“Are you ready to shoot?” he asked. “Lay your seat back so you can face them.”

I did—and got a clear view of the police car. “It’s guys in suits. That Mu dude, I think, and a new one. Should I fire?”

“Aim for the engine. But seriously, hold on to that gun because the kick will make it fly out of your hands otherwise.”

I got the front grill in my sights, exhaled like I’d been trained to do in video games, and squeezed the trigger slowly.

BANG!

Holy crap! I knew it would be loud and strong, but I wasn’t expecting that.

“You okay?” Jordan asked.

I grunted, checked the window, and saw that the car was still coming. The guy in the passenger side reached his arm out the window and fired. I ducked down while Jordan, still steering with one hand, serpentined the truck back and forth.

“I can’t get off a shot like this!” I cried. “And you’re gonna make me barf.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll count down from five and then move onto the centerline and hit the brakes.”

“Got it,” I replied, taking a deep breath.

“Five.”

A bullet pinged off the back of the truck.

“Four.”

He placed a hand on my calf as I knelt on the seat.

“Three.”

Ping ping ping—and one bullet pierced the windshield between Jordan and me, creating vision-blocking spiderwebs in the tempered glass.

“Two,” he said.

“Just do it already!”

Jordan braked hard, and I fired the enormous pistol.

“Damnit!” I said as the gun almost tore from my hand. I didn’t see where the shot went, but I aimed again and, with a loud boom, punched a big hole in their windshield.

“Go go go!” I yelled, firing one more round into the cop car’s hood.

Jordan swung his bloody arm at the cracked windshield and knocked it onto the hood and over the front bumper. He jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and the truck lurched forward. I looked back, and no one was in pursuit.

“You hit their engine!” Jordan cheered.

“No,” I said, wiping away hair plastered to my forehead with sweat. “I killed the driver.”

CHAPTER 50

Jordan

MAGGIE’S MOM WAS scrubbing blood off her hands as we dashed into the office.

“What is this, an emergency room?” she asked, taking in my blood-soaked, shirt-wrapped arm. She looked horrified, and that was before she caught a look at her sweaty daughter standing there in her bra and shorts, a thin streak of blood running across one shoulder. “Well,” she added with a nervous laugh, “looks like you two had quite the night.”

“Mom,” Maggie said, exasperated, and went upstairs to get another shirt.

“Is Troy okay?” I asked.

“Poor guy—I’ve never seen so many raccoon bites on one person,” she said. “Some of them were deep and nasty, and I gave him the start of what will be a painful series of rabies shots.”

“Ouch,” I said. “That dude stepped up. So did Luke.” The bloody, lifeless image of my sometime-enemy but always-teammate flashed through my mind and sank into my gut. If I thought too much about any of this, I’d be paralyzed.