I COULDN'T KEEP my legs still as I watched anxiously out the window, waiting for something to go wrong, for Wretton to jump out of the shadows and catch us, turning this plan to dust before it even had the time to form anything of worth.

"What are you gonna do?" I asked nervously, my knee jumping erratically. The car slowed to a stop and I whirled her head to stare at Cara. "Why are you stopping? We have to go!"

Cara rolled her eyes and pointed in front of her. "It's a red light, Elda. We're not in a car chase yet, so there's no point waking up the kindly neighbors at ungodly hours of the night."

Shrugging, I looked at the clock in my truck. It was nearing two in the morning. I supposed she made a good point, but it didn't keep my heartbeat or my knee from moving quickly to an anxious beat. "I just want to be gone already. Out of their reach." I want to go find Bucky, I wanted to say, but I didn't waste my breath. With any luck, we'd escape this night with our lives. The CIA didn't quit easily when people of interest tried getting away from them. I knew that as much.

"Don't worry, we're gonna be out of here in no time, you just sit and relax."

Easier said than done, I knew. I frowned as I slumped in the passenger seat, willing Cara to drive faster, to get us out of this damned city. To hell with drawing attention to ourselves, I wanted to be somewhere safe where I could sleep with both eyes shut.

Scoffing gently, I shook my head. Like that'll ever happen again.

As the radio pulsed softly through the speakers, Cara humming along to a song I didn't recognize, I felt myself slipping into my innermost thoughts again, which turned out to be the most peaceful, yet most dangerous place for me to be. Although I was all alone in my mind, a sensation I craved to have every day, I was alone to think about anything and everything that had gone wrong in my life up to that point.

So, as usual, along came Bucky. With his goddamn good looks and long hair and one arm.

It had only been a few months since I'd seen him, but now I was having a hard time calling him to my mind's eye. The thought of him was always there, yes, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember everything that made him...him.

Like the way that his lips curled in a gentle smile when I pushed myself against his side during our movie nights. I could hardly remember the shallow dimples that carved their way into his cheeks as he looked at me.

Or the way that his eyes sparkled when he caught me staring at him, knowing full well just how delicious he looked in his white tank top and dark jeans. I could concentrate with all my being, but I couldn't picture just how much they glittered when he knew I was thirsting after him.

I could remember the way it felt to hold him, but that memory was beginning to fade as well. Each night since he'd been taken, I tried to remember what it felt like every time he stood there, enveloped in my arms. Sometimes he wept for a part of him that he could no longer grasp, and other times he just walked toward me and crushed me to my chest, as if he was still boggled by the fact that I was real, and I was doing this all for him.

The only memory that remained the clearest picture, though I willed it away, was the image of Bucky pressed to the dirt, his eyes screwed up in pain as he realized what all of this meant. My mind's eye played a cruel trick on me, forcing me to relive the orange substance in the syringe being shoved into his arm, his body falling limp as he was carried off to the vehicle and shuttled off to God knows where.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I saw it again, clamping the heels of my hands against my closed eyes. A shaky breath left my lips, and I felt myself sinking, right into the leather seat, down to the floor of the truck, out onto the concrete, broken beyond repair.

A warm hand on my leg roused me from my thoughts and I looked up at Cara, who offered me a small smile in the darkness. "Hey," she said, one hand on the steering wheel, "It's gonna be okay. We're gonna get him back. We're gonna get all of them back. I promise."

I huffed, dragging my hands down my face. "Easy for you to say, Cara."

"I'm serious," she replied earnestly. "If there's one thing I've become better at over the years, it's knowing when something is a fool's mission. And this? This isn't it. I know how much Bucky means to you, and I'm promising you, I'll get you two reunited all by myself if that's what it takes." She squeezed my leg with her hand before returning it to the wheel.

A grin graced my lips as I looked at her, opening my mouth to say something before squinting at something beyond her. "Uh, Cara? What's that?" I asked, pointing a finger to the headlights on her left, coming straight for us.

"Probably just an Uber driver getting their income from a person drunk off their ass," she said confidently. The intersection ahead of us remained green, so she continued cruising to the other side.

But the car on our left wasn't slowing down. If anything, it was getting faster, barreling towards us at breakneck speed. "Cara, they're going faster, wha—"

When she spared a glance at the car, she registered just how close they were getting to us and she let out a slew of curses before dropping a lead foot on the acceleration and gunning it out of the intersection. "Jesus Christ," she breathed heavily, glancing in the rearview mirror. "Shit!" She exclaimed, running a hand through her hair. "Looks like your CIA agent found us, Elda."

Every thought of Bucky fled from my mind as I spared a look behind us, spotting the headlights of the car that was getting closer and closer with every passing second. "Yeah, that's Red, all right."

"You've got a nickname for the guy?" Cara chuckled. "Looks like you and I are gonna get along way better than I thought."

I rolled my eyes, "Not the time, Cara. Drive!"

"I'm going, I'm going!" She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and leaned forward, as if moving with the direction of the car would make it go faster. "Damn thing won't go as fast as I want it," she grumbled.

"Hey!" I gasped despite our current predicament. "That's my truck you're talking about!"

"I'm sure your truck is perfect for all other things, but when you've gotta run from the authorities, I'm not gonna lie, it does a pretty shitty job."

I shook my head and gripped my seat belt in my hands to occupy myself with holding onto something. "Whatever, just get us out of here."

Cara's plan of just driving straight until we lost Wretton was proven to be a waste, though, as two sets of headlights turned in front of us, crashing towards us just as fast as Wretton behind us. "Holy shit," she yelped as she looked to her right down a street, spotting one more car in the darkness of the early morning, corralling us to wherever they wanted us to go. As she whipped around a turn to our left, I realized that we were already lost. We were playing into their hands, doing exactly what they wanted us to do.

My friend clearly hadn't had this revelation yet as she screamed, "Hell yeah, I'm fast and fuckin' furious!"

"What are you talking about?" I growled, my breath coming fast and panicked. My twenty-seven-year-old body didn't want to die, but with the way she was driving, I wasn't sure I'd make it out of tonight, purely from the stress. "SLOW DOWN!" I yelled as I read the orange sign on the side of the empty city road: ROAD CLOSED AHEAD.

Cara gritted her teeth and spat, "Do you want to get out of here or what? Let me drive!"

"You're driving my car, I don't want to fucking blow up!" When did I get like such a paranoid adult? I wondered. Probably since you started hanging around an irrational twenty-four-year-old, a voice in my head sneered.

"Relax, I've got it!"

My eyes were wide as saucers as we sped towards the closed off road. Slabs of concrete were torn up from the ground, creating a ramp-like shape as they acted as a road block. I opened my mouth to let out a scream when Cara jerked the wheel to the left, effectively pulling a U-turn and flying around to sit still, staring at the four cars coming for us. They had us trapped. We were finished. "Cara—"

"Shut up," she growled as she put the car into gear. "Time to work some magic. Put your head down," she instructed, her playful tone giving way to a commanding woman of authority.

"What?" I was too focused on the possibility of dying at two in the morning to fully process what she was saying.

"Put your head down, Elda, or so help me God, I will shove it between your knees so fast you'll have whiplash!" She reached a hand under the steering wheel for something, beginning to accelerate again, this time, no doubt, playing a game of chicken with the CIA agents. A game I knew that she would lose.

"Okay, okay!" I yelled, slumping down in my seat and covering my head with my hands.

The truck was going so fast that I was sure we'd collide with someone or something soon enough, but then I heard Cara mutter something under her breath before releasing a deep breath. The next thing I heard was gunshots. Eight of them, to be exact. I jumped each time they rang out. I thought they were shooting at us, that Cara was going to be shot dead at any second, but then I felt something whoosh past my ear, and I realized that Cara was the one with the gun.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck! I was screaming in my head. She's gonna get us both killed!

I held my breath and watched as she let out a grunt, dropping her gun on her lap and jerking the wheel again, twirling us around for the second time. I lifted my head and peeked into the side mirror, watching as Agent Wretton stepped out of his car that was stopped on the side of the road. He didn't run after us, he just stood there. And behind him were the three other cars, simply sitting on the side of the road.

But just as I thought we were done, I turned back to look ahead of us and remembered the concrete blockade that we were currently facing. "Please don't tell me—" I groaned.

"Hold on!" Cara shouted, and we went hurtling toward the concrete slab. I could already see the front of the truck getting squashed like an aluminum can, I could see my head flying into a painful contact with the dashboard, I could see both of us dying on impact. But Cara gritted her teeth, growling as she stepped on it and drove straight for the road block.

Suddenly we were on the ramp-like structure, and then we were in the air, we were flying over the fence and into the construction zone in the pitch black morning, and I was screaming, and my eyes were squeezed shut, and Cara wasn't saying anything, and all I could think to say was, I'm gonna die, I'm about to die, this is it—

We landed roughly, the truck bouncing uncomfortably as the ground came up and met us. Cara let out a sharp "Woohoo!" and pumped the air with a tight fist, a triumphant smile breaking her concentrated face.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't even comprehend what had just happened. Pressing a hand to my furiously beating heart, I looked over at the smiling young woman and screamed, "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

She just threw her head back and laughed, continuing to drive toward the city's edge. "All the best people are, El."

Sighing, I sat back in my seat and felt the laughter bubble up to my mouth after a few minutes of shocked silence. "What...what the hell was that?" I said, pointing to the gun that was still sitting in her lap.

"I shot out their tires," she spoke with a rather matter-of-fact tone, as if to say, duh, you couldn't tell?

I blanched. "Wha—but how...?"

Cara smirked. "I told you, I'm wicked with a gun."

||

okay i'm actually really proud of this, i wanted to bring up the action for this sequel since haven had none until the last few chapters, and i hope you guys thought it was good! i'm not even kidding, i got an adrenaline rush as i was writing it, lol. cara is one crazy girl, but i love her for it.

how was this chapter? what did you think? let me know!

i'm going to be updating this story two times a week now, so i can speed up the writing and publishing of this story. i also want to get started on my tony stark sequel, stoneheart, and it's gonna have spoilers for this one in there(at least mentioned), so i need to finish this before i go on to that!

hopefully i can keep up the two updates per week regime!

august 8, 2019