Joey began to writhe wildly, popping loose the fitted sheet from the mattress. “No,” he said. “I’m not. I got no idea what happened to you. I don’t even know you. I am IDTF. You have to let me go!”
Camille took the toolbox from Kim and set it on the ground at their feet without a word.
Joey Benavides watched in abject horror as the two women ducked down beside the bed, and out of his sight. The stab wound made his hand feel like it was being eaten by ants and throbbed enough to make him lose his mind. His wrists were about to snap into pieces and he was pretty sure he’d sprained both his ankles fighting against the ropes. Unable to see over the edge of the bed, he raised his head and strained to hear what these crazy women were saying over the rapid thudding of his heartbeat in his ears. They whispered so he caught only snippets of muffled conversation.
“… No, no, not that one,” the blond one said.
A series of clanks and bangs followed before Camille Thibodaux stood, holding a ballpeen hammer. The blonde used a chair to pull herself up. Her eyes were cruel and devoid of forgiveness. She grasped a large pair of channel-lock pliers like a club.
“Now, wait, wait, wait,” Joey stammered, feeling as if he was coming unhinged. “I… you… I mean I didn’t mean any harm…”
“Beh,” Camille said, in the Italian equivalent of a verbal shrug. “I’m sure you didn’t expect it to come to this,” she said. “I would have been so docile and compliant if only you’d been able to get that roofie into my sweet tea without me catching you.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” he pleaded, “what about your kids?” He licked his lips. “You can’t do this with little kids in the house.”
Camille gave him a pitiless smile. “My husband and I make a lot of noise in this room. That’s why we have so many kids. He made sure the door was heavy enough to deaden any sound.” Her laugh was cold and heartless. “Besides, they’re boys. They wouldn’t notice a stick of dynamite if it went off in the middle of their cartoons.”
The room began to close in around Benavides. He’d been in his share of bad fights. He’d thought his boss might shoot him. Hell, he’d even been afraid Jacques Thibodaux was going to kill him, but he’d never in his life been as terrified of anything as he was of these two insane women. The blond one didn’t say much, just held the heavy pliers like she intended to start yanking off important parts. He began to jerk against his restraints in earnest, past the point of feeling any pain.
Camille stepped to the edge of the bed, studying his knees with her cruel black eyes. Nearly out of his mind, he locked on the ballpeen hammer. “Wh… what are you going to do with that?”
“To tell you the truth,” she whispered. “I don’t really know. Guess we’ll just keep trying stuff ’til we hit on something that does the trick.”
Chapter 36
Quinn moved on autopilot, carried forward by instinct more than any actual plan. He slid behind the wheel and hit the Hellcat’s ignition, bringing the beast to life with a burbling roar. Bursaw’s nephew had both the red and black fobs on his keychain. When both proximity chips were in the vehicle, the more aggressive red key always won, all but screaming orders at the onboard computer, and awakening all 707 horses under the hood. The predatory blat of the supercharged 6.2 Hemi engine alone was enough to send the crowd stepping back as if they were afraid of being eaten.
Quinn whipped the wheel hard over, giving the muscle car enough gas to drift the rear tires to the right and point the nose in the direction of the fleeing Alfa Romeo Giulietta. It didn’t take much and he lifted his foot just enough to stop the drift, straightened the wheels, and then poured on the throttle.
The blower kicked in with a rising whine and the car sprang to life around him, as if it had caught the scent of new prey. Throwing him back against the bolstered leather seat, the Hellcat tore across the cobblestone drive in a shrieking squall of smoke and gravel. Less than a minute from the time the door shut on the Giulietta to speed away with Song, Quinn fishtailed the screaming Hellcat off the gravel and onto the paved highway toward Dubrovnik. It was late and thankfully there was no oncoming traffic, so he was able to use the entire road, drifting through the first long, arcing curve to the south, just in time to see the lights of the Giulietta wink out as they crested a hill, a quarter mile ahead.
Quinn used the paddle shifters to take the car down a gear, applying steady throttle to get maximum speed but without the smoking burnout that the powerful Hellcat was famous for. The effect was like being strapped to the back of a bullet with the Challenger eating up the distance to the fleeing sedan in a matter of seconds. Quinn let off the gas as the easily recognizable rear lights of the Giulietta loomed ahead in the darkness like two long number sixes tipped on their faces.
Song was nowhere in sight and Quinn assumed the two men visible through the rear hatch had pushed her down in the backseat. An arm appeared out the rear passenger window, buffeted heavily by the wind, and began to shoot at him. Quinn gave a tight chuckle despite the situation. Shooting backwards, in the dark, and from a moving car was useless.
Tracking in close like a guided missile on the Giulietta’s tail, Quinn took a quick moment to tap check Anton Scuric’s pistol he’d stuffed in his waistband, making certain it was still in place. In the middle of a long, slow curve, the little Giulietta used up the entire road. The little family car swayed and rocked back and forth to keep the heavier Dodge from passing. It seemed obvious that the driver wanted to be followed so he could lead Quinn into a trap, but he could not have expected to be overtaken so quickly, likely miles from any reinforcements.
Coming out of the turn and into the straightaway, Quinn took the Hellcat down a gear and feinted as if to pass on the right. The moment the Giulietta’s driver moved to cut him off, Quinn rolled quickly to the left, shooting the Hellcat forward between the fleeing sedan and the mountainside.
Nosing in along the Giulietta’s left flank, front fender to rear quarter panel, Quinn yanked the heavy Dodge to the right, aggressively nudging the lighter sedan just behind the back wheel and causing it to come untracked. He mouthed the words he’d used when first learning the PIT or “Precision Immobilization Technique,” toning down his aggressive driving as soon as the Alfa Romeo began to spin out and wrap around the hood of the Dodge to slam into the rocks to the left, facing in the other direction.
“GET!” Quinn barked when the cars made initial contact. And then, more softly, he said, “Out… of… my… way,” as he steered through the collision to make certain he didn’t end up spinning out of control himself.
With the Alfa Romeo behind him, Quinn took his foot completely off the gas, tapping the brake to bleed off speed. When the speedometer needle dropped below forty, he gave the wheel a slight flick to the right, shifting the weight off the inside wheels, then cranked it ninety degrees to the left and stomped the emergency brake. The back wheels broke loose, coming around in a semi-controlled “bootlegger’s” turn. Machinelike, he released the emergency brake and rolled on the gas, closing the distance back to the smoking Giulietta in a quick breath.
The little sedan had rolled up on its side, snapping an axle before colliding with a boulder and falling back to rest on all four tires. The driver, a tall and bony man wearing dark clothing, had just flung open his door and was climbing out with a pistol in hand when Quinn bailed out of the Hellcat, shooting him twice, center mass. He dropped to his knees and the gun slid away into the darkness. Quinn spent the third and fourth of the XDs’ six rounds on the backseat passenger who’d been shooting at him during the chase. He came out of the Giulietta on the far side, taking potshots and moving at a crouch — but not quite low enough. Quinn’s first round missed, but the second struck him in the back of his head.