He peeled onto Farnam without waiting for the light to change and uncaring of all of the rest of traffic. Horns blared as he wildly weaved through mid-morning traffic. He roared through red lights, barely missing the cars headed in different directions than us.
I held my breath and braced myself for impact. He swung right and then left, continuing to change up our direction. He glanced nervously in the rearview mirror and I craned my neck over my shoulder to see if I could make out anyone following us.
Sure enough, a block behind us was another vehicle gunning it through the cluttered traffic we left in our wake.
At the next stoplight we got stuck behind a delivery truck. Ryder tried to swerve around it, but a minivan waited for us on the other side. The light took forever to turn and all the while I watched Nix in the side mirror.
I wasn’t sure who was driving his SUV, but he had no problem knocking into cars and running them off the road to get us.
The light turned green, but we had nowhere to go while traffic slowly moved forward. By the time Ryder could press significantly on the gas, Nix was right beside us.
There was a gigante driving and more hanging out in the backseat. Nix leaned out of the passenger side window, shouting curses at me. Ryder growled out his own fowl words and rammed over the curb, onto the sidewalk.
We were close enough to the cross street that he only had to cut across the corner and bounce us back to the road, but it seemed to take forever with Nix so close. I struggled to get my seatbelt on while I was thrown all around the cab from Ryder’s chaotic driving.
Back on the road, we inched out just before Nix turned the corner.
We still hadn’t lost them.
“They have guns,” I gasped.
I could see the gigantes dangling out of their windows, semi-automatic guns planted in their heavy hands. I wanted to scream and cry and panic, but I forced my mouth and mind into submission for Ryder’s sake. He was doing everything he could to get us out of here alive. I couldn’t get in his way.
“Ryder,” I pleaded.
“Red,I’m going to get us out of here,” he swore.
I believed him. I had to.
“Oh, shit!” He jerked to the left, barely missing a biker pedaling up a steep incline. He squeezed the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white, but he got back in control of the Bronco.
My heart beat so harshly in my chest it was nearly the only sound that I could hear.
Where would Nix take me if he caught me?
What would he do to me?
What would he do to me?
I felt that stirring of power again. I felt it pulse through me, raging against my fear. There wasn’t water around, so there was no catalyst to bring it out of me. But it was there under my skin, swirling in my blood, beating with my heart.
Nix’s SUV rammed into our bumper and I finally did scream. Ryder let out a string of curse words and stomped harder on the gas. The engine vroomed like a racecar, eating up the road like it had been made for this.
When the SUV rammed us again, my stomach roiled ominously and I felt close to a heart attack. Gunshots popped in the air, punctuating our desperate escape, but nothing hit the car. I wondered if they were afraid to kill me.
I had no other explanation for why they didn’t shoot directly at the Bronco.
Another scream ripped from my throat when Ryder took a sudden, sharp right going way too fast. He handled the wheel as best as he could, but we still slid and fishtailed and rocked back and forth until Ryder wrestled the Bronco back under control.
Just when I thought I could breathe again, he did the same thing going left and then again going left again.
We’d come to a section of town that was made of mostly one-way roads. We ended up going the wrong way down one of the busier streets and cars blared their horns at as us we tried not to hit them.
Ryder dodged them at first, swerving right and jerking the Bronco left again. But there was too much traffic and they couldn’t get out of our way fast enough. In the side mirror, I watched two of the cars that had just narrowly missed hitting us head on, spin out before slamming into each other.
They skidded to a stop in the middle of the road only to have more traffic bang into them. Tires screeched, metal screamed and all out mayhem was born as the two cars caused a massive pile-up that reached from one side of the road to the other.
I felt awful for causing the chaos.
