Free Travis Justice by Colleen Shannon Page A

mind enough to keep her other wrist manacled, so she was pulled with him. With a growl of anger, he brought his other hand up to latch it around her hair.
    She saw it coming. Rather than pull back against gravity as most people would, she used the fall as her friend and followed the curve, pushing with her toes to overbalance them both, hard. He fell backward into the street with her on top. Then she heard his teeth snap together and the grip on her hair went lax. She’d landed on top as she’d devised. She felt a twinge of guilt as she saw blood gush from his lip, now realizing Zach bit his lip when he fell.
    No time for recriminations or apologies . . . she was up and running. He scrambled up a split-second later, and then he was in hot pursuit, blood dripping down on his white shirt.
    She was half his weight, and faster, so at first veering through cars and leaping over shrubs allowed her to pull ahead, but she’d already exerted herself and her breath soon was labored. She dared a look over her shoulder and wished she hadn’t.
    Even in the moonlight she saw the blood on his shirt and that familiar gleam in his eyes, much brighter now. He wasn’t even breathing hard. She realized she might be faster, but he was fitter and stronger.
    She ran harder, knocking over a trash can as she went, but he only leaped over it and kept coming. Could she make it back to her car? She veered around a block in the right direction but her legs were tiring. She refused to heed them, pumping harder. She had to get away—Jiji only had a few more days. He was in and out of consciousness now. The sword was coming in tomorrow night.
    Everything was set up with Ernie. She had to get away, or Jiji would die while she was in prison. And Takeo . . . despite the stress of the moment, tears filled her eyes at the mere thought of Kai raising her son.
    Then she heard sirens approaching.

Chapter 5
    H ana’s breath was wheezing now in her chest, and as hard as she tried to keep ahead of Zach, she knew he was closing the gap. Even as she ran she was reviewing potential escapes in her head because she’d scoped out all the streets surrounding his house before she made her first home invasion.
    A culvert was coming up on her right, she recalled. It had a large drainage pipe, big enough for her to crouch inside and hope he missed her. But if he did find her, she’d be trapped. And she wasn’t certain whether he was close enough to see her or if he was still rounding the other block. It would slow her too much to turn and look.
    She turned another corner and there, to her shock, was Ernie’s van. He was leaning against it, as if waiting for her. Without a word he slid open the side-panel door and she leaped inside, so out of breath she managed only a garbled, “Thank God.” He didn’t bother to ask for direction; he just got in the driver’s seat, fired up the engine, and drove away sedately.
    â€œI thought you might need a backup getaway vehicle,” Ernie said as he turned his blinker on and turned a corner as if he hadn’t a care in the world: A boring citizen who’d never missed paying a parking ticket.
    Hana was lying flat on the floorboards in the rear and she stayed there. “Do you see him?”
    Ernie turned his head toward the sidewalk and slowed a bit as he looked in that direction, but he sped up immediately, taking the corner. “Yep. He’s staring straight at us.”
    â€œOh God, Ernie, he’ll take your plate number.”
    â€œYou know me better than that, baby girl. This isn’t my van.”
    Hana closed her eyes in relief and did what did not come naturally: She was happy, for once, to put her fate in the hands of a man.
    * * *
    Outside the van, Zach was indeed memorizing the plates. He’d turned the corner too late to see how Hana had disappeared into thin air, but the van was logical as her escape route. He’d heard it fire up right before