Not one of them could have expected an a-hole driving a combination mega lorry and construction-sized cement mixer to opt for committing mass murder – even though he would die pulling it off.
O’Reilly had managed a hair-raising but successful one-eighty through oncoming traffic and they’d ended up heading in the right direction … before the mammoth mixer turned suicidal.
From the back seat, craned forward to see between O’Reilly and Lamb, Tony felt his mouth open but the only noise he heard was the wild, grinding howl of the mud-covered monster lurching across the path of the Volvo no more than a hundred and fifty yards ahead.
‘Back up,’ Lamb yelled. ‘Back up!’
He was, Tony realized, shouting to the lorry driver, not O’Reilly. The colors of other vehicles spun around them, running together before his eyes. A steady blare of horns drummed amid the shrieking of tires that weren’t grabbing anything but ice.
O’Reilly cranked the steering wheel left, as hard left as it would go, and the Volvo shuddered, slid, found some traction and leaped inches from the road to slam into a bank. They roared upward, O’Reilly pumping the brakes and fighting for control.
They stopped.
Tony fell backward against the seat. His father didn’t make a sound. In the front seat, Lamb filled any lull with colorful language mostly unintelligible to Tony.
He started to open his door.
‘Stay where you are,’ O’Reilly snapped. ‘We need to move. Now.’
Miraculously, the Volvo made a smooth descent to the roadway – only to be confronted by the maniac equipment driver who waved his arms in front of them until they stopped.
‘Not now,’ O’Reilly hissed. He told Lamb to, ‘Give the fool a card and warn him off.’
They were already moving again when Lamb rolled down the window and a scrawny man covered with cement dust from the top of his Mohawk to the steel caps of his Doc Martens grabbed the open rim and stuck his head inside the car.
‘Shite,’ said O’Reilly the Irishman, braking again. ‘Take our number and call it in, son. We’ll deal with you later. And get out of our way.’
The man pointed back to his cab and yelled, ‘The police are for emergencies, right? My missus is dying in there.’