Every family has a secret. Ours is Uncle John Covali. Uncle is somewhat honorary, I guess. I guess can be used as a qualifier for most things about Uncle John since I’m sure I don’t know the half of anything about him, but there are some things I do know.

He is family, that’s for sure, on my dad’s side, so the uncle appellation is earned somehow or another, but exactly how, I’m less clear on. He’s not my dad’s brother, in any case. Great-uncle maybe, though he doesn't look much older than our parents, who look a bit young for their forty-ish ages. Also, he helps supports the family.

I don’t mean we freeload off of him—Dad’s Director of R&D at a think tank in Austin and Mom’s a professor of psychology at University of Texas—but now we live on his estate, and anything we need, he supplies. I guess he’s more of a benefactor or a patron to us. Something like that. We don’t have to live on his estate, and for several years we lived a few miles away in northwest Austin. However, after Allie graduated from high school, my parents decided to move back to the estate. They said that with Allie starting her freshman year at UT, Uncle John thought it best that we all live together, even though he’s on some business trip or another more than he’s actually here.

Nothing changed when I started college a couple of years earlier, so I don’t understand where the difference is now, but he wanted us all together, so here we are.

But hey, mostly absentee landlord, indoor and outdoor pools, pro-level gym, three-hundred-meter rifle range that doubles for archery and skeet. Plus, plenty of cars. I get to choose between driving the Mercedes, Beemer, or Porsche to school, or the Range Rover, for that matter. At the same time, the Executive Driver training I took after I turned eighteen still leaves me a bit worried when I think about it. Then a refresher course last year. Allie takes hers next weekend, and I get the annual refresher the weekend after that. It's a lot of fun, but still….

I asked Uncle John why I needed the training, and he said, “You’ll know when you need it.” Mom and Dad just nodded in agreement.

* * *

“Oh, man. Can you say boring?”

Allie was going on about her Statistics class while we drove back to Uncle John’s Covali compound. Driving forty miles-per down a two-lane Ranch Road in a 911 Carrera because a big step-van was creeping down the road—I could agree with boring, and scorching. First week of September and it was still over one hundred for the high.

“I think English is his third language,” she continued. “No one could butcher it that badly if it were only his second?”

“And how’s your Korean, little sister?” I chided. She knew a little, just as I did, but not enough to give a lecture.

“Me-anhamnidah, auggie!” she snapped back in Korean. “Excuse the hell outa me! You just think he’s some wizard in Sadistics.”

I chuckled. I’d had him the year before, but she'd placed out of so much that she got him for Statistics her first semester. The brainiac had placed out of enough that she started as a sophomore.

“Give him a couple of weeks. You’ll be able to understand him better then.” I glanced at her, and as I did, the step-van ahead of me slid sideways along the road. I slammed the brakes, stopping behind the van, which had halted on a bridge, perpendicular to the road. It completely blocked the road.

The driver was already climbing out of the cab, dressed more for the corner office than delivery, something pipe-like and dully metallic in his hand. It didn't look like a pistol, but he held it like a weapon

“Shit!” I muttered, shifting the Porsche into reverse.

“This isn’t good,” Allie said, grabbing for her backpack as I started bootlegging the Carrera. “Call 911?”

“Screw 911,” I yelled. “Call Uncle John!”

I straightened the car out, fish-tailing more than I would if I’d stayed in better practice, but I was in control and pointed in the proper direction to un-ass the place. Except that a few hundred yards down the road was another box truck, turned catty-wampus with two guys getting out of that cab. One unlimbered something long, fatly-tubular, and weapon-like. A bazooka? It didn't look right for that. I cut the wheel, slammed on the brakes, and slid to a stop again, spotting a metal-and-wood ranch gate with a rutted dirt road past that.

It would’ve been a good day to be driving the Range Rover. I popped the clutch in second gear and cut the wheel for what I hoped would be a good enough angle to cross the bar ditch. If I made the bar ditch and crashed the gate, I could still bottom out if I caught the ruts. We went slightly airborne coming out of that ditch, the wheels digging in just as we hit the gate.

The gate came apart, but not like in Hollywood. Part of it came through the windshield, glass flying everywhere. I just got my eyes closed before my face and arms were peppered by the shards. Something hit the fingers of my right hand where I gripped the wheel and the steering wheel bent.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Part of the gate must’ve gone under the Carrera. The car shuddered and a tire blew. I opened my eyes to a blast of hot air. The rear window shattered, but we were still moving and steering. The engine went loud. Must’ve scraped the muffler off.

I missed the ruts, too. That was easy because I wasn’t on the stupid road, taking out brush and cacti instead. I cut back towards where the road should be, hitting a large prickly pear bush in the process. I missed the windshield right then. The piece of the fence inside the car didn’t stop anything.

The cactus came apart maybe like it would’ve in Hollywood, if anybody wanted to explode a large bunch of cacti. And a lot of the pears came right through the open windshield. Allie was getting the brunt of that as the steering wheel deflected some of what came my way.

The road came back into view, and I paralleled it just off the ruts, assessing damage. Right rear tire was blown, but I could go—I could steer. We might get out of this. I looked over at Allie and froze.

She slumped against the door, a couple of cactus pads stuck to her face, but a lot of blood flowed from beneath them. Part of the fence did that, laying her cheek open to show bone and teeth. Her left forearm bent sharply like it’d acquired another joint, blood and jagged whiteness showing above the break.

“Damnit!” My eyes stung. “Damnit all to hell!”

I reached down and palm-shifted to third—my fingers weren’t cooperating—and slid onto the dirt track where the ruts stopped.

I should do something, but if I stopped, the SOBs will catch up and get us—if I don’t, Allie could die if she wasn’t dead already. I was going down some dirt road, God knows where, and there were cows up ahead.

I swerved around a couple of cows, slinging Allie off the door and over the console. I wasn’t going to be shifting again unless I got her off, but gas and steering should be enough now. When the path forked, I took the left track, bouncing through a ravine. The bottom scraped hard, but the engine didn’t even stutter.

We hit a smooth patch, and I covered Allie’s mouth and nose with the back of my hurt hand. Relief flooded me when I felt air as she exhaled, though my hand came back red and sticky.

The road met up with a better-maintained caliche road. I spun onto this road, fish-tailed wildly—three tires and one-handed driving will do this to you—finally straightened out and shortly found my way through an open gate back onto the road. I swung widely onto the road, checked the driver’s side mirror, which was all that remained, and saw scrubby trees and cactus flashing by behind me. It’d been knocked askew—imagine that.

I hazarded a glance behind me. No vans, trucks, or vehicles of any kind back there. I took the car back as fast as three good tires, a rim, and third gear would take me. The remote for the gate was still on the visor, and I thumbed it when I knew I was close enough for it to respond, thumbing it again as I was making the turn in to go through. I’d done this for fun upon occasion, and the practice paid off. The gate—a nice, big, hefty gate that would’ve stopped the Porsche cold—closed within ten seconds of our passing through it.

I could hear the engine pinging loudly. It was probably toast, but I’d get to the house now. The rim screeched, protesting against pavers that made the drive up to the house. Probably gouging them too, for all I cared. I guess it had its desired effect, or maybe it was the security cameras. Uncle John and a woman I didn’t know bounded out the front doors as I screeched around the circular front drive. I slowed, using my wrist to keep Allie from sliding forward, finally braking to a stop in front of Uncle John and the woman.

“Gods, Kevin! What happened?”

“Get Allie,” I said as a reply. I tried to open the driver’s side door, but it was wedged, so pushed Allie back upright with my elbow as the woman opened the other door, caught Allie, and unbuckled her.

 “She has a badly broken—compound fracture, I mean—left forearm,” I gasped. “Her face is torn. and I don’t know what else.” The prickly pears stuck to her face and chest were evident, so I didn’t mention them.

I managed to climb out the drivers-side window one-handed—the window had broken sometime during all that. The woman gently pulled Allie out of the car while I limped there.

“I wish I’d gotten here a day earlier,” she muttered.

Uncle John stood stock still, staring at me. His look was like he was seeing through me. Then his voice lowered a notch, cold in a way I’d never heard it before. “Kevin, what happened?”

My stomach started doing flip-flops, and I felt myself begin to shake. “Let’s get Allie taken care of and—”

“Now.” His voice brooked no argument. “Allie’s being taken care of. What happened?”

“There were guys in step-vans, front and back. They blocked the bridge over Bear Brush Creek and the one before that. I took out a ranch gate—that’s where we took most of the damage—found my way out another gate and back here as fast as this poor car could manage. I’m sorry about the car—”

“I’ll buy another. Have it delivered tomorrow if you like.” He raised his hand. “What weapons did they have?”

“Front guy had something in his hand. Small and round, but not sure what. Those behind had something long, like a dark gray sewer pipe with a grip, but the guy handled it like a weapon. That’s when I crashed the gate.”

“Poppy,” the woman said to Uncle John. “Haspernate.” She gestured with her head towards the back of the car.

“I saw.”

I looked at the back of the car, and the paint looked half-cooked off. “What . . . .” I kind of just trailed off. I wasn’t sure what to ask.

“That’s probably what blew your tire, too. Good thing you were moving. If they’d been able to keep you in their sights a couple of seconds, you’d be with them, not us.”

“What—I mean, the tire went when I crashed the gate. I guess it could’ve . . . .”

“Foliage around the gate?” Uncle John asked.

“Yeah. Cedars, and prickly pear, anyway.” I was feeling shaky all of a sudden.

“That’d screw it up enough anyway.” He nodded thoughtfully. “By the way, Kevin, you did a good job. Maybe not as good as you could have, but good enough, and that’s what counts.” He turned away from me to where the woman was working on Allie.

“Doesn’t sound like they’re here in much force yet, Lauretti.” He looked down on her as she was working on Allie. He seemed to emphasize her name.

“No, John. Definitely not yet, which is probably why they tried this stunt. At least they were trying to take the kids alive.”

Uncle John grunted an assent, but I was trying to puzzle out who this Lauretti was. She seemed familiar, but she called him Poppy, then John, with no Uncle? She at least seemed competent with what she was doing for Allie, who was starting to move and moan.

“John, a stretcher.”

“Kevin, could you get the stretcher?” Uncle John asked, looking  at me for once.

“I’m not sure I could carry it right now.” I went to raise my right hand and banged it on the side of the car. A dizziness came over me as I stared at my mangled fingers. The world went black.