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That’s when the driver in the station wagon spots me. Or, I think so, because we’re instantly going sixty in a forty and he’s flooring it to Vinewood.
I’m running out of road. He’s going to T-bone right into that intersection with Minnetonka and Vine. I punch it, coming right up on his tail.
Burke answers, but my phone has slid to the floor. “Burke, I’ve got him! We’re on Minnetonka—”
Station wagon has hit the stop sign and taken a right, screeching out in front of an oncoming car.
The car hits the brakes, and barely misses me as I lay on the horn to alert any other oncoming cars, and follow.
My heart is outside my body. But we have a half-mile before he hits Highway 7, and I’m going to stop him before he flies out into the two-lane highway and kills people.
He’s screaming down the two lane road. But I have a Camaro. Time is not going to win this round.
Hassan’s shooters are going down.
They pass Deep Haven Elementary, and I know there’s a curve coming up, so I get on their tail, ready to gas it.
A car in the left lane whips by, and then I floor it. I’m beside them with a clean stretch of road spooling out ahead of me.
I don’t want to bang up the Camaro. But what choice do I have? The highway appears ahead of me, cars stopped at the light, and to the right, I spot a line of vehicles merging into the side road, coming out of a church.
A wedding. That fact tickles something deep in my brain, but I don’t have time, because the wagon isn’t slowing down, and someone is going to die.
It might be me. But right now, all I’m thinking about is Eve, and the fact that losing her mother might be the one thing she doesn’t recover from.
And I don’t care what Booker, or my Dad said.
I can’t be here and not try. I love Eve enough to keep her from walking through all that pain of waiting for justice.
It’s all I have to give her, after everything I did to her—or will do to her.
I yank the wheel to the right and hit the gas, slamming into the front of the station wagon. I brace myself and stay the course.
We are careening for the ditch. A car pulls out fifty feet in front of us.
I hit the brakes.
The force throws me forward—and I thank Eve for her relentless pursuit to make me a better, safer, man, because instinct has hooked me into my seatbelt as the two of us—the wagon and the Camaro—spin.
The wagon jerks around, taking me with it. The force rips me free of the pavement and my car takes to the air.
We—my car and I—land, roll and I’m conscious for most of it. When we shudder to a stop, we are wheels side down.
I’m gulping breaths, my heart nowhere near my body. But I’m alive.
My Camaro, not so much. The car is wheezing, still trying to breathe, wedged against a tree in the ditch.
Sorry, sweetheart.
Sirens scream in the background.
I press my hands to my chest, and yes, I am intact, although I’ll be bruised by the belt. Freeing myself, I try the door—yeah, that’s not happening. The roof is dented, but the passenger door opens, and I kick it wider. I dive out, onto all fours, crawling.
“Are you okay?”
The voice makes me look up, and for a second, I’m not sure where I am. Because the man is sturdy, with military short, gray-brown hair, and blue eyes, and he’s wearing a concern on his face that I recognize from before.
“A
