Free Unfiltered & Unsaved by Payge Galvin, Bridgette Luna Page B

seventeen. Too young to be out on her own living like this.
    And very, very scared.
    “Come on,” Hope said, and gestured to her. “It’s all right. Come on.”
    The girl got to her feet, moving awkwardly, and Hope realized that it was because of the high round swell of her stomach. She was pregnant, at least six months gone. Painfully thin, against that lush curve.
    “Avita, come on!” Elijah said. “It’s okay. She’s a friend. Hurry!”
    Avita took a few steps toward them, but before she could reach them, the door swung open from one of the motel rooms, and a big, beefy man was silhouetted in the glare of lights. She cried out and backed up. When Elijah tried to go to her, he staggered again.
    The man lunged forward, grabbed Avita by the elbow, and yanked her toward the door. “No you don’t,” he said, and shoved her bodily inside.
    Elijah let out a groan that sounded more like frustration than pain, but he didn’t try to go after her. Instead, he yanked open the passenger door and practically fell inside. “Go!” he yelled at Hope. “Come on, move!”
    She slid in behind the wheel, slammed the door, and put the car in drive. As she hit the gas and made a wide, fast turn, she saw the man in the doorway—Mr. Solomon, she guessed—watching them. He wasn’t trying to come after them.
    It looked like he was … smiling.
    Hope saw why as she completed the turn and headed for the exit of the parking lot. Bathed in the neon blue glow of the sign sat a parked black sedan with heavily tinted windows, squarely blocking the way out.
    “You have to get past him,” Elijah said. “It’s Skinner.”
    “I can’t! He’s blocking me!”
    “Ram it! You can’t let him get you!”
    Elijah was right, because the driver’s side door of the black sedan opened, and the bald head and broad shoulders of Skinner emerged. He was pointing something at them.
    He was pointing a gun at them.
    Hope felt a wave of freezing cold, then burning heat, and something just clicked inside—that same God-granted survival instinct she hadn’t known she had, and it made her shove the gas pedal to the floor, whip the wheel aside, and hope like hell her sensible old car was up to this challenge.
    Skinner saw what she was up to and ducked back in his car, just before her Chevrolet hit the curb two feet from his front bumper with a bang hard enough to make her see stars. The tires jumped the concrete and dug into the narrow rock strip, then spun with a shriek on the sidewalk. In another second the car banged again as the back wheels followed. Then they were thrown around by the next hard bounce, hitting the street.
    Hope didn’t let up. The tires hadn’t blown out, by some miracle, and she screeched into a turn and felt the engine roar to a speed it hadn’t tried to achieve in years, if ever. Elijah was talking, but she couldn’t hear him; her attention was on the wheel shuddering in her hands, and the shimmy of the wheels on the road, and the baleful glare of Skinner’s headlights as he swung out of the entrance to the parking lot in pursuit.
    Great, now you’re in a car chase. Good plan. Her conscience was taking on a snarky tone now, which wasn’t at all helpful. You’re not a car chase kind of girl, Hope. Do you really think you’re up to this?
    Elijah was still shouting at her, and now that the surge of adrenaline was starting to fade and reality set in, she could hear him. “Hope! Hope, you’re going the wrong way, turn right! Head for the freeway!”
    He was right. She was instinctively heading back toward the university campus, where there would be no safety, and no cover, and it would be dangerous to be conducting a high speed chase. She took the next right, barely backing off her speed, and saw that the black sedan was gaining on her. “He’s faster than we are!”
    “No shit.” Elijah tried to turn to look, but winced and faced forward. He put on his seatbelt, struggling to fasten it. “Just keep pushing it as fast