Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets (17 page)

Mina pulled herself up over the edge of the
building just in time to hear a couple of silenced shots pop
against the wall just behind her. There was scrambling from below.
She suspected it to be people heading into the surrounding
buildings to try to cut her off. The combination of burnt-wire
smell in her sinuses and the chipped instructions practically
screaming for her to get off the rooftops, where someone could trap
her, was quickly giving her a headache.

She firmed up her resolve to try to ignore
those thoughts, which would lead her right where the counter-chips
expected. Despite this, she found herself looking for ways down a
few times, simply by merit of the chipped responses being so
automatic. Instead, she focused on estimating her best jumping
distance and the lengths between buildings, forcing her chip to
supply the information. Mina took off at a sprint as soon as she
found a span that would be challenging, but not impossible. She
cleared the gap across an alley, teetering on the edge of another
building, before pitching herself forward.

Picking herself back up, she moved to the
best cover she could find and turned her comm on to contact Miko.
As she did, it immediately chimed at her to tell her that she had
missed three calls from her parents. The sound was followed by
another, specifically, someone from an adjoining building yelling
“Over there!”

A peek around her cover revealed three people
on the rooftop she'd been on, one now sprinting towards her
rooftop. Cursing, she stayed as low as she could while heading for
another, amidst calls of where she was heading and “Cut her
off!”

A couple of shots whined off of the rooftop
behind her. She kept running, aware of those following her.
Meanwhile, she assumed some of those shouts were into a wrist-comm.
Someone—or a bunch of someones—from street level, would be heading
to the rooftops in the direction she was moving.

“Miko!” she addressed her wrist-comm, even as
she jumped across the gap to another building, now only one rooftop
away from running out of block before she reached a street. Her
chip helpfully chimed in with a number of routes down, or possible
hiding places, which she discarded while also ignoring the urgent
insistence that she turn her comm back off.

“Hey. You done doing stupid things now?” came
the response.

“Yes. Your turn,” Mina called into her wrist
as she ran, hearing plenty of movement around her.

“Tracking you now,” Miko answered, with the
sound of Vlad's engine growling to life in the background.

“Hurry!” Mina added, then quit focusing at
all on the comm. She banked to one side, briefly exposing herself
to the line of fire. Apparently, that wasn't what had been expected
at all, and she managed to leap off the top of her current building
towards the row of buildings across the alleyway. This time she
didn't quite make it, leaving her dangling by her fingertips from
the three story building that backed into the alley. She heard
voices below her and glanced down, struggling to pull herself back
up. More commotion on the rooftops told her that even if no one
would be there to intercept her, someone would have a clear line of
fire to her shortly.

She was out of time.

Chapter
Seventeen

The roar of Vlad's engine being gunned as
Miko tore down the alleyway interrupted the commotion below Mina.
While there was enough room between two sets of buildings for
delivery trucks, it was never meant to be traversed at that rate of
speed. Vlad took a dent to one door, and Miko fought the wheel to
keep from spinning as she side swiped a set of garbage cans.

The next thing she hit was a man with a gun,
sending him smashing into the wall. Another dove out of the way of
the car. A third would also have gotten clear, but Miko opened the
door to catch him as well, though her driver's side window cracked
on impact with his skull.

Mina judged the distance, then let go of the
rooftop, dropping onto the top of Vlad as it moved under her. “Go,
go, go!” she yelled down. She flattened herself to the top of the
car, hugging it as best she could. Then she looked up, saw people
reaching the edges of rooftops above her, and another figure
standing and pointing a gun behind them. Just as the first shots
were fired, Vlad cleared the end of the alley and pulled out onto
the Seattle streets. Mina almost lost her grip on the car when Miko
pulled out of her lane to pass a slower moving car, then barely
avoided an oncoming van as she pulled back into the correct
lane.

Mina tried shifting herself into position to
get to the open passenger side window, but gave up when she heard
screeching tires behind them, just as they were starting down a
hill. At the bottom of the hill, a large delivery van pulled across
the intersection and remained there, with two people quickly
climbing out and darting around the van. They were about to be cut
off, and even with Miko driving, Mina was pretty sure they couldn't
make a turn in time.

“Miko!” she yelled.

“I see it!” came the response and Miko gunned
the engine, moving faster, instead of slowing down. Mina's eyes
widened, and a glance behind her confirmed that the car behind them
had also accelerated to try to keep pace to trap them, making sure
they couldn't slow down to turn off anywhere without being
clipped.

“Miko!” she yelled again.

“Hold on!”

“Do I have a choice?!”

Mina held on desperately to the top of the
car as Vlad sped up, on a collision course with the side of the
van, then Miko yanked the wheel about. Countless amounts of time
and tire damage trying to perfect the fishtail parking job paid off
as the car fishtailed briefly, nearly overturned, then set down on
its wheels. Miko grinned like a maniac as she sped back up the
hill, and past the car that had been pursuing them. Between the
unexpected maneuver, the distraction, and clearly having chips that
didn't include stunt driving, the car pursuing them didn't stop in
time, slamming at high speed into the van. The maneuver also nearly
threw Mina off the roof, but she managed to hang on, though she
ended up breaking off one of the side mirrors in the process of
trying to find handholds.

Miko turned at the first corner up the hill
she could find, stopped there out of apparent line of fire just
long enough to let Mina slide in through the passenger side window,
then took off again through the mostly quiet streets.

“The cops are going to be after us in no
time; you know that, right?” Mina asked, once she found her breath
and voice a little.

“Sure, but they'll be swarming that accident
scene first. So we have a chance to make our getaway to whatever
Batcave you come up with.”

“Seriously? Now?”

“There is always time for the Batcave,” Miko
answered with self-assurance, still glowing from actually finding a
practical use for a fishtail turn. Clearly, she'd accomplished a
life goal and wasn't going to be dissuaded from being chirpily
cheerful, regardless how many people were trying to kill them. Mina
did, finally, think to turn her comm back off.

“Fine, okay. We need to get out of the city,
away from street cameras, and hope that people were confused enough
that no one will get a good look at that little chase until we're
clear.”

Miko tipped the head of her bobblehead. “I'll
make good time, promise.”

Mina managed to help navigate, pulling up
areas where there were no cameras, back streets slated for repairs,
and a route far from the efficient one her chip suggested, but
which served her current purposes. Eventually, they managed to make
their way out of Seattle and to the more open roads to the south,
getting off of major roads and onto the ample stretches of back
roads.

“So where are we going?”

“Hobart,” Mina answered.

“Where's that?”

“Towards Tiger Mountain.”

“What's there?”

“Nothing, that's the point. I just want to
get off the road entirely, and up high, then monitor police band
for a bit.”

“No more stupid stunts leading to car chases
and people shooting at us?”

“Nothing planned.”

“Damn.”

The pair managed to find some backroads
remote enough that they weren't even within the road maps included
in Mina's chip. They drove back as far as thin dirt roads would
allow, into areas that had probably once been occupied, but now
were simply part of unofficial hiking and climbing trails. Parking
Vlad off the road, Mina got out to stretch and try and relax a
little after the harrowing day. Seeing no indication that they'd
been followed, she returned to the car, tuning its radio to pick up
police band chatter. Unsurprisingly, descriptions of Vlad
circulated now and then, and Miko was being sought for
questioning.

“That's so cool! I've never been wanted by
the police before!” Miko eventually declared.

“Cool 'til your dad hears about it.”

“Still cool even then.”

“Miko, this is serious. You didn't need to
get involved ...”

“Yes, yes, but you're glad I did. You're
welcome.”

“I'm just worried. I didn't want to get you
in trouble.”

“We'll manage. We just need to figure out
what to do next. Hopefully that whole trip into the police station
was worth it.”

“That's what I'm listening for, to see if it
turns anything up.”

“Aha! A method to the madness.”

“Well, yes. I don't exactly enjoy being shot
at. Or car chases, for that matter.”

“Okay, the being shot at was kind of unfair.
They need to give you a gun. The car chase was awesome though.”

“They'll give me a gun when they think a case
merits it,” came the automatic response.

“This one doesn't? Wow, I can't wait to see
what they consider a case that merits a gun.”

“No way. I'm already probably going to be
fired. There's no way you're staying involved in this past this
case. This is a one-time thing.”

“Yeah, like that's going to happen. You had
your chance to get rid of me by heading off to Russia and trading
your bike for ballet slippers.”

“I'm serious.”

“So am I.”

“Miko, I ...” Mina was cut off by the feeling
she should be listening to the police band. A few hours had passed
with no word of anything useful, aside from an occasional mention
of their exploits. She hadn't even heard anything regarding any of
the people in the car or the van that had crashed. Now, there was
something about a burned-out wreck of a car being found just off
the road in West Seattle. The car was being identified as the one
being sought in relation to the dead officers. The car's owner was
found with the car, just as burned out. There were no suspects.

“Whoa ...” Miko started. “These guys are
hardcore.”

“They were trying to kill us not long ago,
and killed two cops, remember?”

“Sure, but we're the good guys. We're not
their crew. Getting rid of their own evidence trail is something
else entirely.”

“I ... guess so. But now we're right back to
square one.”

“Maybe not. We know they're not in West
Seattle. That place will be crawling, and they obviously set this
up.”

“Which also means we need to avoid West
Seattle ... so no checking the car out. Not that it’s likely to
have anything useful.”

“Maybe it did. What was the big deal about it
before, when you saw it at the sandwich place?”

“It had a university pass, and the people
were taken from ... you're a genius!”

“Naturally. Uh, what did I figure out?”

“There'll be a registry for the guy, and his
car, at the University.”

“The place where there's cameras all over?
We're not going to be able to get Vlad anywhere near the
place.”

“I know, which is why Vlad is going to have
to stay hidden as close as we can get, then we're going to steal a
car.”

“Leave my baby? Wait ... steal a car? The
owner won't have the theft tracking turned off. There'll be police
all over it as soon as it's reported.”

“Sure will. We're not going to be there for
long, though, and I'm all for a chance someone else will pick up on
some of this in the process of investigating. The entire police
department can't be against us, I just don't know who is and isn't
on the take is all.”

“Clever. So are we going to break into a
computer lab, too?”

“No chance. Too easy to just shut down the
computers. We're going to ditch the car and go visit your dad.”

“You really want me off this case and
grounded for life, don't you?”

“I know, I know. You need to make him listen,
though. He can get us into the system without raising alarms, and I
can find what I need from there.”

Miko sighed, weighing the argument. “I'll
try. He hasn't been big on listening since ...” Miko trailed off.
It had been a fact that loomed.

“Since your Mom. I know, and I'm sorry.”

Miko nodded a little. “I lost 1.5 parents.
It's hit home every time I try to get him to slow down and pay
attention to me.”

“If I had anything else ...”

“I know, and you're lucky I'm just that
awesome a friend. Let's go. Just give me the directions and where
we need to stop.” Miko reached out to pat Vlad's dashboard. “I'm
sorry, baby. I promise I'll come back for you and fix those nasty
dents. We'll go do something special, just the two of us,
okay?”

* * * *

They parked a stolen pickup as close to
campus as they could without triggering alarms, and covered the
rest of the way on foot. Figuring out a route through to Dr.
Kimura's office without raising any alarms proved tricky, but Mina
hoped that anyone after them would assume she was still laying low
in the middle of nowhere somewhere, which was precisely what her
brain was telling her to do. She couldn't tell at this point how
much was the chip, and the AIA's natural tendencies to try and stay
below the radar, and how much was just her brain telling her she
really didn't want to die.