Chapter 44
Scarlett
Widow and I are in the Bugatti, flying down a country road at three-figure speeds.
The scenery is a useless blur. Civilian vehicles are obstacles that we whip around at the speed of light.
Police are irrelevant. If I end up running into them, eh.
Good luck keeping up with his baby in a Dodge Charger.
Back at the HDLC office, Nisha, Bastian, and a small portion of our crew are working on cleaning up the mess we made.
Jonas will be secured and treated just enough to make sure he doesn’t die, then handed over to Burt.
As of right now, that’s all background noise in my own obsession, flying down the most likely path the mysterious white truck might’ve taken.
With the vehicle’s description and an approximate time of departure, we were able to track the truck as far as the last four-way intersection.
Bohnes and Alexei are in the Chevelle, following behind us.
If I were trying to outpace them in the Bugatti, it’d be easy, but only an idiot drives down an unknown road full of potential hazards at two-hundred-plus miles per hour.
A hundred is fine though. The Chevelle has no problem keeping up.
Trusted bitches, like Jennifer, have been sent down the other roads, leaving this one—the most likely choice considering it leads to the highway—to us.
We have Widow’s phone open to a call with Bohnes and Alexei. It’s not like our previous forays, where we communicated like Power Rangers sliding into the various seats of the Megazord. This drive is somber and hellish.
We don’t talk to each other. We won’t, unless there’s something directly related to finding Ash that needs to be said. For now, I do what I do best and I drive.
We pass several small side roads and driveways. Each one gives me a small heart attack. What if the truck left the main road? It’d take days or even weeks to search everything out here. No traffic cams either. No security cams.
If we’re wrong and the truck carrying Ash has stopped anywhere else on this route, we might be too late. Jonas is secure, sure, but he’s never worked alone. Even with Chet and Ernest gone, I’m sure there’s no shortage of goons and accomplices in the mayor’s seemingly limitless pockets.
And then…then I see it…I…
“Widow,” I choke as he leans forward in his seat and starts cursing. “Guys, there’s a white truck up ahead.”
I slow down, careful not to press the brakes too hard.
I’m coming up fast on a simple white box truck without any visible logos.
There’s absolutely nothing interesting or remarkable about it.
Instead of passing it, I slow down and try not to let my mind wander.
There’s so much doubt poisoning my thoughts, so many crossroads where chance or fate or, shit, like I keep saying, Providence, could change everything.
What if Ash was transferred from the white truck we glimpsed on the HDLC security camera office to a different vehicle?
What if I passed that vehicle as I was driving?
What if, what if, what if, that deadly, morose loop that I’ve always refused to travel.
I have to take each step logically, from one reasonable assumption to the next. What-ifs could get Ash killed.
So I slow down and maneuver around to the left of the truck, like I’m just trying to pass. While I keep my eyes on the road to check for oncoming traffic, Widow rolls his window down and leans out, trying to get a good look at the driver of the truck.
After a few seconds, he slumps back in his seat and talks loudly enough that we can all hear him over the roar of the wind. We’ve slowed down substantially, but sixty-five is still plenty fast.
“There’s nobody driving that truck,” Widow says, baffled, relating the information to Bohnes and, because this is business and not personal stuff, we’ve got Hype on the line with us.
“Nobody driving?” she asks, the question followed by the clattering of keys. “What’s the license plate?”
It wasn’t possible to get a clear read on the plate from the cameras we had access to.
Bohnes moves the Chevelle up close to the rear of the truck and Alexei reads it off.
Once they’ve done that, Bohnes positions the Chevelle to the right of the truck, hurtling down the narrow cement shoulder beside forests and fields and farms.
We’ve got the truck flanked now.
My instinct is to use a pit maneuver on this bitch, but I’m worried about Ash.
If he’s inside the truck, then he’s in the back.
It’s one thing for the boys and me to pit each other during a race when I know for a fact we’re the best goddamn drivers that pitiful little Prescott track has ever seen.
It’s another altogether when it’s a top-heavy box truck driven by a ghost.
“We’ll go ahead and lay spikes,” Bohnes tells us, speeding up and cutting in front of the truck. He slows down purposely, testing the vehicle we’re pursuing to see what it’ll do.
The truck doesn’t stop. It keeps going at the same speed, knocking into the Chevelle’s rear bumper and pushing it forward like an unstoppable train. Bohnes hits the gas and takes off, disappearing around a corner with Alexei as his passenger.
“Bohnes has Stop Sticks?” Widow asks, and then he laughs, like a crazy person. The wind tousles his bloodied, perfect little haircut around his magnificently handsome face. There’s a strength and a fire in my husband that doesn’t surprise me, but impresses me nonetheless. “I fucking love that man.”
Adrian opens the bag at his feet, examining all of the bits and bobs that only a career criminal of Bohnes’ magnitude would’ve known to bring with him. We have everything but the kitchen sink in there.
I ease the Bugatti behind the truck, waiting for Hype to give me whatever info she can dig up.
“Is the truck’s driver crouching in there, so we don’t shoot him?
” I wonder, cows and horses and fields flying by on either side of us.
“Or is it being remotely driven?” I exhale, forcing my addled brain to fixate on that truck.
For now, we work under the assumption that Ash is in the back of it, just like we did with Bohnes and the mausoleum.
If he’s not then…we work our way from the most logical thing to the least. One by one, just like Bohnes said. Until we have Ash back, until our vengeance is satisfied, until the world burns.
“Self-driving car,” Hype mutters through the line, cursing and yelling in Korean for a minute before she gets it together. “Like, uh, like a Waymo or something.”
“Like a what?” I snap back, getting frustrated.
My hands are so tight on the steering wheel that they hurt.
Once upon a time, driving a car like this Bugatti would’ve felt like a dream.
Today, I don’t give a flying fuck about any of it.
I’ll live with my family in a hut in the middle of nowhere if it means being together.
I am so tired of losing people that I care about.
“Shit, you know, a Waymo! Fuck! Like in San Francisco. An AI car.” Hype sounds like she’s hyperventilating over there, the crunch of a Pocky stick audible even with the wind whistling past through Widow’s still-open window.
“The vehicle is registered to some rando. Nothing is standing out to me. But don’t you find it weird that a vehicle like that is in Prescott? It’s gotta belong to Jonas.”
I can agree with that, even if I have no clue what a Waymo is, even if I’ve never been to San Francisco in all my life.
“You’re telling me that some AI-slop robot is driving the truck with my fucking husband in it?!” My voice is shrill enough that Widow flinches, clenching his teeth against his own pain. “Aren’t you a hacker wiz? Well, hack this bitch, bitch.”
“It’s encrypted up the fucking wazoo!” Hype screams back at me, both of us in agitated, overexcited states. “I’ll try, but your brute force methods might actually work better.”
“The spikes are set,” Alexei reports, his voice as calm and even as my own is manic. “Stay to the left lane, please.”
“Roger.” I check for oncoming traffic again and then veer into the left lane, straddling the shoulder on the opposite side in case we run into someone when going around the next curve. Killing myself and Widow in a fiery head-on collision won’t do anyone any good.
We pass the Chevelle and it pulls out behind us, catching up just as the truck hits the spikes.
All four tires pop and the vehicle wavers dangerously before straightening itself out.
Doesn’t stop though.
“Fuck.” I’m chewing on my lip, my mind spinning through ideas.
We can just keep following it until it eventually gives out.
Though, I’ve participated in enough police chases to know that a vehicle can go a lot further on four popped tires than you’d think.
What if the damage to the truck escalates to the point that it crashes?
What if it drives somewhere we can’t win, like a house in the middle of the woods that belongs to some powerful rich scumbag?
“Pull up close to the truck,” Widow says, selecting items from the bag between his feet.
He takes his seat belt off and then wraps a rope around his waist several times, attaching a pair of bolt cutters and a knife to it.
On the end of the rope, he loops one of Bohnes’ metal carabiners.
“I’m going to get into the back of the truck. ”
I almost laugh at that. It’s so fucking psychotic that it’s worth mocking.
“No, you’re fucking not,” I reply, another idea coming to mind.
“Let’s flank this bitch, us on one side and you guys on the other.
There’s a bridge coming up, and I would not trust Jonas or his associates or whoever programmed this thing not to send it straight over the edge and into the river.
If we flank it, we can make sure the truck follows the road and doesn’t flip over in a ditch. ”