Chapter 30 #2
Olena screamed. The ghost gurgled a startled cry and hit the brakes but swerved into the median as he tried to reach for his neck.
My seat belt locked against my shoulder with a hard bite, just as I’d planned, while the car’s movement threw Olena into the side window.
Her head cracked off it hard enough to splinter the glass and leave her dazed.
The car’s nose had scraped off the median in a way that left our back end jutting into the middle of the road.
Horns blared in brief warning before the car behind us hit the side of our back end.
Olena smashed into the window again, her arms flailing like a rag doll and her temple now bleeding.
The ghost slumped sideways, still grasping at his neck, and fighting for air.
We’d spun and come to a stop, now facing the opposite direction we’d been driving.
Oncoming headlights barreled at us as brakes screeched but not in time.
Another car hit us head-on, sending the front airbags exploding and the windshield shattering.
Olena flew backward and then forward, smashing into the back of the seat in front of her and crumpling into a bloody heap.
The seat belt punched me in the shoulder again, but it did its job and held me in place.
I could feel a bruise already blooming beneath my skin.
My head spun, but we’d finally stopped moving.
I clawed at the buckle on my other shoe and ripped it off, knowing I was going to have to run, and then lunged at Olena. I shoved my hand into her dress, the same as she’d done to me, and grabbed the diamond.
“Thank you for my freedom,” I said to her dazed, bloody face and scrambled for my door. The cool night air rushed in, and I had one foot on the pavement when her bird hand clawed into my arm like a talon.
I screamed at her nails digging in and found my other shoe. I held it by the strap and whipped it at her, wishing I could do more damage but needing to get the hell out of the car. The heel cracked off her forehead and sent her reeling back.
“Get back here, you little bitch!” she screamed as I shoved my way out the door.
Outside, the dark night hung thick with misty fog and the grittiness of the air surrounding a busy roadway.
Traffic had stopped on our side of the bridge and had only begun to slow on the other as rubberneckers slowed to see what had happened.
Cars still whizzed past, sending a rush of air billowing my skirt and my hair flying.
The drivers of the two cars that had hit us were out in the roadway, clutching their heads and asking if we were all right.
I didn’t have time for pleasantries. I had to go.
By now we were closer to the east side of the bridge than the west, so I took off in that direction. The cold pavement made my bare feet ache, but it didn’t take long before they were numb. Nor did it take long for a gunshot to ring out into the night.
I flinched and dove behind one of the stopped cars. I sat on the ground and peeked around its bumper to see Olena limping up the road, gun in hand, looking madder than hell.
“Shit,” I hissed. Of course she had a gun.
If she hadn’t had it stashed in the glove compartment, she probably snatched it off the ghost. “Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered.
If I took off running, she’d try to shoot me, and someone would get hurt.
Traffic had stopped, and more and more cars full of innocent people were in the line of fire.
“Give it back!” Olena screamed, closer now, and fired the gun again.
I flinched and covered my ears. This was not good. I had no weapons—not even a shoe. I was barefoot in a gala gown on a bridge full of cars with a five-million-dollar diamond in my bra and a madwoman shooting at me.
“Think,” I said, and knocked my head back against the bumper.
My car-shield was a minivan, surely with an innocent family inside.
If I’d been a better nanny—or a real one, even—I’d probably know a secret button to push to release a hatch, which would let me crawl inside.
But then I’d be with the innocent family inside their car while a madwoman shot at me, and that wouldn’t bode well for anyone.
Still, I was desperate. I stood up from my crouch and peered in through the minivan’s back window, looking for anything that might help. My breath caught when I recognized a Buggy-Baby stroller collapsed inside. I saw X3 stamped onto one of the rods. “No way,” I muttered.
You could still break down a door with it, Alisha had told me. The titanium rods are triple reinforced but light as a feather.
Break down a door … or stop a madwoman from killing me or hurting anyone innocent.
Pressing my luck, I peered around the van again. Olena was five cars away, still charging like a bloody bull.
I frantically looked for a back release latch on the van and found one in the form of a handle I promptly yanked.
The hatch slowly rose with a ding. The family was too busy ducking in their seats to notice.
A cartoon with a little blue dog played on the screens hanging from the ceiling.
I could hear the dad in the front seat, on the phone with a 911 operator, surely.
The mom had climbed to the middle seat and thrown her body over the car seat strapped there.
The only person who noticed me stealing the stroller was the little girl sitting in the very back seat.
She curiously looked at me through her little smudged glasses as she hugged her doll.
The last thing I needed was for her to scream and alert her parents I was robbing them of their very expensive stroller.
I gave her my friendliest smile and then held my finger to my lips. “Shhh. I’m a good guy,” I whispered. It wasn’t entirely true, but I’d learned bending the truth with children was permissible, if not necessary.
She considered me with a tilt of her little head and then mirrored me in pressing her finger to her lips. “Shhh.”
“Thank you,” I said and pulled the stroller from its keep.
Olena was right around the corner now; I could hear her labored breathing and her footsteps scraping the pavement. “Where did you go, princess?” she called.
The stroller folded up like a beach chair when it was collapsed. I gripped it with both hands and waited until I saw her shadow in the dim yellow light casting pools on the pavement. In the last second before she passed the van, I swung the stroller and smashed it into her upper body.
The shock—and surprising power of the stroller—knocked her to the ground with a yelp.
“Damn, this thing really is a weapon,” I said in awe and looked at it still in my hands. It had felt like swinging a Wiffle-ball bat but with the power of a battering ram.
Olena lay on the ground, groaning and holding her chest like I’d cracked a rib. Maybe I had. The good news was the gun had flown from her grip and landed out of her reach. I dropped the stroller and lunged for it.
“Give me that!” she screamed and clawed at my legs. She got a grip on one of them and pulled me to the ground.
I cried out when my knees hit the asphalt. I felt my gown tear and gritty rock dig into my skin. I got one hand on the gun and kicked at her.
“Get off of me!” I landed a kick to her face and managed to scramble away. I was only a few steps away before she dove on me again.
This woman would not quit.
I held the gun out of her reach as she continued to claw and grab at me. I did my best to run, but she was with me every step, punching at me, reaching for the gun, hissing horrible threats in my ear.
“I’m going to kill you and enjoy it. Give me what’s mine, you nasty little bitch. I should have killed you when you were a kid.”
“Get off me!” I roared and shoved her as hard as I could. In the process, the gun flew loose from my hand, but she didn’t seem to care. The cold fury in her eyes said she was going to kill me with her bare hands.
She came at me with her talons bared, dress tattered like mine, and blood dripping down her face.
We were past the stopped traffic by now.
It was just us and the empty road. We were still far out over the water.
High enough for a fall to end in certain death.
Olena charged and I could do nothing to get out of her way.
She shoved me up against the icy railing of the bridge and put one hand around my throat.
“Where is it?” she hissed with pure venom in her voice and rage in her bloodshot eyes.
She scratched at my chest, ripping her nails into my skin, and dug the diamond back out of its keep.
“Yes! Mine for good this time,” she cheered and clutched it in her fist. She was still choking me with her other hand.
Her nails drew blood on either side of my throat, I could feel it dripping.
I pushed and clawed at her, trying to keep my balance.
The bridge’s railing hit my midback. All it would take would be a hard shove, and momentum would pull me over the edge to a watery death.
“Goodbye, princess,” Olena sang with a laugh worthy of the wickedest witch.
My vision narrowed as my lungs fought for oxygen, which wouldn’t come. This was the end. I’d die alone, and no one would mourn me because I had no identity. I was no one. Nothing.
I tilted my head back, searching the night sky for stars or even a plane.
Anything more pleasant than the soulless stare of my sworn enemy as she squeezed the life out of me.
I thought I saw a star, even through the fog, but that might have been my suffocating brain mustering a twinkle as my vision turned to black.