“Stop the car!” I shout.
“Uh, Lacee. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re being chased right now. Stopping the car isn’t really an option.”
I glance in the side mirror and see a black SUV barreling down the highway toward us. “Who are these men?”
“I promise I’ll explain everything.” He swerves around a car, almost hitting oncoming traffic. “Just maybe not right now.”
“I don’t even know who you are!” My hands go to my head. “This is what I get for kissing a complete stranger.”
“Leave the kiss out of this.” He swerves into traffic again, getting around another slow car. “The kiss didn’t do this.”
“I want out of this car!” I pull on the door handle, but it’s locked. My fingers fumble for the button that unlocks everything.
“Lacee, I need you to calm down.” A bullet hits the car's back window, shattering the glass, and I scramble even more to open my door. “Okay, okay! I see what I need to do here.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Park’s arm raise, and before I know what’s happening, he sticks the tip of a pen on my thigh and clicks the top. I feel a small pinprick.
“What are you doing?” My leg immediately goes dead.
“I drugged you. I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t calm down.” Park moves his hand back to the steering wheel.
“You’ve…got…to…be…kidding…me.” My words slur together, and my eyes turn groggy as I collapse into the side of the door.
TWENTY-FOUR
PARK
My foot presseshard against the gas pedal, and I swerve in and out of slow traffic. The black car does the same. My tires spin in the snow, and suddenly we’re drifting through all two interstate lanes, circling around and around. Lacee’s body falls sideways, and I grimace as her head hits my shoulder.
I gain control of the car, but now we’re facing the wrong way with the SUV speeding toward us. Its tires are whirling in the wet snow, drifting back and forth. I shift my car into reverse and start driving backward before our front bumpers hit.
I place my hand on the side of Lacee’s seat, looking over my shoulder so I can see where I’m going out the back window, but that position forces her head, which used to be leaning against my shoulder, to fall into my lap. Her forehead lands on my upper thigh, and I roll my eyes.
Oh, come on!
Shouldn’t her seatbelt be holding her in? But that’s when I notice she doesn’t have her seatbelt on. She must’ve forgotten to fasten it when we fled the restaurant.
This isnotgoing to work.
“Sorry about this position, Lacee. It’s not intentional.”
I take my eyes off the road and push her body away with the hand that’s not driving. But she just falls back on top of me. I’m fighting against the dead weight of her sleeping body as the car drifts from lane to lane in reverse.
I steal a glance at the black car. The man in the passenger seat holds a gun out the window and starts firing.
Oh, boy.
The first round of bullets misses us completely, probably because the car is swerving back and forth as I work to get Lacee off me.
I’m pushing on her shoulder, trying to keep heroutof my lap, when a bullet shoots through the front window and lodges into her headrest.
“On second thought, maybe you won’t care that your head is resting in my lap if it means keeping you alive.”
I forget about getting her body off of me and shift the car into drive just as I turn hard on the steering wheel. We spin around, sending Lacee’s body back into her own seat.
We’re facing forward now. There’s an overpass on my left. I jerk the wheel hard, pointing the car toward the two pillars holding up the bridge. It’s going to be a tight fit, but if any car can do it, it’s the tiny rental car.
The man in the black car fires another round of shots at us just as we pass through the two pillars. There’s not an inch to spare on either side. The tires plow through the thick snow, hitting a bit of a jump as we cross over to the other side of the interstate. Both our bodies lift into the air, and I grab Lacee by the arm, keeping her from smacking into the front dash. We drop back into our seats as the car lands on the road again.
