Page 8 of The Cul-de-Sac War

Cassie’s thoughts must have been on par with her own, because the next thing Bree knew, Cassie’s voice was off speaker and booming in her ear. “Bree.”

Bree winced and pulled the phone away. “What?”

“Don’t do anything stupid. Just let the guy pass.”

A chant of “stupid, stupid” began in the background.

Bree squinted in the mirror. It was time for a dose of his own medicine. “Oh, I’m letting him pass.”

“No, you sound like you’re forming an evil plan. Use a normal voice. A nonmalicious voice. Let’s try it now. I am letting him pass.”

“I’m letting him pass.” The words held all the unyielding weight of Thor’s hammer.

“See? That’s exactly what I just told you not to sound like.”

With a quick, one-handed swerve, Bree stole between two parked cars in front of a two-story Colonial. The roar of the truck’s rusted-out exhaust pipe shook her car as it passed. She gripped the worn leather of the steering wheel, her hawk eyes now as focused on the truck as if it were her last meal.

“Don’t forget you have a dinner to get to,” Cassie said, snatching for a distraction.

Too late.

“Unbelievable.” Bree’s preying eyes locked on his bumper—or what she could see of it. As if tailing innocent vehicles and contributing to noise and earth pollution weren’t enough, the bumper was covered in outlandish, chauvinistic stickers. The kind that should’ve been illegal. The kind that made a person speed up to see what sort of woman could possibly sit in the passenger seat beside such a moron.

Bree’s blood pressure rose as her eyes moved from Then Satan said, “Let women drive” to Looking for your cat? Try under my tires.

Surely the police wouldn’t charge her if she rammed him. Surely they’d give her an underhanded fist bump and wish her on her merry way.

The truck began to ascend the hill.

“Bree, where are you now? What are you doing?” Cassie said.

Bree’s tires answered for her, squealing as she gunned it after his trailing black smoke.

The nice thing about her 1998 chipped green Subaru was exactly that—it was a 1998 chipped green Subaru. Car insurance? They practically paid her. The road took on new meaning in such vehicles, one being the overwhelming impression that life was just one big game of bumper cars.

“Please,” Cassie said on the other end of the line, “please tell me you aren’t silently doing your villainous monologue about the world being a game of bumper cars. Please.”

The old Ford diesel flew up the road toward her neighborhood. With her foot pressing the pedal to the floor, the Subaru bravely held on, huffing as it chugged up the hill. She tightened her grip, leaning forward until her nose nearly touched the wheel.

There? How does it feel? She eased back to make the turn into her neighborhood.

But just as her car broke off to give him space and make the turn, the truck turned onto her street.

Her street.

She jerked her car after him.

Standing along the sidewalk beside a hedge, her neighbor Mrs. Lewis tugged her dog leash close to her heart and watched the pair speed down the road. Bree gave a sheepish wave and ducked her head but kept on.

What was there to apologize for, anyway? She wasn’t the criminal here but the hero, chasing the man out of her neighborhood, seizing him by the collar and giving him the boot. Showing the inconsiderate hooligan exactly what it feels like to get pushed around.

They covered the length of the street quickly, rushing toward the cul-de-sac and its abrupt end. The truck flew by each house, the options for where it was going dropping by the second. There were only six, five, four houses left before it’d have to turn around—

The beast of a truck pulled into a driveway.

Bree barely managed to swerve in time.

At the same moment Bree hit the brake, her head whipped around to stare as she passed the parked truck. The world was moving in slow motion. Her mouth popping open and dangling like a codfish at the shock of being above water.