“Bo. You close?”
“Not exactly,” I said, watching as the five bikes spread into a fan, boxing us in from both sides. “We got a situation.”
Jo yanked the wheel hard left, skirting the double yellow. The truck lurched, and my shoulder hit the window, the seatbelt cutting into my collarbone.
“We’re being followed,” I spat, “by Harley and his entire fucking circus. They’re trying to box us in.”
There was a pause on the line, then the sound of Knox yelling for Ransom and Quiad. “Where are you?”
“Headed toward the river turnoff. They’re right on us—” I broke off as one of the bikes surged forward, riding the shoulder. Jo floored it, and the engine howled.
“We’ll be there,” Knox said, voice gone hard. “Stay alive.”
He hung up.
Jo glanced over, and for a second I thought I saw a flicker of worry in his eyes, but it was gone before I could read it. “How many?”
“Five,” I said, “but only three look like they know how to ride.”
He grunted. “That’s enough.”
The first time Harley tried to edge us off the road, he came in on the left, inches from the truck, the skull helmet grinning right at me through the window.
Jo drifted into his lane, forcing the bike into the soft dirt at the edge, but Harley didn’t even flinch. He matched us move for move, like he was daring us to blink first.
I could see his eyes, pale and bright, even through the tint of the visor. He raised one finger—middle, obviously—and gestured up, like “faster, bitch,” as if he could muscle us into a crash by willpower alone.
Jo smiled, real slow. Then he hit the “FLOOD” toggle.
Four giant off-road lights mounted on the roof snapped on at once, blasting the bikers with a wall of white. I heard the engines stutter behind us, the whine of a rev limiter as at least one of the bikes got spooked and dropped back.
But Harley stayed right there, inches from the mirror, one hand steady on the bar, the other now flipping a small black object in his palm.
“What the fuck is that?” I said.
Jo didn’t answer. Instead, he floored the gas and aimed for the next curve, which happened to be a sharp S-turn with nothing but a strip of gravel between the road and a stand of pines. The truck hit the curve at twice the posted speed, and the G-force slammed me against the door so hard my teeth rattled.
Behind us, I heard the distinct, satisfying scrape of metal on asphalt as one of the bikes lost control and slid out, sparks flaring in the dusk. The rider tumbled into the ditch, but the rest kept coming, even more pissed than before.
I tried to breathe, but the air was all engine noise and panic.
“They’re not backing off,” I managed.
“They won’t,” Jo said, eyes locked on the road. “They want you to see it coming.”
The next mile was a blur—bikes darting in and out, Jo threading the truck through the curves like he’d memorized every inch of the county. He didn’t say a word, just kept one hand tight at ten o’clock, the other hovering near the gearshift.
Harley made another move, this time coming up on the right. I saw him reach for the thing on his belt, and suddenly it was in his hand—a length of thick, rusty chain. He swung it in a lazycircle, then let it snap against the side of the truck, the bang so loud it felt like the metal had gone straight through my bones.
Jo didn’t flinch, just leaned on the horn, the sound so deep it sent a tremor through the dash. He pulled the wheel hard right, and for a second we were airborne, all four tires skimming the ground as we hit a blind rise and cleared the shoulder.
The truck landed, and I lost my stomach somewhere in the footwell.
“Shit, shit, shit—” I clung to the dash, sweat running down my back.
Then Jo cut left, aimed straight for a side road barely wider than the truck itself. He killed the lights, banking us into darkness, the only illumination coming from the moon and the headlights of the bikes behind us.
Two of the bikers tried to follow, but the third clipped the turn too fast and ate it hard, bike and rider spinning off into the brush with a shriek.
