“Please don’t make my job harder than it needs to be.”
Before I can respond, our car starts to skid, tires screaming. We twist wildly as Jessica tries to regain control. Her teeth are gritted, her knuckles white, but she can’t seem to get the steering wheel to comply.
And then I hear a whistling noise amidst the cacophony and I realize what caused the skid in the first place: a bullet hit our tire.
Jessica loses the fight with the car. We swerve off the road and straight into a fire hydrant. By some miracle, the airbags don’t deploy and concuss us both.
But the car is wrecked. The fire hydrant held its ground, reducing the front hood to a smoking, mangled pile of machinery. We aren’t going any farther in this thing.
“Get out of the car and run!” Jessica yells.
We stumble out of the c
