass there. Raven grinned, as he turned left. She’d never fired a weapon in her life, and she never had had an eye for a ball, but she kept firing. The close proximity of their tail, and the firepower of the weapon insured she got in a sufficient number of hits.
    The back tire exploded, tilting the truck ominously. He didn’t pause as the large vehicle shimmied and swerved, just flattened his foot on the accelerator, gripped the wheel and kept going. It wasn’t the smoothest ride, but they were still ahead of Donovan. If only by feet.
    Danica kept firing, until her weapon, too, ran out of ammo. “Damn it—”
    “Here,” Raven shouted against the din of racing engines and the thump-clop-scrape sound of driving on a rubber-less rim. He handed her another AK-47. “Take mine. It’s nice and big, and full of extremely accurate bullets.”
    With a wide grin, Danica picked it up, braced it on the back of the seat, and started firing. “From your lips—” Even with her inexperienced aim, eventually she’d hit someone, or something. Right now, the covering fire was preventing Donovan’s people from driving right up their tailpipe. “You’re heading to the palace, right?”
    “Hell, yeah!” Raven shouted, rocking and rolling down the streets of San Cristóbal, bullets flying all around them. Morning commuters jumped or drove onto the sidewalks to get the hell out of their way. “We’re about to become Vera’s best friends.”
    “My thoughts exactly—Hey! Did you see that? I hit the front tire! Yahoo! They’re running off the roa— no, wait. They’re back on again,” Dani shouted, clearly disappointed she hadn’t run them into the ditch alongside the narrow street. “Oh, my God! Incoming!” Yeah. He saw them. Two more vehicles barreled down on them from side streets, closing fast. Vera’s people from the look of the heavy, shiny black vehicles.
    People jumped clear of the trucks hurtling down Avenida del Sol, with its flowering, brilliant yellow mimosa trees, and picturesque sidewalk cafés. Kids, chickens, goats, and bicyclists scrambled out of the way. “Are we close?” Danica yeled, getting the hang of the rifle and feeling like G.I. Jane without the bad hair and terrible shoes. They screamed past City Hall, flanked by a pretty little park, and turned with a screech of three tires onto Presidente Avenida leading a parade of mismatched vehicle.
    “Gate’s closed.”
    She vaguely remembered the high, black, wrought-iron monstrosity, about a mile wide and half a mile high. “How—”
    “Brace yourself. Now!”
    She let go of the rifle, allowing it to drop behind the seat, then braced herself as Jon aimed the truck through the heavy iron gates like a guided missile. Danica, teeth almost jarred from her head, turned to face