Trapped Read Online Free Page A

hand.
    "Don't
wake me up unless you see either him or something suspicious, but
when in doubt wake me up. I only need a couple of hours, but the
sooner I can get them out of the way, the sooner we can be back on
the road and putting distance between him and us."
    I
sat there fuming for several minutes after Ash lay down on the bed,
but eventually started paying attention to the comings and goings
outside the window just to combat the boredom.
    It
didn't help much. It was early enough in the day that there
wasn't much in the way of activity. A cleaning lady was slowly
working her way down the line of units on my right, headed towards
the front desk. As it got nearer to checkout time, a few people
exited various rooms and started packing up their cars, but that was
it, and by the time I'd been at it for what I figured was an
hour, I wanted to just close my own eyes and go to sleep.
    I'd
nearly given into the urge when a familiar-looking car pulled into
the parking lot. It was the bullet holes that finally jarred me out
of my daze, and I started slamming Ash's keys against the chair
frame before I'd even processed the fact that Ash had been telling
the truth.
    Ash
grabbed my hands, stilling them and then he whipped out the knife
he'd unpacked earlier and sliced through the duct tape.
    "Believe
me now?"
    Ash
waited for me to nod before ripping the tape off of my mouth.
    Anton
was out of his car now, walking towards us with an unhurried stride.
    Ash
was staring at Anton, but I didn't get the feeling that he'd frozen.
It was more like he was calculating odds.
    "You
know how to use one of these?"
    I
took the proffered handgun with one hand while the other was still
absently pulling tape off of my chest.
    "Not
really."
    "Pull
the slide back, it's ready to go now, just point it at your target
and pull the trigger. It probably won't matter, as fast as he moves
you're unlikely to actually hit him."
    We
were back in the corner of the room. It meant we'd lost sight of
Anton through the window, but we were as far away from the door as we
could get. My hand was getting clammy, so I started to transfer the
gun to my other hand and then a hand reached through the wall behind
me in an explosion of plaster and pulled Ash through the wall.
    Things
were happening so quickly that I had a hard time processing who was
doing what. I was pretty sure that Ash got his knife into Anton, but
Anton had a knife too, and blood seemed to be sprouting all over
Ash's chest.
    A
gun went off, once and then again, but it was Ash who was reeling
away rather than Anton. I held my gun up and pulled the trigger. The
recoil almost tore the weapon out of my hand, but Anton stumbled
backwards, moving with only a fraction of his normal speed.
    Ash
was suddenly at my side and he pumped three more shots in Anton's
direction as the bigger man disappeared around the corner of the
building.
    I
had only a moment to consider the massive hole that had been torn out
of the wall before Ash was pulling me out the door and towards his
car.
    "We
have to get out of here."
    He
was panting now, and his hand on my arm was suddenly doing more to
support him than it was to hurry me along. I put a shoulder under his
arm and half dragged him to his car. He fumbled with his keys, but
then he was falling into his car. He managed to drag himself over to
the passenger side and I slipped behind the wheel.
    "Just
drive! No more than five over the speed limit, back the way we came."
    Ash
had his phone out now, dialing a number with fingers that even out of
the corner of my eye I could see were shaking.
    "We're
in Kearney. Just had a run-in. I need you to distract the cops, feed
them information that the perpetrator was in a dark-colored BMW. It's
mostly true so it shouldn't be hard."
    Ash
hung up and dialed a second number.
    "It's
me. I know. I wouldn't have called if it wasn't important
though. Look, there's a stray cat in Kearney right now. No, I
don't know how he made it past the border packs, but