Page 54 of Destroyed With You

He turns and looks behind us. “Yeah, you’re not going to be getting that wish.”

I glance in the rearview mirror to see a BMW eating up the distance between us.

Shit.

Not only was I hoping for more time, I would have preferred our enemy not to be in a vehicle that could run circles around this one.

“We need to get to the open road,” I say. “I’ll out-maneuver these fuckers.”

How I’m going to do that on straight, shoulder-less, country roads is something I’m not thinking about at the moment. The eternal optimist. That’s me.

“Yeah?” His voice is tight. “Well, until then, we have a problem.”

I’d been concentrating on the surface of the drive, but he’s looking further ahead. I follow his gaze to see that the gate we’d left open is now closed. Not to mention locked with a chain.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I fervently wish for manual transmission, but instead try to press the gas even harder. “Hold on,” I say, then maneuver the car so that the point of impact is right where the gate latches to the frame. We collide at full speed, and while the chain doesn’t break, the post comes out of the ground, and we’re able to bounce right over the barbed wire gate. I wince, expecting the tires to blow out, but we get lucky, and they don’t. Maybe whoever’s following us won’t be as lucky.

That theory is negated seconds later when the Beemer careens over the barbed wire, makes a wild turn onto the road, and roars toward us. And to make matters worse, someone leans out of the passenger side and fires, shattering our back window.

Winston and I both duck. “Any brilliant ideas?” I ask.

“Lose them.”

“Great. Glad you thought of that.”

I don’t take my eyes off the road to look at him, but I’m positive he’s sending me a sarcastic look. “Just thinking out loud.”

“No. I appreciate it. Anything you can think of to get us out of here works for me.”

“And you? Any ideas?”

“Other than just driving like a bat out of hell? Not really.”

Even as I say the words, though, I see a flatbed loaded with baled hay coming toward us from the opposite direction.

“This will work.”

“Whoa,” Winston says. “What the hell are you thinking?”

“Quiet. I need to concentrate.”

He makes a low noise in his throat, but to his credit, says nothing. He does, however, brace himself with the dashboard and door handle. Smart man.

“Just warn me when you—”

His words are cut off as I make a hard U-turn in front of the flatbed, so close the driver has to slam on the brakes, and we come within mere inches of missing it as I skid off the road, then frantically try to accelerate on the soft shoulder to get ahead of the now-slow truck.

By some miracle, I manage that, and now I aim the Toyota straight ahead, so that we’ll pass the BMW heading west while we go east.

As I’d hoped, the BMW driver doesn’t fire—not with witnesses. And it also can’t turn around to follow us, because it’s now even with the truck, and has no clearance for a U-turn until it’s past the flatbed.

It’s not a lot of time, but we can make it work, and once again, I put the Toyota to the test, flooring it and making the first turn I see, then another and another until we’re lost in a web of ranch roads, county roads, and private drives.

Finally, I pull over behind a whitewashed Baptist church. The parking lot is empty, and as soon as the engine dies, I lean back in the seat, breathing hard.

My heart is still pounding when I feel his hand take mine. I look over to find him grinning like a fiend. “What?”

“That was some damned impressive driving. I thought we were going to buy it in front of that truck.”