Capturing Cara

Chapter 3-2

Cara hurried across the tarmac and squeezed through the gate she had seen Abby going through. She could feel her energy level escalating as she moved. A few hours of sleep, the cool night air, being out of the plane, and the thought of having fun had her adrenaline pumping. She wanted to catch up with Abby so she could drill her about the brothers and see if there was a chance to cheer Ariel up a little.

Cara frowned when she saw someone coming up out of the shadows behind Abby. The guy kept his face turned so she couldn’t really make out his features. A sense of unease ran down her spine. She hoped Abby knew the guy because she was definitely getting bad vibes from the way he was moving up behind her without calling out a greeting. Cara decided she better call out a warning when she noticed Abby jerk in surprise.

“Hey, Abby! You okay?” Cara asked as she moved toward the truck. “Ariel and Trisha are on their way. It didn’t take…” Cara’s words died off as she saw Abby crumple against the man.

The man’s head jerked up when he heard Cara call out. Pulling a gun from behind him, he aimed it at Cara and pulled the trigger. Cara dropped her backpack and tool belt and was already hitting the pavement when a soft pop went off, barely missing her. Within moments the man had picked Abby up and slung her over his shoulder, letting off another round of gunfire as he moved. Cara rolled toward a golf cart parked nearby and hid behind the small front wheels, for once glad that she was so small. Cara was breathing hard through her nose, quickly thinking through one strategy after another when she felt a hand on her arm, causing her to let out a small scream.

“Shush. It’s me—Carmen,” Carmen said, kneeling next to Cara. She looked up when she saw Ariel and Trisha running toward them.

“s**t, what happened?” Trisha said, breathing out a sigh of relief when she saw Cara turn and sit up. Before Cara could say anything, Carmen spoke up in a low voice.

“Some asshole waylaid Abby. From the little I was able to gather, he isn’t too happy she didn’t choose him instead of this Zoran guy. He stuck her with something and has her cuffed. I’m going to follow him. Keep your line open; I might need some backup,” Carmen said before running toward a motorcycle hidden in the dark between two hangers.

“We need wheels,” Ariel muttered darkly, watching as a truck peeled out from the airport. Carmen didn’t bother turning on the lights on her bike. She pulled the fast but quiet Yamaha YAF-R1 motorcycle after the truck, popping up onto one wheel when she floored it.

“On it,” Cara said shakily, moving toward Abby’s truck. Within seconds she had the engine running. Cara couldn’t help but wish she could tell her Uncle Wilfred that hot-wiring cars in her early teens had done her some good in life. She remembered when she was twelve and had taken the sheriff’s car for a spin. She had been pissed at the sheriff for some reason she couldn’t even remember now. She had left it parked outside of old Widow Miller’s house. How was she supposed to know that the sheriff had been having an affair with Widow Miller and his wife would try to shoot him? She had only been twelve, for crying out loud!

Of course, after that little incident everyone in town knew about Widow Miller and the sheriff. Needless to say, the sheriff didn’t get reelected that fall. When her Uncle Wilfred found out what had happened, he had given her the third degree and made her work in the sheriff’s garage after school for the remainder of the school year under the new sheriff.

Cara was grinning like a fool when Ariel and Trisha jumped in the front seat and looked at her funny. She couldn’t help the silly grin on her face. “I used to have a problem with taking vehicles for a spin.”

Cara slid the truck into gear as soon as the two women had buckled up and tore off after Carmen and the truck. “Call Carmen; ask her which direction.”

Cara listened with one ear to the conversation between Ariel and Carmen and kept the other on the revving of the truck’s engine, trying to get a feel for how much power she could get out of it. It was important to know the vehicle you were driving, especially if you were going to be driving at a high rate of speed on unknown roads. She didn’t want to take a chance of taking a curve too fast or having the engine seize on her in the middle of a turn.

“Should we call the local authorities?” Cara asked as she turned the wheel sharply, punching the gas pedal as far as it would go. “Damn, I need to work on her truck. The acceleration on this thing sucks.” Cara wondered distractedly if Abby ever drove the poor thing over the speed limit. It was acting more like a granny-mobile than a pickup truck!

Trisha rolled her eyes. “Only you would be thinking about something like that while chasing down bad guys in the middle of nowhere.”

“Hey, I can work on more than one thing at a time,” Cara said as she took another turn, sliding the truck around and fishtailing a little. Oops, turn, turn, turn, straighten, don’t over correct—that’s good.

Cara’s thoughts were all over the place as the adrenaline began pumping through her in high gear. Tires are a little bald on the back, transmission could use a tune-up, and one of the cylinders is missing slightly. She could work with that.

Maybe if the brothers are really cute, I can talk Ariel and Trish into staying an extra couple of days. It isn’t like the Boswells are in a hurry to get their jet back, since it’s still in production. That will give me time to work on Abby’s truck. Of course, Cara inserted into her running commentary to herself, we have to get Abby back first and kick some bad-guy butt. Cara felt confident that shouldn’t take too long between the four—five, if you counted Abby—women. Hell, Cara thought with a rueful grin, knowing Carmen, there might not even be anything left for the rest of us to kick!

Both Ariel and Trisha let out a string of expletives they had learned while in the Air Force when Cara made the next turn, barely keeping all four tires on the pavement. Cara just laughed. She had taken more than one joyride in her life and had never been caught by the police who had been chasing her.