I can see the driver now—a shaved head, eyes fixed forward. The passenger leans halfway out the window, gun raised.
Another shot.
The bullet ricochets off the guardrail beside me.
Enough.
I drop a gear and slam the accelerator to the floor. My car surges forward, then I jerk the wheel sharply and brake.
They’re too close to react.
Their sedan swerves violently to avoid rear-ending me. Tires lose traction.
The car fishtails.
For a moment it looks like they’ll recover.
Then they slam sideways into the guardrail with a violent crunch of metal.
The sound echoes across the empty roadway.
I don’t stop.
I keep driving another block before pulling into a dark service road and killing the headlights. My pulse is steady now, the adrenaline fading into cold calculation.
They’ll crawl out of that wreck if they’re lucky. And if they’re smart, they’ll disappear before I circle back.
Because whoever sent them just made a serious mistake.
I pull my phone from the console and dial a number from memory. It rings once.
“Ilya,” I say calmly when he answers.
“What happened?” he asks immediately.
“Someone just tried to kill me.”
A pause. Then his voice drops into the same dangerous register mine has. “Who?”
I stare back toward the roadway where the wrecked sedan sits smoking in the distance. “That,” I say, “is exactly what we’re about to find out.”
But even as the anger burns through me, another thought cuts through the haze.
Zatanna.
The engine ticks as it cools, the night settling heavy around the car. The wrecked sedan sits crooked against the guardrail a block back, one headlight flickering like it’s dying slowly.
I should leave.
Every instinct I have says the same thing. Move. Don’t stay in one place. Don’t wait for whoever sent them to realize their mistake and send more.
But instead, I’m sitting here with my phone in my hand.
Zatanna’s name on the screen.
I stare at it for a second, annoyed with myself.What the hell am I doing?
She should be home by now. Safe in her tiny apartment somewhere in this city, far away from whatever mess just tried to take my head off. The last thing she needs is a call from me right now. If anything, I should be driving in the opposite direction, disappearing until I figure out who sent those idiots.
