The Shack series

Chapter 3

"I am. This is going to get a little rough." As we bolted ahead, the SUV fell back in the distance. The Cobra was kicking up a dust cloud damn near a city block long and I could see the G8 gaining.

"They're going to catch us!"

"I need them to almost catch up. Just hang the Damm on." The narrow rock road I was looking for was coming up fast on the left side. I downshifted, spilling some speed.

She caught the sudden deceleration. "Don't stop! They'll..."

Whatever she was going to say was lost to me as I mashed the clutch and pulled handbrake.

Steer right, Steer left.

For a second, as we drifted into the turn, I thought there was something wrong with the engine, but the high-pitched screaming was Delaney, trying to curl up into a ball with her harness fully locked up.

Tap the foot brake to reduce speed just a bit more. Once the nose aligned, I floored the gas and as the revs jumped into the red, I dumped the clutch and dropped the handbrake.

We rocketed down the narrow rock road with scrub trees, ditches and fields flashing past on either side, throwing an even bigger cloud of dust. The G8 driver didn't even try the turn; he flew past, just a blue blur. He'd have to look for a place to turn once he could slow down, which was likely to take him a quarter mile.

The SUV, coming up slower, easily made the turn.

I slowed a bit to let him try to catch up a bit, I needed him closer to pull this off. The dust was incredibly thick on the red rock road; a fine powder that would hang in the air forever and thickly coated the scrub trees and grass next to the road.

The SUV driver was focused on me and forgot the most important thing about driving. The most dangerous thing on the road isn't the other driver.

It's the road.

Windshield coated in dust, focused on Sally's cute little a*s, he missed the fact that we were coming up on a T intersection.

I dropped Sally into second gear, flicked the wheel right, then left, spinning her into a bootlegger turn right at the hammerhead where the road widened at the cross, tucking her neatly at dead stop along the side of the road.

By the time the SUV driver realized what was happening, it was too late. He was still accelerating when he crossed into the intersection, and his desperate attempt to turn was probably one of the worst choices he could make. Not that he had any good choices at that point.

A controlled spinout, like a bootlegger turn, is best accomplished by a low-center-of-gravity, rear-wheel-drive car with a manual transmission. Preferably one with excellent sway bars.

It is nearly impossible in a high-center-of-gravity SUV with an automatic transmission at 70 miles per hour.

For a fraction of a second, the SUV was upright, skidding exactly sideways, then the tires caught, the balance shifted and it began an incredibly high-speed rollover. It still might have been survivable, except for the reason for the T intersection: a 30-foot-tall rock face that had proven easier to go around than cut through. Even as I shifted up and began to accelerate back through the dust cloud down the red rock road, pieces of the SUV flew past us. Nobody was going to live through that.

Delaney stared back down the road at the c*****e, gulping air. "What... what..."

"Get a grip, this isn't over yet." I slammed through the gears as fast as I could, pouring on the gas, the engine howling with demonic glee.

Ahead of us, I could see the G8 bearing down on us. I bared my teeth. "Okay, MotherDammer. You wanna play chicken? C'mon!"

I could see somebody hanging out the rear passenger widow. Tiny flashes against his silhouette told me what he was doing. Surprisingly Delaney had enough presence of mind to figure it out.

"They're shooting!" She looked at me, pale and terrified.

"Damm'em if they can't take a joke, Kitten."

The driver of the G8 was the only other player on the field; hitting a moving target from an accelerating car is hard as hell at the best of times. I was more likely to lose control than I was to get hit by a bullet.

It took too long for him to get it. Never, ever, play chicken with someone who isn't playing by the same rules you are. Don't ever play chicken with someone who isn't afraid of getting killed.

Once he realized I wasn't planning on turning, he tried to move aside, but the road was too narrow, and the G8 cartwheeled as the front left wheel, then the nose dug into the soft dirt of the ditch. As we flashed past, I saw the terrified face of the gunman as he was ejected from the window. The car turned into a short-lived four-thousand-pound projectile, spinning through the air and slamming though scrub trees until it met the trunk of a massive live oak.

I braked slowly, no point in losing control now. Delaney was huddled into herself, half curled up, ghost-white, teeth chattering. She was in shock. She might be getting ready to pass out.

Maybe that was for the best; it'd make the next part a lot easier on her if she did.

I shifted into reverse until I was 30 meters from the twisted wreck of the G8, then stopped; I could see flames back at the wreck of the SUV. That's rare and it meant that the SUV had hit incredibly hard. I got out, pulling the .45 from my waistband. Delaney was fixated on the floor, not even looking up when I shut the door.

I'd seen enough to know there was no way anyone was coming out of the G8 alive, but the gunman on the side of the road was still twitching.

I walked over and looked down at him. His back was obviously broken, and his eyes weren't seeing anything, but he was still alive. He probably wouldn't even survive if he were in a hospital, but that didn't matter, I couldn't take the chance.

I fired once into his forehead and headed back towards the Cobra. Delaney's face was blank white sheet with dark hollow eyes as she watched me.

We pulled away towards the main road.

"Why... Why did you...?"

"They knew your name. They knew where you lived. What do you think they were going to do if they didn't catch up to us now?"

She shuddered, lower lip quivering spastically. "They were going to kill me, right?"

"You'd have been begging them to kill you."

She leaned forward heaving for as second, but nothing came out. "Damm them." Fragments of tears squeezed out of her lashes. "Damm them."

"Hold on to that anger, Baby. Sometimes that's all you have."

She straightened up and took three deep breaths, each one longer and deeper, forcing herself to calm down. "Damm them."

We drove for almost an hour without speaking at all before I noticed something.

I sniffed. "What the Damm is that smell?"

Delaney gestured to her lap. "I peed myself, Okay?! You're Damm crazy!"

I shrugged. "Good thing I have vinyl seats in this thing. Roll your window down, Sunshine. We still have a couple hours to go to get you home and I don't want to smell that the whole way."

"You're Damm crazy!"

"You already said that."

"You could have gotten me killed. What if we'd have rammed each other? In case you forgot, my seatbelt won't open."

"Like I give a shit." I chuckled. "Some math for you. We were doing 70 miles an hour, they were going at least as fast. This car weighs just about three thousand pounds, theirs weighed about four thousand pounds. If we'd have hit head on, you wouldn't have felt a goddamn thing."

"Who are you?" Her voice was a little quieter.

"Nobody important. I'm just here to take you home."

She was quiet for a little while. "Are you some kind of cop?"

"No."

"But that stuff you did with the car and the way you took out... everyone..."

I should have let it go and let her stew in silence, but I answered instead. "I spent two decades in the Army, Buttercup. Seventeen Damm years in Special Forces."

"Really?" She screwed her face up. "You don't look like..."

"Well excuse the Damm outta me, Princess Glittersparkle. Liam Neeson and Brad-Damm-Pitt were unavailable today, so you're stuck with my ugly a*s. I'm goddamn sorry I don't live up to your expectations."

She stared at me for a minute. "God, you're Mom's ex-husband, aren't you? She said he was a tough guy in the Army."

I glared at her and looked back out the windshield at the road.

"She said you hated her more than anything in the world. Why would you help her?"

"The same reason anyone helps anybody. She has something I want."

"Tiffany and Tara."

I shook my head. "Hardly. Even if the b***h told them the truth now, it's too Damm late to make a difference."

"The truth?"

"She told everyone I was abusing her, beating her up. I never once touched her cheating, lying ass."

"Oh."

She sat quietly for a while, and I eventually punched the CD player on, bringing up Santana.

"Why do you listen to this stuff?"

"It helps me calm down, keeps me from being so angry."

"Maybe you should try something different, I don't think it's working."

"Ha Ha, Cupcake, very funny."

She shifted, crossing her arms. "I want to change clothes and get cleaned up."

"Keep wanting. See where that gets you."

"Jesus. No wonder she divorced you."

"Shut up."

She sat for a bit. "You could do me a favor and take Tara and Tiffany anyway."

"They're adults. Hell, she said Tiffany is a doctor."

"Yeah, and Tara is a lawyer. They're perfect for Dad and Mom."

I glanced at her. "You're not exactly living up to the standard, are you?"

"Damm you. I hate them."

I could hear bitterness in her voice. "Good for you, Sugarpie."

"I mean it."

"Drive on with that. A rebellious teen-age girl who hates her family, how Damm original."

She wrapped her arms around herself. "They're so Damm perfect. All I ever hear is how they had straight A's and were in National Honor Society. All that shit."

"So? Work harder."

"I can't work harder, I have dyslexia. Asshole. If I concentrate really hard, I can read for about 20 minutes and then it all goes to s**t. I'm one of the stupid kids."

"A short bus rider? I'll bet that burns Chucky's ass." I snickered.

"He's embarrassed by me. Really embarrassed." She had tears in her eyes.

"And you're working hard to keep him that way."

"Damm you. You don't know what it's like."

"Said every teenage girl ever born."