Free Behind the Badge by J.D. Cunegan Page A

the voice was muffled by the mask, it sounded an awful lot like the asshole cop she had questioned earlier that day.
    “You really wanna find out?”
    Silence filled the front compartment, and Jill hoped the masked attackers were reconsidering their strategy. Jill was flying by the proverbial seat of her pants; this was, by far, the strangest scenario in which she had found herself -- which was saying something, considering she once had a man's heart sitting in a box outside her apartment. She knew she wasn't going to stab this guy in the neck. Colonel Downs probably knew she wasn't going to stab this guy in the neck. But Jill needed the four in the masks to think she might .
    What she hadn't counted on was the press of the gun barrel into the back of her neck.
    “What I want,” the female voice hissed, “is for you to put down that sword.”
    Well, if this was ever an impasse... they wanted Jill to put down her sword, she wanted them to pull the van over. They didn't appear willing to acquiesce, and Jill was worried pushing the issue further would get someone killed. But if she lowered her weapon, showed any sign of surrender at all, there was no telling what kind of signal that would send.
    “How do I know you won't pull the trigger even if I do?”
    “You'll just have to trust her,” the driver called out over his shoulder.
    Jill swung her free arm behind her, her coiled fist hitting the masked woman in the elbow. The bone gave way and the woman howled in pain. The momentum of the blow sent her into the driver's right side, their shoulders colliding before he yanked on the wheel and the van skidded across two lanes of traffic before hopping the median. The right front tire took out a speed limit sign, the twisted metal rod bent at a ninety-degree angle before the van slammed back onto its wheels right in front of oncoming traffic. Cars skidded onto the sidewalk and crossed the median as they slammed on their brakes, and there were three crashes as motorists tried to keep from running into the van.
    Jill reached for a metal bar on the left side of the partition, grunting when the force of the van almost popped her shoulder out of its socket. Fortunately, the four masked figures were too busy trying to hold on or control the vehicle to notice her, so by the time Jill gathered her bearings, she grabbed the sword again and reached around the driver, placing the blade flush against his neck.
    “Stop the van!” she ordered. “ Now! ”
    “Or what?” the masked man in the back of the van with Jill asked. “We all know you won't press down. That's not your style.”
    “You don't have what it takes,” the man in the passenger's seat, who to this point had been silent, added.
    Even as they spoke, the van was decelerating, the front tires hoping over the curb as the vehicle bounced and teetered onto the sidewalk. Onlookers from across the road had pulled out their phones, snapping pictures and taking videos -- because apparently, a high-speed chase was great social media fodder, but no reason to call the authorities. Not that Jill wanted the authorities here just yet; with any luck, they wouldn't show up until she was already gone. That was seldom how it worked out, but Jill figured one of these days, it had to go her way.
    Then again, it wasn't like she could just tie up the bad guys in a makeshift spider web and just... leave them there.
    She pressed the blade harder against the driver's neck. It wasn't yet deep enough to cut through skin, but if the van jostled just the wrong way...
    “You know nothing,” Jill muttered under her breath. She didn't need Carter -- if he was indeed behind the mask -- recognizing her voice.
    The man who had been on the ground behind Jill got up and punched her in her kidney. Though the blow caused her knees to buckle, and Jill bellowed in pain, she kept her grip on the katana and it moved just slightly against the driver's neck. It cut through the material of the mask and came to rest