Page 87 of Vicious Temptation

“Fuck. Me.”

Brake lights stretch ahead for nearly two blocks, and the sirens behind me are growing louder.

I scan the street for anything I can use and spot a delivery truck pulling away from the curb half a block ahead. There’s just enough room to squeeze through beside it.

Cutting across the lane, I make it around the truck before the gap closes again. The cruiser behind me isn’t as lucky. He gets trapped between the truck and a line of cars as horns erupt around him.

“That’s embarrassing,” I say with a laugh.

I take another turn and finally get a clear stretch of road…for about five fucking seconds.

Red and blue lights appear at the next intersection, followed by another cruiser coming up fast from behind.

“How many of you fuckers are working tonight?”

The one ahead slows in the middle of the intersection, forcing me to choose between left and right.

I go left.

He moves left.

I cut right.

He jerks back the other way, but he commits too late.

“Too slow.”

I shoot past his front bumper and hear another order through the speaker.

“Stop the car and pull over!”

The command hits a nerve. I’ve never been particularly good at doing what I’m told.

Two nights ago, another cop sat on my couch, eating my pizza as I trauma dumped. He held Papá’s ring in his hand and looked at me without a trace of judgment.

Now I’m running from men who wear the same badge, and I almost laugh at the fucking irony.

Still want to be my friend, Braga?

I bite the inside of my cheek and try to push the thought away before I can decide which answer bothers me more, but it stays with me until another cruiser appears in my rearview mirror, forcing my attention back to the road.

I know I need to get off the city streets. There are too many intersections and too many places for them to cut me off. The highway entrance is coming up on my right. If I can reach it before they close it, I’ll finally have room for the GT-R to do what she was built to do.

I check the mirror, judge the distance to the cruiser behind me, then take the ramp.

His lights follow.

“Come on, baby,” I mutter, pressing the accelerator harder. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The ramp curves ahead, and I take it fast, holding my car tight to the inside before the highway opens in front of me.

Finally.

I press the gas pedal to the floor. The GT-R surges forward, and the cruiser behind me starts to lose ground. His lights shrink in my mirror as I move through lighter traffic, taking every opening I can without forcing anyone else off the road.

“There you go, baby.”

The speedometer keeps climbing, and for the first time since this started, I finally have room to breathe. No intersections for them to block or parked cars squeezing me into narrow streets, just the open road and a cop behind me who picked the wrong fucking car to chase.