She gripped the wheel purposely, changed gear, and pushed the gas, sending them flying forward faster and more wildly than they had before.
They were pinned against the back of their seats as Mercedes sped toward the edge of where the parklands met the river. T.B. so close, he was nearly touching their bumper.
Mercedes squinted and braced as she tugged to the left suddenly where they met with a slight grass hill. The wheels left the ground and the car glided through the open air, crystallized waters passing beneath them. They lingered mid-air over the waters for what felt like an eternity, pushing closer and closer to the riverbank ground.
Only making it by an inch, the purple Camaro settled with a bang, hitting Adam and Mercedes’s faces on the dash upon landing. Mercedes leveled off and drove calmly away. Why did she ever think she couldn’t do this? She was made for this.
She watched Adam wipe the blood from his cut lip and smiled as she felt the hot sting of blood dripping from a cut on her head. She checked her rearview mirror to see T.B.’s car smoking and crumpled on the bank of the river, half of it slipping into the water. They had lost him. She had won. She’d beaten the unbeatable and reconfirmed that she was, in fact, still the best driver in the whole of Ridge City.
“Fuck. Yes,” she said in low tone. “Take that, motherfucker!”
“I never doubted you for a second, baby,” Adam said, grinning like a lovesick fool.
“I know,” she said, shaking her head but pressing her lips tight to avoid smiling as bright as she felt inside.
“Still the best fucking driver in Ridge City, baby.”
“Damn right,” Mercedes smirked.
* * *
JANUARY 1986
The bullet shattered the blue glass bottle. Adam and Paul ducked to avoid the raining spray of glass off the roof of Paul’s trailer.
“Fucking good shot,” Paul said, handing Adam more ammunition.
Adam shot again, this time at green bottles, and in several firework-like explosions, they shattered, too. Ducking again, Adam and Paul crouched into the light brown dirt as it rained green glass.
“What’s the verdict? You gonna leave the lot?” Paul asked, standing to brush the dust from his pants.
“Not yet,” Adam said. “Don’t want to leave this little trailer, I love it too much.”
“Thought you wanted somewhere bigger now that you’re a fucking drug lord,” Paul said, ducking again as it rained red glass.
“I do have my sights set on something a little bigger,” Adam grinned.
“What have you got in mind?”
Adam checked his surroundings to be sure they were alone. He aimed again, his eyes settling on the target. “I want Dorian Blake.”
“You want fucking what now–”
Adam fired his gun, this time missing and hitting an electrical wire in the space behind the trailer, sending sparks into the air, though neither of them flinched.
“Dorian Blake.” Adam smiled and moved to sit in a plastic lawn chair, taking a towel from the table and wiping the sweat from his face. He knew Paul wouldn’t like it. He didn’t have to. He just had to agree.
“I fucking heard you, I just thought you might want the opportunity to take that back,” Paul said.
Adam chuckled.
“God. You told the others this yet?”
“They don’t need to know, right now it’s just a pipe dream,” Adam admitted, holding his palm as a visor against the shining sun.
“You’re talking about starting a war here, Adam,” Paul said. “And for what? Why Dorian Blake and not Ricardo Cortez?”
“You don’t really expect me to dignify that with an answer, do you?”
