She wasn't really paying attention to other traffic unless it was somebody she had to pass on the two-lane road, or a car she didn't want to demolish coming the other way. So when the black Bonneville showed up in her rearview mirror, she noted it and downshifted to set up for the next corner. The Bonneville moved closer. Timmie saw a sign for the Herman wineries and thought about taking Meghan on a Katy Trail bike ride and stopping over. She heard Willie Nelson on the radio and turned it up even louder, the perfect companion for a back road. She'd just noticed that she had a long clear ribbon of road ahead when something smacked into her car.
"Son of a..."
Cyrano lurched, shuddered, swerved. Timmie tightened her hold on the wheel and lifted her foot off the pedals just long enough to see what had happened.
The Bonneville had hit her, right in the ass. Timmie thought of stopping. Getting out and yelling at the jerk. She thought of slowing and just letting him pass if he was so bent on it.
He wasn't. She realized that in the split second before the Bonneville rammed her again. Harder. Smack against the right rear fender so she'd swerve right off the road down toward the river.
Her adrenals kicked in like afterburners. "Shit!"
It took a little maneuvering, but she regained control and accelerated. Timmie tried hard to see into the car, but its windows were tinted. A guy, she figured, because most women didn't handle cars like that. Which was probably why this guy thought he could just take her out in the middle of the afternoon on a country road. He probably figured he had a nurse in an old French car, what could it take? One or two good hits, she'd be over the edge.
And then what?
Which was when it hit her that he very possibly wanted her dead. He certainly wanted her disabled. He'd backed the Bonneville away a bit. For another try, Timmie realized suddenly when she heard the growl of a couple hundred horses revving up. The son of a bitch really was trying to run her off the road.
It made her smile. The guy had picked the wrong road and the wrong girl. If this had been a straightaway, she wouldn't have stood a chance. That car had at least a hundred horses on her. It was newer, and it was sure as hell heavier. But this stretch of Highway 94 was nothing but curves and hills, which made the driving just as important as the horsepower. And if there was one thing Timmie knew after besting just about every canyon road and interstate in Los Angeles County, it was how to drive.
"You want me, asshole," she said, sucking in a breath and spitting on her stick-shift hand, "you come get me."
With an apology to Cyrano's old engine, Timmie slammed him into second and took off. Cyrano screamed like an outraged woman. The road ahead bent on itself like a frying snake. Howling with the kind of sheer, stupid glee she hadn't felt in months, Timmie took it like a rocket. Swooping over the hills, she tracked across both lanes as she set up the apex of each corner to make its cleanest turn, one hand on the wheel, one on the stick shift, her right foot rocking constantly between brake and gas as she double-clutched into each turn and then eased up to let her gas foot have the fun along another stretch of clear road.
She kept her focus on the road ahead rather than the road behind. Unless this guy was road-race trained, he wouldn't keep up with her. But she didn't want to run down some unsuspecting grandma just trying to get to her daughter's. And the way the hills folded up against one another, it was tough to judge too far, especially doing seventy.
The Bonneville fought valiantly against gravity. Its wheels screamed. Timmie thought she could see the brakes smoke on more than one turn. She heard more than one squeal of protest from overdriven tires. Which meant, she figured, that the guy driving wasn't the cop who'd gone after Murphy. Cops drove better than that. A cop would at least have made it a tight contest.
Timmie spent a millisecond too long assessing her pursuer, missed her line around a tight turn by inches and almost ended up on two wheels, saving herself with a little heel-toe action as she double-clutched down into a tight S turn that had a twenty-mile-an-hour warning sign on it. Timmie took it at fifty.
She was doing eighty when she passed the You Are Leaving St. Charles County sign. The road leveled out for a bit and Timmie downshifted for better acceleration. She was going to lose ground here, and she knew it.
So did the Bonneville. Timmie could hear that engine winding out. She saw the next curve coming, hoped it would be soon enough, knew that if this guy smacked her at this speed she wouldn't come to earth till she hit the far bank of the river.
He was inching up. Timmie found herself leaning forward, as if she could get a few more mph just by gravity. The curve was close, closer, beckoning like a mirage in a terrifying desert. Timmie's heart was knocking against her chest like every poor, overworked piston in her engine. But she was going to make it. She could get to the next set of curves and keep going, because there was a town nearby. People. Witnesses this guy didn't want. She reached for the stick shift and stomped her foot on the clutch, and knew the guy behind her had lost.
Timmie had forgotten one important thing. She hadn't driven in Missouri in over ten years. In that time, she'd never had to deal with ice on the road. It was one o'clock in the afternoon on a sunny day. The temperature still hovered at freezing, though, and the hills to the north kept the sun off the road. Timmie didn't even see the patch of black ice she hit. She just suddenly found herself airborne, with a panoramic view of the Missouri River out her windshield, and knew she was screwed.
Chapter 16
Thank God for seat belts. It was about the only coherent thought Timmie had for about fifteen minutes as she stared blankly out her front window into the bushes that had ended up catching her. She would have been pavement pizza if she hadn't been strapped in. As it was, she was hanging from the shoulder strap like a parachutist who hit a tree. Her head hurt, her chest hurt, and her hands, still wrapped around the wheel as if holding her in the car, felt as if they'd shattered on impact.
Amazing. She could still see the river, not more than twenty yards off. Rolling, rolling... no, that was the Mississippi. Besides, it wasn't rolling at all. She'd sailed right to the edge of some farmer's pond. Oh, well. Maybe that was the farmer himself she heard trying to get into her car.
He wasn't going to have any luck. The door was locked. Another legacy of life in the fast lane. Timmie locked her car doors if she was going to sit in her driveway to think.
Now the person was tapping, scraping around the car as if trying to find a better way to get in. Timmie sighed. She guessed she was going to have to move. She tried to reach around for the seat-belt release and couldn't. Something was in her way. Besides, her shoulder hurt when she stretched.