I want to ask him why. Why he kept a bolthole in Ireland when he was supposed to be gone for good? What he was planning. What he thought he’d need to come back to.
But I don’t. Because the answer is probably the same as the reason he drove straight from the airport tonight instead of calling. Jason doesn’t trust phones. Doesn’t trust distance. Doesn’t trust anything he can’t verify with his own eyes.
Neither do I. Not anymore.
The driver accelerates. The engine climbs, and the road blurs past, and I watch the speedometer needle push past a hundred and twenty.
“Ease off,” I tell him. “We don’t need to attract attention.”
He doesn’t ease off. If anything, the car goes faster.
Jason straightens in his seat. His hand moves to his weapon.
“What are you doing?” he says to the driver.
No response. The car surges forward. The lead vehicle’s taillights are getting smaller. We’re pulling away from the convoy.
“Hey.” Jason’s voice sharpens. “I said what are you doing? Slow the fuck down.”
The driver’s hands are locked on the wheel. His knuckles white. He doesn’t look at Jason. Doesn’t acknowledge the question.
Everything in me goes cold.
“Stop the car,” I say.
Nothing.
The speedometer is past one-thirty now. The hedgerows are a solid wall of black on either side, and the road is too narrow for this speed. One wrong turn and we’re through a fence and into a field.
Jason pulls his gun and puts it against the driver’s temple.
“Stop the fucking car.”
The driver floors it.
The engine screams. The car leaps forward so hard Aoife is thrown against me, and I brace my arm across her chest, pinning her to the seat. Jason is shouting something, but I can’t hear it over the engine because the driver has the accelerator buried and we’re doing a hundred and fifty on a road built for sixty.
I reach for the door. If I can get it open, get Aoife out, even at this speed, it’s better than whatever’s coming.
Then I see it. In the rear window. A light. Moving fast. Faster than anything on the ground.
Trailing fire.
I grab Aoife. Both arms around her. Pull her down into the footwell and cover her body with mine. Her hair is against my mouth, and I’m holding her so tight I can feel her heartbeat through her ribs.
The missile hits the rear of the car.
The sound isn’t a sound. It’s pressure. A fist made of air that compresses my skull and my chest and my spine into a single point of white. The back of the car lifts. I feel it happen, the entire rear axle coming off the road, and then the rotation starts. Slow at first. Almost gentle. Like the car is deciding which way to fall.
It decides.
The roof hits the road. The windshield implodes. Glass everywhere, in my hair, in my mouth, in the gap between my arms where Aoife’s face is pressed against my chest. The car slides on its roof for what feels like forever, metal shrieking against tarmac, sparks pouring through the shattered windows.
We flip again. Sideways this time. My shoulder hits the door frame, and the impact sends a bolt of pain so bright I lose my vision for a second. Aoife’s body slams against mine, and I hold on to her. I hold on because if I let go, she goes through the window, and she’s gone.
The car comes to rest on its side. Driver’s side down. Passenger side up.
For a moment, nothing. Just the tick of cooling metal and the high-pitched whine in my ears and my own breathing, fast and ragged and wrong.
