Chapter 3 #3
It was nearly one in the morning, and traffic was light, but a few cars were still slipping through the intersection.
A dozen worries bounced through my mind like ping pong balls.
I couldn’t let the car get damaged. I couldn’t be captured.
I couldn’t bail and let them have the car.
I couldn’t hurt any innocent bystanders. How the hell was I supposed to do this?
At a hundred miles an hour, the intersection came on so rapidly it terrified me. The Maserati was beside me, a man leaning out the window as the driver angled the car toward me. Was he going to try to jump on the damn Lamborghini?
At the intersection, a white van lumbered across the road.
Making a split-second decision, I tapped my foot back and forth from the gas to the brake, doing my best to control the speed as I yanked the wheel to the right.
A squeal of tires tore the night apart as the car swung wide and drifted, and I clutched the wheel in a death grip.
Eyes wide with fear and concentration, the Lamborghini spun in a hundred-and-eighty-degree circle as I revved and braked.
The rear end hung out ahead of the work van, and I caught a glimpse of a man inside.
The older Hispanic man’s eyes and mouth were open in shock as the crazy fucker in a Lamborghini tried his best to control the machine.
The car screeched to a stop, its ass pointing the wrong way.
Thankfully, the Maserati had overshot the intersection, and the driver laid on the brakes, sending white smoke into the night sky.
Jamming my foot on the gas, I sent my car rocketing forward, heading in the opposite direction.
The Ferrari chased after me, rounding the corner like an Indy car.
The Lamborghini roared like a demon as I poured on speed, leaving the older supercar to fall behind.
Slowly, I put more distance between us, but up ahead, a new problem presented itself.
I cursed under my breath at the sight of work trucks, flagmen, flashing lights, and construction equipment.
A massive orange sign screamed DETOUR at me as I approached.
An arrow pointed to the left, into a small two lane side street.
I crushed the brake with both feet, the rear end doing all it could to fishtail as I slowed from a hundred-and-twenty down to thirty.
The construction crew dived aside, screaming in terror as the monster vehicle rushed headlong at them.
Thankfully, the car swung enough that I was able to hit the gas and shoot down the side road.
Behind me, the Ferrari followed, its headlights shining like twin suns in my mirror.
Sweat ran in rivulets down my neck and back as I took the twisting turns of the road that prevented me from getting the car back up to speed.
From my right, an inky black shadow burst from a side street. The Maserati.
“Shit,” I cried, swerving away from him so he couldn’t side-swipe me.
“You’re dead, motherfucker,” the driver screamed out the open window. “You are fucking dead.”
Swallowing and nearly choking from my dry mouth, I hit the gas and took the very next turn.
Now that I understood the car’s size and weight, I’d gotten a handle on it.
With this turn, I used the heft of the car as well as its power, and feathered the brake and gas together, pushing into a controlled spin.
The shifters chasing me fell for my feint.
They slammed on their brakes to follow me.
Instead, they slid by, slowing to a complete stop as they overshot the road.
The Ferrari slid farther than the other and hit the curb, front tires exploding.
The nose of my car faced the direction we’d come from, and I stepped on the gas, barreling down the street and flying by the construction crew, who looked on in shock.
The wind from my passing blew one’s baseball cap off his head.
The Maserati made a quick, tire-squealing turn and rocketed after me, coming alongside me on the driver’s side.
Again, the window rolled down, and a big guy acted like he was going to climb out and jump onto my own car.
A glance at the speedometer told me we were going nearly a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour. This guy was fucking nuts.
“Don’t do it,” I shouted, though I doubted the guy could hear me through the closed window and the roaring wind.
As if emboldened by my warning, he pulled a knife from a sheath on his boot as the driver swung his wheel. The car and the psycho hanging out the window lurched toward me.
I yanked my wheel to the right, and a loud ping echoed from outside. My stomach twisted as the driver’s side mirror spun away into the night after striking a light pole.
“Fuck!”
I waited until the driver swung toward me again and slammed all my weight on my brakes.
My chest lurched against the seatbelt, and the car itself shuddered under the sudden stop.
The Maserati swung hard, wanting to nudge me off the road, but all it found was empty air.
The guy hanging out the window shifted to his wolf form and leapt free of the car, slamming into the passenger window of a parked Honda.
The glass shattered from the impact. The Maserati jumped the curb, struck a pickup truck, and flipped onto its roof.
Exhaling in relief, I gunned my engine again, glancing back to make sure no one was following. Rather than head straight for the interstate and home, I took a circuitous route until I parked at the rear of an old gas station with boarded-up windows.
I got out of the car and walked around it, breathing deep trying to calm my nerves.
Remarkably, there was no damage other than the mirror that had been sheared off.
There were a few small scratches around it, but nothing major.
The problem was, this wasn’t how Joseph wanted the car.
He said not a speck of dust, not a single scratch.
I’d have to get this fixed before I turned it over.
Pulling my phone out, I did a quick search, looking for garages nearby that could handle something of this caliber. My hands shook as the adrenaline faded from my system, but scrolling through the internet actually helped me ease back down.
Finally, I found a place that looked like a possibility, and it was only a couple miles away. The website showed a bunch of old-school custom muscle cars and higher-end luxury sedans. Tuyuc Auto Services. That was where I’d have to go. There was no time to waste. My sister’s life depended on it.