I heard the sound of Steve checking the chamber on his gun. I looked in the rearview to see if he was planning to lean out the window and pop off at the biker to blow his tires out, but he’d already reholstered the weapon.
“Everybody buckled up back there?” I shouted.
“I strongly advise you to pull over,” Steve said.
“And let this guy get away?”
“Yes.”
I snorted. “Not a chance.”
We were heading northwest out of Wilmington on Route 52. The countryside passed by in a blur as we followed close behind the biker, who was zipping in and out of traffic. He must have thought it would be easier to lose us on the country road, rather than the tight grid of downtown or the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstate. Fortunately, there was one thing the biker hadn’t counted on: weekend drivers.
We passed a pickup that was doing fifty-five in a fifty-five. Clearly a sociopath. Maybe in Middle America it was acceptable to drive the speed limit, but not on the coast. If you weren’t doing at least ten over, you were liable to be run off the road. In Delaware, speeding wasn’t breaking the law; it was self-preservation.
Barack leaned between the seats. I could tell he was trying to get a look at the speedometer. The needle was fluttering between eighty and eighty-five. No matter how hard I pressed the pedal, the Beast wouldn’t go any faster. The motorcycle topped out at the same speed, so we were locked in step with each other.
“Listen, I know he flipped you off. But this is madness. It was just a middle finger. It’s not worth getting into an accident.”
“He knows us. He knows that we know who he is.”
“And who is he?” Barack asked.
“I don’t know his name, but I know that skull on his back. His club has something to do with Finn. And he’s just flaunting it in our faces. He was mocking us back there.”
“He’s not going to pull over, that much is obvious. What are you planning to do?”
I didn’t say anything.
“How are we on gas?” Barack said.
The tank was three-quarters full and he knew it. “If you want to drive, you’re more than welcome to.”
“You’re doing a great job, Joe.”
“You mean that?”
“Could I give you a suggestion, though?”
I shook my head.
Barack ignored me. “You might want to move your hands down a notch. Ten and two used to be the recommendation, but experts now say nine and three are better. In a crash, the airbag can break your wrists if your hands are too high on the wheel.”
“That what they teach you at Harvard Driving School?”
He didn’t take the bait. I waited for him to look away, and then I slipped my hands down the wheel to nine and three.
The motorcycle whipped around a midsized sedan with Vermont plates, and I did the same, keeping pace. As we passed the sedan, I caught glimpse of a small tuft of white hair poking out above the bottom of the window. The driver’s head was so low, it was a miracle he could see. A pair of bony hands hung from the steering wheel like Halloween decorations.
“Everybody wave to Bernie,” I said.
Nobody laughed at my joke.
Developed lands segued into fields and farms. Weekend drivers loved driving past fields for some reason. There wasn’t much to see right now. The corn was barely a foot high. Other crops hadn’t started poking up yet. The biker occasionally checked us out in his side mirror, but didn’t slow. Which one of us was going to make a mistake first?
“You know what the official state beverage is?” I said out loud. There was no answer from the back. “Give up? I’ll tell you: it’s milk. Milk is the official state beverage of Delaware.”
“Fascinating,” Barack said.
“I know, right?” I said, glancing in the rearview to see if he was rolling his eyes.
He wasn’t.
“Cow,” Steve said.
I looked at Steve. “Yeah, though we’ve got goats in Delaware, too. You know what gets me, though? Almond milk. It’s not milk, it’s more like juice. Just call it almond juice—”
“Cow!” Steve and Barack screamed, pointing through the windshield.
My eyes returned to the road just in time to see a large black-spotted dairy cow in the middle of our lane. In the opposite lane was a semi, coming right toward us. I pumped the brakes and spun the wheel hard to the right, praying silently to Saint Francis that we wouldn’t crash.
My prayer must have gone to Saint Francis’s voicemail.
We skidded around the cow, which had a very nonchalant look on its face, given the situation. The antilock-braking system kicked in and prevented the brakes from locking up and sending us ass over teacup, but it couldn’t prevent us from diving headfirst into the ditch.
The Little Beast rocketed up the opposite embankment. We tore through a barbed-wire fence like it was nothing more than party streamers, and then we were in a field. The car rocked back and forth over the uneven dirt, going slower and slower until finally rolling to a stop. That’s the last thing I remembered before blacking out.