The Witness (Miami Private Security #4)

9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Michael

M isgivings about riding in an enclosed space with the murder chicken aside, I decided that things could have gone worse. Noah’s parrot bite had stopped bleeding, and Minerva’s pile of luggage worked as the ideal barricade around the parrot crate to ensure the bird didn’t escape during the drive.

I put The Tank in gear and rolled down the palm-tree-lined driveway and past Silver Palms’s security booth. We gave the security team a friendly wave.

I exhaled. Mission accomplished.

In the back seat, things weren’t going as smoothly for Sabrina.

“What do you mean you will not tell me?” Minerva pressed Sabrina for more details.

“Mother. I saw a man break the law. He wants to keep me from talking to anyone about it. That’s all I can say.”

“No, that’s silly. If you were some kind of witness, you’d be with the police, not these men.”

“It’s complicated.” Her frustrated whimper made me want to give Sabrina a hug.

“So make it simple so I can understand. Wait, who’s paying for all this? I know it’s not you; all your money is tied up in that restaurant.” Minerva’s waving hand flashed in my rear-view mirror as she indicated me, Noah, and the SUV.

I tuned out Sabrina and her mother. A white sedan, one car behind us had caught my eye. It had followed us for the last two turns.

At random, I turned into a neighborhood of small villas along the golf course, wanting to see if the car followed. And fuck me, it did.

“You see it?” I asked Noah in a low voice.

“The white car.”

I nodded. “We have a tail.”

The neighborhood street circled back to the main road, and I turned right. A black SUV pulled off the shoulder and cut in front of me. The white sedan sped up and closed the gap between us. I sat up straighter and clutched the steering wheel at ten and two, ready for anything.

“Shit,” Noah whispered as he reached under his jacket to pull out his weapon and place it in his lap for easy access. A jolt of adrenaline raced through my veins. I focused on escape routes and contingency plans.

“Sabrina, Minerva, we have a problem. You both belted in?” I asked without taking my eyes off the road.

“Yes,” they answered in unison, sounding nervous.

“Good. It might get ugly.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than the white sedan slammed into us. The driver tried to force us into the back of the SUV. The Tank barely shuddered, but the sound of the impact and the front bumper ripping off the sedan was startlingly loud.

Minerva screamed, and the damn parrot joined her, wings flapping against the crate. Fucking murder chicken.

“Sabrina, that parrot gets out, you deal with it.” The last thing I needed was the damn bird making this situation more dangerous. Should have left it at Silver Palms.

I considered playing along, bumping the SUV in front of me and trying to push it off the road. But that was a risky maneuver. The Tank could slip or spin, and with four of us in the vehicle, I didn’t dare. I decelerated, trying to make room to swerve around the black SUV. Besides armor plating, The Tank had a V12 engine and a turbocharger. This beast of a vehicle had horsepower to spare, and blowing past the lead car would be a safer option. Before I could stomp the accelerator, an F350 pickup pulled from behind the white car and into the opposite lane, boxing us in on three sides.

I cursed under my breath; we were trapped in a three-sided rolling cage.

“They are going to try to force us to stop.” I spared a quick glance at Noah, who was texting the office to let them know what was happening.

He jutted his chin at the shoulder of the road, and I nodded in agreement.

“Do it now before we run out of road.” Noah grabbed the oh shit handle above the window.

About a hundred feet ahead, there was a long bridge spanning a pond with a stout concrete guardrail. A coordinated effort by the three drivers could crush us against the railing and I’d have to stop. We’d be sitting ducks trapped in The Tank. Pinned down, forced to fight or hope the armor plating would keep us safe until the cavalry arrived.

“Hold on.” At the last possible moment before the pond, I swerved onto the shoulder and up the steep berm separating the road from the golf course. The Tank bounced over the exposed roots of the banyan trees planted atop the small hill.

The parrot’s screeches ripped through my eardrums, drowning out all the other sounds in the vehicle, even the growl of the V12 engine. I cursed and jerked the steering wheel hard, slaloming between the banyan trees as The Tank fishtailed onto the fairway.

I aimed at the flagstick in the distance, cutting across the pristine grass and whipping past a foursome of horrified golfers in pastel-colored shirts standing next to their carts.

“Two vehicles are still behind us. And looks like they are getting ready to shoot.” Noah had turned all the way around in his seat to look out the back of the SUV at the white sedan with the missing front bumper. In my mirror, I saw a guy with a handgun hanging out the passenger window.

“Get down and stay down, ladies.” The Tank had bulletproof glass, but I still wanted Sabrina and her mother to take cover.

The women gasped and ducked, handling the situation far better than the damn bird that was beating its wings against the crate and squawking. I almost felt bad for it.

The telltale thwacks of bullets hitting the armor plating of The Tank was oddly reassuring. The vehicle was built for this. Poorly aimed fire from a handgun at this range wasn’t even close to what The Tank could withstand. Unless the guys in the pickup pulled a shoulder-mounted RPG out of the truck bed, I was feeling pretty good. We’d be safe while I figured out a way to lose them more permanently.

For a split second I wondered if it was The Tank that got us noticed by Sandoval’s people when we visited Silver Palms. While not obvious to most, the run-flat tires and armor plating would have been a hint to anyone from Sandoval’s organization watching Silver Palms we were more than a regular family popping in to say hi to Grandma.

I took a sharp turn and pulled onto the cart path. The Tank’s tires gouged into the perfectly trimmed turf, sending a spray of soil and grass into the sedan’s windshield. Ahead through a newly planted hedge, I saw a line of about six cop cars, lights flashing stopped on the main road.

I was impressed and surprised that a small police force in a quiet upper-middle-class town had managed a roadblock this fast. That was until I saw the building on the other side of Northlake Boulevard was a mega church. The kind that hosted a few thousand people for Sunday services. It wasn’t a hastily created roadblock. The local PD was there to direct church traffic.

The Lord provides in mysterious ways.

I wrenched the wheel left and plowed through the golf course’s new hedge without remorse. The cops directing traffic were going to end this car chase and cause me about a million problems, but not one of those problems would be fatal.

The Tank bounced over the grass swale, a curb, and the sidewalk. Every bump caused another squawk from the damn bird. We hit the pavement on Northlake, and I brought us to a screeching stop in the middle of the array of cop cars at the church’s entrance.

“Everyone alright?” I asked with a chuckle. Adrenaline had supercharged my blood and made me giddy now that the worst was over.

“Yeah, we’re okay.” Sabrina sounded a little shell-shocked, but she was safe. Minerva also gave me a tepid okay as they sat up.

“The white car with the shooter is headed west on Northlake. The pickup is going east. No chance any of these guys are going after them.” Noah jutted his chin at the Palm Beach Gardens cops that had pulled their sidearms and had them pointed at us. “I managed to text the plate from the black SUV to the office.”

I had fifty bucks that said all three vehicles were stolen so the plate number would be useless.

“This is going to be an enormous pain in the ass,” I muttered as I unbuckled my seat belt and turned around to check on Sabrina and her mom.

I reached out and touched Sabrina’s forearm, walking my fingers down her arm to find her hand and give it a soft squeeze. Our gazes met and held for a moment. Her face was flushed and her pupils were dilated from the rush of fear, but otherwise she was holding it together.

“Sabrina, don’t say anything to anyone and stay in the car if possible. We need to get you and Minerva back to the office. That is the priority.” The sooner Sabrina was inside the safety of the Smith Agency building, the better. This attack had me believing that Sandoval was the boogeyman that John Smith described him as.

“But the police—” She started to pull her hand away, but I kept it in mine.

“Aren’t your problem. You did nothing wrong.” I smiled reassuringly at her and Minerva.

“Okay.” Her tone was steady, if subdued. After one more soft squeeze, I reluctantly released her hand.

Minerva wrapped an arm around Sabrina and looked at me over her daughter’s head. She gave me a single nod of approval that I returned.

“Noah, call Smith and tell him to get us a lawyer. The cops are going to want to keep us for questioning, and that’s not happening.”

“On it.” Noah put his phone to his ear.

Even Sandoval’s organization had limits. And the chances that he’d infected this department were about zero. The area was too far from Miami and not exactly a hotbed of crime. Unless you considered the real estate prices or the hideous golf pants many of the men here favored when on the course. My issue was that our cross-fairway car chase would be the most exciting thing these officers had seen all year, and they would want to investigate… very thoroughly. Not happening.

I put The Tank in park and sighed long and loud, getting ready to do some serious tap dancing. My exhalation disturbed a single small blue parrot feather that had landed on the dash. I watched it float up and get carried away by the flow from the AC vent. If only we could extricate ourselves that simply.