We were on a straight stretch, and Tad pulled the throttle again. The bike shot forward as the diesel engine behind us roared again. I dared to look back, twisting my head to the side.

The diesel engine belonged to a large square truck—a semitruck with chrome stacks and a large cage on the back of it on top of a flat deck. “That will never catch us.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Tad yelled back to me. “Runners.”

Runners? From behind the black semi to either side two motorbikes—crotch rockets was what Dad called them—raced toward us. “Oh dear.”

“No shit.” Tad hunched his back, and I realized he intended to go faster. I didn’t want to go faster. All I could see was us hitting a pothole, wiping out on the asphalt, and watching all my skin peel away like wet toilet paper in the wind.

“What do we do?”

“Go faster than them,” Tad said. “And if all else fails—” He reached to his waist and handed something back to me. I took it without thinking, the shape familiar to me even though I’d never handled one before.

“A gun? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? What’s wrong with you? I can’t shoot at them!”

“You have to. They’ll take us downtown, and you don’t want to be chipped, sis.”

Chipped. What had Yaya said? “With a tracking device?”

“Exactly.”

“Honey puffs,” I whispered more to myself than Tad, but he heard me anyway.

“That the best you got?”

The two bikes roared up beside us, flanking us. Their helmets were completely dark, hiding any indication of a face.

“Shoot them, Lena!” Tad yelled, and the bikes wavered back. I held the gun but didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want a tracking device put in me. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

I didn’t want to be a Super Duper; I just didn’t want to die. This was ridiculous. “I can’t.”

Tad let out a hiss and hunched farther over the bike. The runner on the left pulled a weapon out and pointed it at me. A gun of sorts. Long like a spear with a funny little dart at the end of it.

“Are you kidding me?” I yelled. The gun went off, and the dart flew between Tad and me.

“Shoot them!” Tad yelled again.

I brought up my hand that held the gun as fast as I could, and it slipped out of my hand. I tipped my head back to see the gun rise and fall as we sped away from it. “Oh dear.”

Tad groaned. “If you weren’t my sister, I’d strangle you.”

“That is not how we talk,” I reminded him.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy Do-little.”

The puff of a second gun went off, and I shifted where I sat so the dart missed me. But it hit Tad in the back of the arm, the feathers on the end of it flapping in the wind like a miniature flag.

“Damn it!”

He wobbled and drooped forward.

“Tad! Don’t do that!” I reached around him and grabbed the handles of the bike, somehow keeping us going. Even though I wanted to stop, I ended up gripping the throttle and shooting us forward. We left the bikes behind as I screamed into the wind.

“Mother-humping whales on the beach!” What in heaven’s name was I going to do? How did I stop this thing and not wipe out?

Tad slumped to the side as he mumbled, “Dmfffhphh.”

I had to let go of the one handle to catch him. The bike unbalanced and we were bucked off at high speed, on asphalt without helmets. I let go of him. The bike spun in a screeching circle below us, the tires burning rubber on the road, the metal crying out as it tore.

I closed my eyes as I went face-first toward the ground. This was going to hurt; there was no way around it.

But I never hit. Something snagged me around the waist and yanked me sideways. My eyes flew open. A rather large and solid-looking man wearing a suit of hard materials stared down at me. Flinty blue eyes. That was all I could see.

“You’re under arrest for running from the Supernatural Division of Mounted Police.”

“I wasn’t running. We were on a bike.” The words escaped my mouth before I could filter them. The blue eyes hardened further.

He spun me around, I squeaked, and he clamped a pair of zap straps over my wrists, tightening them until they bit into my skin. “Hey, that’s not necessary.” I twisted to look at him.

“You are in serious trouble, missy.”

I looked around for Tad. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he gotten away and left me behind? No, I didn’t think that was the case at all. “I really didn’t know what was happening.”

“Save it for the captain.” He shoved me forward, through the wreckage.

My thoughts were all jumbled and messy, but something didn’t seem right. “How did you catch me? I was falling and everything happened so fast.”

He grunted. “I’m a shifter.”

“Yeah, but how did you catch me?”

He spun me around to face him. “How new are you?”

I frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

His eyes widened and he laughed, but there was no smile to go with it. “Load her up, boys, we got a real fresh one here. Wet behind the ears.”

Someone else barked a laugh. “I’d like to see where else she’s wet.”

I flushed, the heat in my face enough to bake a cupcake. Flinty Eyes stared hard past me, and no one else spoke a word.

Fresh, he didn’t mean I was being fresh. He meant I was fresh off the delivery truck. Green as a Saint Patrick’s Day cake. Raw as my infamous chocolate chip cookie dough.