Page 96 of Forever Dark
“Thank you.”
The man drove on, still looking back in his mirror.
Selena headed for her car.“If they took Nine, they’re heading south.”
Connor got in his SUV.“They won’t like us catching up either way.”
The engines turned over almost in unison.
They were less than ten minutes out when Connor’s voice hit the radio again.
“Got visual.”
Selena came over the rise and saw it.
Croft’s bus ran ahead on the rural highway like a moving chapel, cream sides flashing in the flat light.Two escort vehicles bracketed it.Black SUV in front left.Beige sedan on the right rear quarter.Both positioned just close enough to make a statement.
“I wonder if that’s Leon’s SUV,” Selena said.
Connor’s SUV surged ahead of her, closing the distance from behind.“This flock has more goons than they need.What’s going on here?”
“Try the left.I’ll take the right.”
The road narrowed between shallow ditches and telephone poles.Open pasture lay on one side, soybean fields on the other.No shoulder worth using.Selena accelerated, bringing her car up alongside the beige sedan.Its driver glanced over once and immediately drifted wide, forcing her toward the line.
“Come on,” she muttered.
Connor tried the other flank.The black SUV moved to block him, too, edging across the center until oncoming traffic forced it back.The bus kept going, steady and unhurried, as if the entire convoy had rehearsed this.
Connor came over the radio.“They’re boxing us.”
“I noticed.”
“State line’s not far if they keep west.”
“I noticed that, too.”The radio buzzed.
The sedan on Selena’s side tapped its brakes, then surged, then tapped again.Amateur intimidation.Still dangerous enough to kill somebody.She dropped back half a length, then cut outward the instant the road widened near a farm access lane.Tires bit loose stones and dust on the road.The rental fishtailed once.Selena corrected, heart punching against her ribs, and came up nearly even with the sedan’s back door.
The driver stared straight ahead now.
Connor saw the opening and jammed his SUV through on the left.For a second both he and Selena were abreast of the escort vehicles, the bus looming ahead between them.Then everything went wrong at once.
A civilian hatchback pulled out from a side road ahead, saw the chaos too late, and swerved hard.The black SUV clipped it with the rear corner.Metal screamed.The hatchback spun, left the road, and slammed broadside into a shallow culvert wall with a burst of dirt and shattered glass.
Selena’s stomach dropped.
For one fractured instant the present split open and she saw another road, another burst of impact, another impossible second when a car had careened outside her home years ago into a woman and nothing in her life had been the same afterward.Flash of headlights.Shouting.A body on the road.The helpless animal certainty that whatever came next would be worse.
Then the road snapped back into focus.
The hatchback sat crooked in the ditch, steam already leaking from the hood.
Selena grabbed the radio.“We’ve got a car on the side of the road.Possible injuries.Need ambulance and fire service now.”
Connor’s voice came back sharp.“You stopping?”
Her hands clenched the wheel.The bus was pulling away.It was an impossible choice.
