Page 16 of Main Event

The SUV changes lanes.

I change back on a whim.

The SUV changes back—with exactly the right delay. Not too fast. Not too slow. Professional.

I pick up my phone and call Luke.

He picks up on the second ring. Street sounds behind him—he’s still in the parking lot, I can tell by the sounds.

“Hey, baby—I’m just leaving, you want me to stop anywhere⁠—”

“I have a tail,” I say. My voice is steady. I’ve practiced steady. “Black SUV, two cars back. I’ve been watching it for six blocks. It’s not a coincidence.”

A silence. Then, a different tone. “Where are you?”

“Heading south on Peachtree. I just passed Collier.”

“I’m four minutes from Peachtree. Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t let them know you’ve made them.”

“Luke—”

“I’m already in the truck. Four minutes. Keep talking to me.”

I keep talking. I tell him the plate—partial, anyway. I can’t get the full number. Then I give him the full description of the SUV, what I can make out about the driver, and the distance to the following vehicle. He’s asking questions that are really just ways of keeping me on the line, which I understand and accept. Four minutes is a long time when someone is following you.

At two minutes, the SUV speeds up.

Not gradually. A deliberate decision—from following distance to closing distance in the space of a block.

“Luke. They’re moving closer,” I say.

“Andi—”

The impact comes from the right—a compact, dark car I never see because I’m watching the SUV. It hits the rear quarter panel with intent, and suddenly I’m sideways, fighting the wheel with both hands, the phone gone, the brace on my leg shifted into something wrong enough that my right leg won’t do what I need it to do. The shoulder is gone. A scream fills the air before I realize the shrill sound is coming from me. I’ve lost complete control of the car as it careens into the gas station lot, and I hit the concrete barrier hard enough to deploy the airbag, hard enough that everything turns white.

Then everything is very still.

LUKE

The call cuts out when I hear the impact.

Not the impact itself—the silence after it, the half-second before the phone hits whatever surface it hits. I know what that silence means.

I know the intersection she described. I know what’s between her and me. I drive through two red lights with the gas pedal pressed as hard as it’ll go, weaving through traffic and avoiding causing a crash myself.

The gas station appears on my left, visible from about a hundred yards—her car by the barrier, an airbag deployed, with white dust lingering in the air. Two vehicles have pulled in behind her. Two men are already out of the SUV, approaching her door with determined and efficient movements, as if they are carrying out a plan.

I pull across the lot entrance at an angle, and I’m out of the truck before it fully stops.

The first man has her door open. She’s still in the car—the airbag, the leg brace, the disorientation—and he has her arm, and he’s pulling, and I hear the sound she makes when her leg takes the wrong angle, and something tears loose in my chest that I have never felt before.

I cover the distance in four seconds.

He doesn’t hear me coming because he’s focused on her. I take him from behind, both hands, and I put him into the car door hard enough that the door swings and catches the second man across the face as he comes around the front of the vehicle. The first man goes down. The second man staggers.

Andi falls against me, and I put her behind me.

The second man is large—thirty pounds heavier than me, easy—and he’s recovered faster than the door-to-the-face should have allowed, which tells me he’s been hit before and trained to push through it. He comes at me with both hands wide, trying to clinch and use the size differential.