Page 1 of Twilight Tactics

1

November

Sunday afternoon

FBI Special Agent Collin Sullivan—aka Sully—gripped the SUV’s wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror once more. The silver sedan was still there, following at a discreet distance, but it was enough to set his teeth on edge.

His partner Piper Whitaker sat in the passenger seat, her jaw tight, brow furrowed. She shot him a quick glance. “You see it too?”

“Yeah.”

“See what?” Ollie Callahan, their fourteen-year-old murder witness, had hearing like a bat. Sully thought she was asleep. “The car behind us?”

No sense in lying. “Yes. You recognize it?”

“I can’t really see it very well. It’s too far back.” She gazed out the rear window.

“Turn around,” Sully said. “Don’t let him know you’ve seen him.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She faced front again and lowered her gazeto her hands, but not before he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes.

Remorse kicked him. “It’s okay. I should have prefaced my question with ‘Don’t turn around.’” The teen was a good kid as far as he could tell. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had witnessed an organized crime hit. As a result, Luca Bellini had sent his goons after her. And it was his and Piper’s responsibility to make sure nothing happened to her.

Like death.

A bullet pinged off the back bumper. Ollie screamed and flattened herself against the seat, her seat belt still around her. Piper pulled her weapon and rolled her window down while Sully pressed the gas, the speedometer inching up past sixty, then seventy. Tennessee’s bitter wind whooshed through the window. The poor heater had been fighting a losing battle almost since he’d cranked the vehicle at six o’clock this morning.

“There are two of them now,” Piper said. “Black SUV coming up on my side. Silver sedan hanging back on the left. Passenger of the SUV is the one who shot.”

“Hold on.”

Sully pressed the accelerator, and the engine roared as they wound through the rolling farmland dotted with patches of dense woods. The Smoky Mountains loomed in the distance. He glanced back at Ollie. She lay still on the seat, quiet as a statue.

The road narrowed. Weathered fence posts whipped past. Fields of dried cornstalks offered no cover or escape. His hands tightened on the wheel while his brain searched for options.

Broken Chains Ranch was less than ten miles ahead, but they’d never make it before their pursuers caught them. And besides, he didn’t want to take the bad guys right to his cousin’s doorstep.

Another shot took out the passenger side mirror.

Ollie screamed.

Piper climbed into the back seat, lowered the window. “I got this,” she said to Sully. “Let them pull up a little.”

Sully did as instructed and used the rearview mirror to keep track of the SUV and the sedan.

“Use the curve, Sully.”

“Got it.” It was a good plan. He turned into the curve and the sedan fell back, but the SUV gained. Piper fired.

Shattered a side window. They never slowed down.

“Ugh,” she said. “Let’s try that again.”

Sully winced. She was a good shot, but trying to hit a target in this situation was difficult if not downright impossible.

Ollie whimpered, and his heart clenched for the child. No kid should witness what she had unintentionally found herself in the middle of. “Ollie, hang in there, hon.”

“I’m hanging, Sully.” Her voice shook. She was terrified, of course, but she was also one of the bravest people he’d ever met. He needed to tell her that as soon as they got out of this mess.