Once I got going, it was easy, but I cursed under my breath every time I hit a stop sign because it meant starting the process all over again. I hadn’t even made it out of town when the rain started to fall. That started a whole new thing of trying to figure out how to turn the windshield wipers on.
I was fiddling with the switch, trying to adjust the speed, when I realized I was about to run a stop sign. Panicked, I slammed on the brakes but not the clutch. The car came to a sudden halt. At the same time, I killed the engine, and it jumped forward.
“Why does anyone want a stupid stick shift car?” I yelled, hitting the steering wheel. The excitement of stealing the car, the anger, and the betrayal were all blending together, slamming my heart against my chest. My stomach was in knots, and there was a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow over. Being on a country road, stopped at the four-way before hitting the two-lane highway, I let my head fall back against the headrest. My eyes closed, and I took a deep breath.
“What the hell am I doing?” I opened my eyes and looked around. “Alex is going to kill me for stealing his car.”
Panic started to rise.
“And where the hell am I even going to go? I have no one.” I looked up at the car’s ceiling, but I was really talking to my dad. I laughed at myself and looked down at my lap.
“Let’s be honest, you were a great dad, but you weren’t the best human on the planet. You’re probably down there rather than up there.” I chuckled at how stupid I was being, but the chuckle turned to a laugh, and the laugh turned into sobs.
I leaned forward, resting my head on the steering wheel as a scream ripped from my lips. Pulling back, I hit the steering wheel again and again out of frustration. More tears. Morescreams. More hits to an inanimate object that couldn’t share in my pain.
Did it make me feel better?
I guess so. It let out enough pent-up energy that I could dry my eyes and focus on getting the car going again. I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I wasn’t going back. Alex could take his car and shove it up his ass, but he’d have to find it first, and that caused a smile to tug at the corners of my mouth.
Chapter 2
Oliver
Idarted my eyes back and forth between the rearview mirror and the road in front of me. The memory of the sound of the police sirens was so loud that I could still hear them echoing in my ears despite being the only car on the desolate two-lane highway in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere.
“Make a U-Turn,” the stupid ass GPS told me over the car’s speakers.
“Absolutely not.” I jabbed my index finger at the screen on the dashboard. It wasn’t responding to voice command, and the screen was completely frozen. It still showed the car in the parking lot of Mario’s Fine Italian Restaurant, which was a good forty-five minutes away by this point.
“Make a U-Turn,” it repeated in that fucking nasally ass computer voice.
“Fuck off.” I smacked the screen, hoping a wire had been knocked loose, but that only made the issue worse.
“Make a U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U…” the robot voice started to skip.
“Fucking piece of shit.” I pulled my fist back and punched the screen. It cracked, flickered, and went black, but the voice didn’t stop.
“I’m such a dumbass,” I muttered, realizing that I could just turn the volume down and I wouldn’t have to hear it anymore.
Sighing, I turned the volume all the way down this time, and the interior of the car went silent. Finally, I could focus on driving rather than arguing with a damn robot.
I checked the rearview mirror again and saw nothing. I let up on the gas, and the car slowed from a dangerous speed down to something that wouldn’t draw attention my way. Not that the car alone didn’t do that. Who the fuck steals a midnight blue Aston Martin? Don’t get me wrong, the car was sexy as fuck with its sleek body, dark color, leather seats, and convertible top, but the built-in GPS made it nearly impossible to get away with.
It wasn’t like one of the many cars that I could easily rip the GPS out of, either. It was in a spot that made removing it as delicate as open heart surgery, and well, the skipping robot voice that had been driving me crazy proved it. I didn’t know if the signal jamming device was working or if I fucked it up when I tried ripping out the GPS to begin with. Either way, I needed to deliver the car and get away from it sooner rather than later.
My paranoia paused and then doubled the second I caught sight of a pair of headlights a mile or so up the two-lane highway. I leaned forward in my seat and squinted to try to get a better idea of what kind of vehicle it was.
Was it a police car?
Panic flared in my chest, but my better judgment pushed it down. From the rectangular shape and the yellow lights, I knew it had to be an older vehicle, and based on how close they were to the road, I knew it couldn’t have been anything other than a car. There was no way that vehicle was a police car, but I kept one hand tight on the wheel regardless, ready to kick it down if need be.
As I got closer and closer to the car speeding toward me, I realized I was right. It wasn’t a police car. It was a blacked-out, late-nineties model Mustang, and the driver looked like they were intoxicated in some way. The car was weaving back and forth between the edge of the road and the center line, as if it were impossible to drive straight.
Either there was a large bump in the road, or the driver didn’t know how to shift gears properly, because I watched the lights bounce up and down, signaling a rough ride.
We drove closer to one another, and just before we met, something darted into the road from the ditch on the far side. It was small and all black. I didn’t get a good view of it, though, because the driver of the Mustang jerked the wheel to try to avoid hitting the animal.
The only problem was that they jerked the wheel toward me. I didn’t have time to think. I didn’t even have time to hit the brakes. All I could do was twist the wheel of the car I was driving and let off the gas as I tried to get out of their path. I went careening off the road about twenty feet into a grassy embankment. I tried to stomp on the brakes, but the car stopped before I could, crashing into an old tree along the edge of a forest.
