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“Nick, goddamn it, get back here!” Tom Lewis crashed behind them into the dark woods.
The boy towed her by the hand, dodging between trees, which was a good thing because he clearly knew where he was and her night vision had been damaged by the security light. The ground was uneven and Sam stumbled, feet burning inside her running shoes, blackberry scratches and rock scrapes inflaming her soles. The right arm Nick had hold of flashed a lightning bolt of pain to her shoulder and neck with every tug.
“Dammit, Westin, I’ll have you charged with kidnapping!”
A loud boom blasted through the night air, and they both stopped, flinching. But she didn’t detect the sound of a bullet whizzing past. She chanced a glance back over her shoulder.
The tall figure of Tom Lewis was barely visible between the trees, backlit by the light streaming from the house. He’d come from inside the house, so Sam hoped his eyes were taking even longer to adjust to the darkness.
“My car,” she urgently whispered to Nick. “It’s parked in front of this lot.”
His voice cracked as he grabbed her arm again. “This way.”
The sounds of snapping twigs and thudding footsteps behind them proved his father was closing in. Sam and Nick burst out of the woods onto the road, yanked open the doors of her car and jumped in.
The keys! She couldn’t find her keys. Breathing hard, she frantically ran her hands over her clothes, finally located the keys in the teensy front pocket of her pants, and thrust her fingers in. The keys jammed in the crease of her thigh and torso and would come no further. Why the hell didn’t she have one of those new keyless cars?
Heart thundering in her chest, she shoved the door open with her left arm and leapt out.
Nick leaned across the seat. “Hurry, hurry! Omigod, hurry!”
As if she didn’t already have sufficient motivation.
She yanked the keys out of her pocket.
Tom Lewis thundered out of the woods behind her.
She’d just managed to slam the door shut when the fingers of his left hand clutched at the handle, trying to yank it open again. Clutched in his right hand, the pistol clunked against her window glass, and for a second she was terrified that the barrel would shatter the glass or the gun would fire and she’d lose the top of her head. She pulled on the door handle from her side, afraid to move her hand to reach the lock button.
Tom let go of the driver’s door and reached for the back door. Sam slapped at the door lock and heard the clunk of the locks closing, but Tom already had the door behind her open.
“Nick!” he growled.
She jammed the car key into the ignition. Tom’s right hand clamped around the back of her headrest, and for once she was thankful that she was petite. Otherwise, he’d have her by the hair or the back of her neck. Twisting the key and pressing the accelerator to the floor, she peeled out onto the road, the tires spitting gravel.
“Nick!” Tom yelled, slipping backward as his feet were dragged on the road. “Don’t do this. Sam! Goddamn it!”
And then, with a clunk and a rasp of fabric, the clutching fingers were gone from her headrest. The passenger door banged in the wind. The door open light on the dash kept flashing its red warning in her face, along with the seat belt sign. She remembered to turn on her headlights. The stop sign at the end of the gravel road seemed miles away.
“You okay, Nick?”
The boy hunched over in the passenger seat, his head below the dashboard, his arms clutched around himself, sobbing, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
In the rear view mirror, she saw the red flash of taillights as Tom Lewis backed his pickup out of his driveway. Then two high beams came her way at an alarming speed, like a tyrannosaurus bearing down on her.
“You might want to put your seat belt on, Nick.” She was approaching the T intersection way too fast.
Like the good kid he was, Nick was reaching for the belt when she slammed on the brakes and skidded around the stop sign, taking a right onto the pavement. They both slid left, Sam banging her elbow on the door, Nick sliding into her, then reversed right, rebounding back more or less into position. The back door slammed shut, and Sam’s back and neck cracked. Reckless driving might be a drastic form of emergency chiropractic treatment.
When the tires stopped squealing, she asked, “Where’s the closest police station, Nick?”
He sat up and finally jammed the shoulder harness into the buckle. Sam wished she had time and another arm to do that on her side of the car.
“The closest police station?” she prompted again.
“I don’t know,” he sobbed. “Why would I know?”
They both watched the rearview mirror as the headlights rounded the corner and sped their way.
“Won’t that thing know?” Nick pointed to the GPS unit suction-cupped to her dashboard. The blue start screen was on, showing her, as usual, its warning about needing map updates. Like a writer-wildlife biologist-field guide had money to download new data every time any piece of GPS info changed. But he was right, the device should know, and surely police stations hadn’t moved around much in the last ten years.
“Nick, press that Skip button.”
He did. The screen switched to show multiple options available for setting routes.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Voice command!” she ordered.
Nothing happened except for Tom’s headlights getting closer. There was a four-way intersection ahead. Three choices.
“Voice command!” she shouted again.
“Speak a command,” the GPS device calmly responded.
“Police station!” she yelped.
“Did you say Lee Session?” the device politely asked. “I found two Lee Sessions.”
“That’s a person,” Nick informed her, checking the screen. “There’s a Lee and a Lisa.”
Whoever imagined this damn technology would be useful? “Back!” she shouted. “Po-leez stay-shun!” she enunciated loudly.
She was at the four-way stop sign. With no instructions forthcoming, she chose to blast straight ahead. The lights moving at a steady stream in the distance had to be the highway.
“I found two police stations in Ev-er-ett,” the device announced.
“Tap the closest one, Nick,” she murmured softly so as not to confuse Miz GPS again.
“Snohomish County Sheriff or Everett Police?”
“Whichever is closest!”
The pickup headlights bounced off her rearview, blinding her. She slapped the mirror upward as she sped onto the on-ramp. A feeble horn honked behind her as she cut off a Prius.
“Nick, what will your father do if he catches us?” she asked.
“Drive five miles on Eye-Five,” the device instructed.
Tom’s headlights swung around the Prius and moved up the inside lane. Sam increased her speed, but there was no way her Civic could match the horsepower of the big pickup. Fortunately, a Mercedes was hogging the inside lane and haughtily refused to respond to Tom’s flashing headlights.
Flashing headlights. Excellent idea. She punched the red button in the middle of the dash to turn on her emergency flashers. Now surely everyone on the highway would be on their cell phones, calling in the maniac woman driver speeding down the road with her flashers on. The driver ahead of her switched lanes to the left, further backing up Tom.
“My cell’s a lot faster than this thing,” Nick murmured, his face blue in the GPS light.
Then why the hell don’t you have your cell, she wanted to scream. But who knew how GPS Lady would interpret that.
“Nick,” she said again, her voice shaky but soft, “What will your father do if he catches us?”
“In one hundred feet, exit right,” the device commanded. “Then keep right.”
The SUV driver in back of her had slowed, no doubt alarmed by the emergency flashers, and Tom’s pickup slid in behind her, only a couple of feet from her bumper.
“Nick?” she prompted.
He folded over again as if having an appendicitis attack. “Oh God, I don’t know! He’s my dad.”
That didn’t make sense, but then not much about the situation did. She peeled off the exit at the last minute, feeling the car’s weight shift momentarily onto the two outside wheels as she rounded the curve. With luck, Tom might roll his truck as he screeched onto the exit behind her.
No such luck.
“Drive six miles,” GPS Lady told her.
The pickup tapped her bumper. What the hell did Tom Lewis expect her to do, anyway? Pull over so he could conveniently kill her and take his son? Surely he wouldn’t shoot into her car while Nick was beside her.
There were cars ahead, stopped at a red light, blocking the intersection. She was going to have to stop.
“I could just jump out,” the boy suggested. “Then he might leave you alone.”
Like he’d left her alone in Fossil Bay? “No. He might shoot you.”
“He wouldn’t. He’s my dad.”
“Well, then he’d have no excuse not to shoot me.”
Nick’s jaw clenched, his face grim as he acknowledged her logic.
The red light turned green and the cars ahead of her moved across the intersection. The pickup bumped her again. There was no way they were going to make it to the police station before he caused her to crash.
“Hang on, Nick.” She careened into the intersection and jammed her foot on the brake, yanking the wheel around. The Civic slid into a turn before halting. The pickup slammed into her left rear fender before sliding off and crashing into a light pole on the corner.
The seat belt forced the air from her lungs, and as she tried to inflate them again, Sam watched Tom open the pickup door and exit, the gun clutched in his right hand. His left was pressed against his head and he staggered, fell to his knees, then got back up again, waving the gun wildly.
Nick was slumped in his seat, but she saw no blood. Had he banged his head against the window?
Above her, the traffic light changed. The Civic was blocking the intersection. As Lewis lurched toward her car, Sam jammed her hand on her horn and kept it there. Headlights from two different directions illuminated the car’s interior. Her emergency flashers strobed across the scene.
Whatever was about to happen, there would be plenty of witnesses.
