Beyond the Rules. Doranna Durgin

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      “That’s not legal,” Hank muttered, still in search of the seat belt as Kimmer bounced them along the uneven street, discovering waves in the pavement she hadn’t even considered before.

      “Oh, please,” she said while Rio loaded—one in the chamber, three in the magazine. “You just haven’t done it yet. Got more ammo?”

      “’Course. Under the seat somewheres.”

      “Find it.” She hit the brake, found it soft and unresponsive, and stomped down hard to make a wallowing turn uphill. “This thing drives like a boat.”

      “Needs new brakes,” Hank said. He pawed through the belongings in the backseat, tossing take-out food wrappers out of his way.

      “Needs brakes,” Kimmer repeated. “You don’t say.” And to Rio, “How’s it look?”

      A glance, a resigned grimace. “They’re on the move again. You have a plan?”

      “One that doesn’t include outrunning them?” she said dryly, glancing at the speedometer. Just forty miles per hour—fast enough in this rural-residential area. “Yes. Get the high ground. Pick them off if we have to. Hope my neighbors called the police.”

      “I love that about you,” he said. “So efficient. Bash the bad guys—”

      “BGs,” she reminded him.

      “—and get the cops in on things at the same time.”

      “Cops?” Hank popped up from his search. “If I’d wanted to go to the cops, I woulda called ’em from my place and saved myself the trip!”

      “Quit whining,” Kimmer said shortly. “And find that box. Unless you just want to get out now? I can slow down—”

      “This isn’t my hunting vehicle, you know. Dunno that I’ll find—whoop!”

      Kimmer had no doubt that without his seat belt on that last hump of road, he’d been riding air. White picket fence flashed by the side windows as they hit a washboard dirt road and another incline. She spared a hand to grab quickly at the rearview mirror and straighten it. The road made perfection impossible, but now she could get her own glimpses of their pursuit.

      Too close. She made a wicked face at the mirror. “Dammit.”

      “Still going with Plan A?”

      “There isn’t a Plan B. Besides, the last little bit is completely rutted—” this as she manhandled the Suburban around a turn that took them from dirt-and-gravel to dirt-and-grass—“and I don’t think they can make it.” They’d left the last farmhouse far behind and now climbed the road over a mound with picturesque spring-green trees. At the crest of that hill the road faded away into a small clearing, one that bore evidence of being a lovers’ lane, teenage hangout and child’s playground. Condoms, beer cans and a swinging tire.

      On the nights when Kimmer couldn’t sleep, she found it the perfect target for a fast, dark training run. Less than a mile or so from home, a good uphill climb and at the end a perfect view of the descending moon on those nights when there was a moon at all.

      The Suburban creaked and jounced and squeaked, and then abruptly slowed as Kimmer carefully placed the wheels so they wouldn’t ground out between ruts. A glance in the rearview mirror and…ah, yes. The sedan had lost ground. Pretty soon they’d be walking, unless they didn’t realize this road dead-ended and gave up, thinking the Suburban would just keep grinding along, up and over and down again.

      Though if they stuck around long enough, they’d hear the Suburban’s lingering engine noise.

      Kimmer crested the hill, swinging the big vehicle in a swooping curve that didn’t quite make it between two trees; the corner of the front bumper took a hit.

      “Hey!” Hank sat up in indignant protest, scowling into the rearview mirror when no one responded to his squawk. Kimmer finally put the gearshift in Park, unsnapped her seat belt with one hand and held out the other for the shotgun. “Keep looking for those shells,” she told Hank.

      “And Plan A is…?” Rio asked.

      “I can get a vantage point on them. See if you can find something else in this heap that we can use as a weapon. Tire iron, maybe. Any other nefarious thing Hank might have collected. I’ve got my club, too.” She twisted around to look at Hank. “I changed my mind. Get your ass up here and turn this thing around. It’s going to take time we won’t want to waste if they do come up here on foot.”

      “Jeez, when did you get to be such a bitch?” Hank gave her a surly look. “I came up here for help, not to get pussy-whipped.”

      “You’ve got help.” Kimmer assessed the semiautomatic, a gun made for a bigger shooter than she’d ever be. No surprise. “You just thought you were going to call the shots. Well, guess what? Wrong.” She slid out the door. Rio was already out and at the back, rummaging around. “Watch your feet,” she told him. “There’s broken glass up here.”

      “Got it. And got the tire iron. I’ll keep looking.”

      With little grace, Hank climbed down from the backseat and up into the driver’s side. With exaggerated care he began the long back-and-forth process of turning the SUV around.

      Kimmer took a few loping steps to the nearest tree, the maple with the tire swinging from a branch made just for that purpose. A lower branch on the other side acted as a step. She pulled herself up one-handed, climbing the easiest route to the branch from which the tire hung. From there she looked down on the road they’d just traversed. It passed almost directly beneath the tire before the hairpin turn that ended at the top of the hill. From there the area spread out before her—small farms and then the smaller tracts of her neighborhood in neat, topographically parallel streets.

      The pursuing sedan sat barely visible through the trees, not moving. With the grind of the Suburban swapping ends and gears in the small space behind her, Kimmer couldn’t hear anything of the men who’d been in the sedan, and she couldn’t yet see them.

      She waited. Her toes flexed on smooth maple bark, her fingers warmed the wood stock on the shotgun, and she waited, plastered up against the tree to put as much of herself behind the trunk as possible. Beneath her, Rio came to stand beside it—a second set of eyes. And Hank finally finished turning around and cut the engine.

      Blessed silence. And then in the roadside not far below them, a flock of kinglets exploded into noisy scolding, flittering from bush to bush like parts of a perpetual-motion machine. Kimmer rested the shotgun barrel on a tree branch and snugged it into place against her shoulder as Rio eased back behind the tree. She raised her voice to reach those slinking below. “That’s far enough.”

      The birds hopscotched away through the brush. An annoyed voice asked, “Who—what—the hell are you?”

      “I haven’t decided yet, but I’m still young,” Kimmer said airily. “Hank will tell you I’m a bitch, though, and I suppose that’s really all you need to know. Plus I bashed up your nice car. I also have you in my sights and this is double-ought buckshot, too. It’s gonna sting, boys. Where do you want I should aim it?”

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