CHAPTER EIGHT
“This is ridiculous,” says Grant from the driver’s seat of Jack’s car. “We can’t just jet off to a foreign country at the drop of a hat!”
“Why not? I do it whenever I can afford to,” I yawn, reclining my seat. “I ditched my college graduation for a cheap last-minute ticket to Morocco.”
I’m trying to use this short car ride to rest, to sink into my heated seat and get some warmth back into my bones.
Grant’s using it to—surprise of a lifetime—continue freaking out.
With my feet up on the dash and the morning sunlight painting red-orange streaks against my closed eyelids, I can almost tune him out and pretend this car is being driven by a white noise machine with anxiety.
Grant works his way through a list of reasons he can’t go to London, none of them convincing.
We’re heading to his apartment solely to regroup and feed his cat, he says, but I’m not above scouring the place for his passport and kidnapping him all over again if I have to.
There may be a light at the end of this tunnel, but it’s still a long way to go without my crime fiction consultant.
“Mm-hmm,” I say, in response to whatever his latest objection was.
“I mean it,” he says, more firmly now. “I’m not going.”
With an impatient groan, I sit up and face him.
“What do you suggest, then? We stay here? Let Anna’s whole twisted story play out for who knows how long?
” Grant’s throat bobs at my suggestion, and I take the cue to ramp up the drama in my voice.
I lean in, eyes wide. “Weeks, months, maybe years of watching your back. Dodging murder attempts. Running from explosions in slow-mo.”
He gives me an uneasy double take. “Okay, I’m not loving how excited you seem about that.” I might be smiling. I school the corners of my mouth back down. “Also, you’re thinking of action movies. Novels don’t have running away in slow motion. It wouldn’t make sense.”
“Sure it would.”
“How? How would someone put slow motion in a novel?”
“Like this: ‘And then they ran away, in slow motion.’”
His face remains a scrunched mask of skepticism.
I sit back, arms crossed. There’s nothing I can say that this man can’t pick apart.
Maybe I should leave him here and go find Anna on my own.
He can just stay here and spend the next however long stewing in guilt, jumping at every loud sound, sweating over every creepy person and suspicious car he sees.
Like the one behind us now, for instance.
I peer into the side mirror. An older man in aviator sunglasses is driving the black SUV, with a woman in the passenger seat. Both are staring daggers straight ahead. Grant turns left at an intersection and the SUV follows suit.
“Huh,” I say.
“What?”
“Hypothetically,” I say, “would being followed count as rising action?”
Grant’s eyes dart to the rearview, then the side mirror, then back. “Oh, God,” he says in that way that tends to precede him losing his shit.
“Grant. Relax,” I say. “It might be nothing.” I slightly regret nudging my driver toward a panic attack at the wheel.
He turns right down a side street. So does the SUV.
I blow out a long breath, and Grant exhales a string of obscenities.
He makes another turn. The SUV follows. I suggest he do it again without the turn signal.
He’s visibly uncomfortable with the idea but tries it anyway.
He even picks up the pace a responsible two to three miles per hour.
It makes no difference. Maneuvering through the streets, the SUV matches us turn for turn.
Grant squints in the rearview mirror, his face growing paler by the second. “Are they trying to tell us something?”
I twist around to see. They do seem to be saying something, though I obviously can’t tell what. And they don’t look happy.
“It could be nothing,” I suggest. “Like, we left a cup of coffee on the roof and they’re trying to let us know.”
“Did you leave a cup of coffee on the roof?”
“… No.”
Grant’s only reply is an audible swallow.
“Maybe they’re lost and they want to ask us for directions.”
“Or they’re bad guys and they want us to die,” Grant says. His hands are choking the life out of the steering wheel.
“Or they’ve been trying to reach us about our car’s extended warranty,” I try.
“Yeah, or they’re bad guys and they want us to die.”
I throw my hands up. “Sure, if you want to go all worst-case-scenario about it. Maybe let’s not jump to conclusions?
” The light in front of us turns red, and Grant swears under his breath as he comes to a stop.
I try to ignore the SUV drawing nearer in the rearview.
“All they’re doing is driving the same way we’re driving.
There could be many reasons for that, some of them not even nefarious.
Besides, what are they going to do, follow us to death? ”
I turn back around to examine them further. That’s when the scowling man driving the car leans over, then lifts up something shiny.
“GUN!” I shout. “HE’S GOT A GUN. GO!”
Those appear to be the magic words; Grant floors it through the intersection. He signals left and then veers right to fake out our pursuers, and for a moment it seems to have worked until they pull a screeching U-turn and follow us, horns blaring all around.
I can’t tell exactly where the first shot hits, but the loud bang sends us instinctively ducking and screaming. Grant angles himself to maintain control of the wheel, swearing profusely.
“Who is that?” I stare behind us, but there’s absolutely nothing of any identifying value, beyond the evident contempt of the tight-lipped man pointing his gun at us. More gunshots ring out, pinging off metal as we screech through alleys and small roads, driving farther and farther off course.
“Whoever they are, I don’t think this is their first car chase,” Grant says through gritted teeth. “I can’t shake them. Is there anything in the back we can use? Something we can throw, maybe?”
I shoot a flat look at him. “Yes, as a matter of fact, there’s a crate of banana peels.”
“Seriously?”
“No! This isn’t Mario Kart!”
“Oh, you mean stealing moves from a video game isn’t practical in real life?”
“Shut up,” I snap, but then my eyes catch on something poking out from the back seat. Something metallic. With a trigger. And even though it seems to be our only hope right now, my stomach turns. I gingerly pick it up, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger as if it were a dirty diaper.
“Um, I may have found something.”
Grant glances at the gun as he cranks the wheel away from another onslaught of gunfire. We tear through an alley and back onto the main road, much to the horror of the screaming bystanders on the sidewalk.
“Shit,” hisses Grant. “Do you know how to shoot?”
“No, and I really don’t want to learn,” I say. Even the plastic training guns in Uri’s class make me uneasy, and I’ve learned to disarm those with as little handling as possible. I stare at Grant, taken aback. “Are you really insinuating that I should shoot these people?”
“No!” he protests, swerving sharply to avoid a cyclist. The SUV makes the exact same move seconds later. “I just thought maybe you could try to hit their car or something, just to slow them down.”
I eye the gun mistrustfully, and reluctantly try holding it the way I’ve seen people do in movies.
It feels foreign and unnatural in my hands.
I glance out the window at the buildings racing past. The pedestrian traffic is thinning out as we near the highway, but there’s still a good chance I’d hit someone else if I tried for the SUV.
I’m not interested in hurting anyone, or worse.
The man behind us doesn’t seem to have the same qualms, or is maybe just a much more confident marksman. Once we race clear of a Mini Cooper, he sends another shot ringing out and Grant and I both tense.
“What if I just, like, wave it threateningly at them?” I demonstrate, and Grant flinches into a defensive hunch over the steering wheel.
“Jesus!” he cries. “At least make sure the safety’s on first!”
My voice comes out shrill and frenzied. “What part of me holding a gun like this makes you think I know how to do that?”
He curses and wipes sweat from his forehead. “I’ll talk you through it,” he says.
I almost drop the weapon in shock.
“You’re a gun guy?”
“I am not a gun guy,” he says, glowering as he cuts around a pickup truck to take the on-ramp. “My dad liked to shoot. He tried to teach me when I was a kid.” This makes more sense. Grant has the look of a guy who learned everything he knows about firearms against his will.
But still. He did learn it.
We both startle and swear as another bullet shatters the side window. With a moment of thought, I lay the gun down on the dash, unbuckle my seat belt, and push up from my seat.
“New plan,” I yell. “You shoot, I drive.”
Grant throws me a wide-eyed stare as we rocket onto the highway. The road stretches before us, nowhere to turn or hide. “I’m sorry?”
“We’re going to switch spots. We have to. Unbuckle.”
“What?”
“Unbuckle your seat belt!”
“I can’t! I’m—I’m busy!”
I flinch as the man in the SUV announces his arrival on the highway with another loud bang. “You’re the only one here who ever learned to shoot a gun.”
“Yeah, and made a point of forgetting everything except how to disable them.”
“That’s still better than me! I’ve never shot anything outside of laser tag. We both know there’s a higher chance that I’ll hit some innocent bystander and that’ll be on your conscience, Grant. Now unbuckle. Your goddamn. Seat belt.”
His jaw is clenched tight, and after a few tense moments, he looses a sound somewhere between a groan and a shout. “Fine,” he barks. “How exactly do you see this working?”