There’s no time.
She looks for the switch to open the huge garage door. Her plan is a simple one. Oleg Ragoravich has a car collection. When he offered her a joyride, he showed her that he keeps the keys in a certain car.
So that’s the plan. Get the showroom door open. Get in a vehicle. Drive out.
She finds the switch. The door is two stories high. It grudgingly starts to part like the Red Sea. It makes a lot of noise. It moves too slowly. Maggie stays on the move. She knows that black-suited men will be on her any second.
A voice yells out something in Russian.
Probably telling her not to move. She turns and sees the black-suited man aiming the gun at her. Her mind whirs, searching for a solution — but in the midst of the whirring, she notices something interesting.
The black-suited man doesn’t fire right away.
Why? CinderBlock fired. This guy fired too when she was in the glass walkway.
Why isn’t he firing now?
And then the answer comes to her. Oleg Ragoravich loves these cars. They are expensive, worth millions of dollars apiece. The black-suited men probably figure that they have her trapped now. No need to fire and risk harming something so valuable.
That gives Maggie the wiggle room she needs.
She keeps sprinting and ducking behind cars until she reaches the Ferrari. Two black-suited men follow. She fumbles with the door but manages to slide into the driver’s seat. One of the men is on her now. He grabs the handle of the door as she starts to close it. With her left hand, Maggie keeps pulling the door closed. With her right, she fires up the ignition. The man keeps his hold on the driver’s-side door. Maggie tries to hold on, so he can’t get in. It’s a draining game of tug-of-war.
The ignition is on, but the car isn’t an automatic. It’s an old manual with a stick shift. Maggie hasn’t driven one since she was eighteen. But her dad had taught her. The man is pulling hard on the door. He has the leverage now. Another man is coming to join him. No way Maggie can fight them both off. She holds on with her left hand and tries to shift the car into gear with the right.
It’s not working.
He’s winning the battle. The other guy arrives and grabs the door too. Maggie waits until they have full pressure on her. Then she simply lets go. The door flings open. The men stumble back, lose their balance. That’s what she’s been counting on. But one of them recovers fast. He reaches out and grabs her by the hair.
He starts dragging her out of the car.
Maggie takes her right hand off the shift. She curls her fingers and delivers a palm strike straight into his groin.
The man’s grip loosens.
Maggie pulls the door back closed. She shifts now, hits the accelerator, drags him a few feet before the man falls away.
The showroom doors haven’t opened enough for her to get through. Again: Doesn’t matter. She slams the Ferrari through whatever opening there is, pushing into the wooden doors and doing Lord-knows-what to the Ferrari’s paint job.
The doors hold for a second before splintering and releasing the car.
Maggie is out.
She feels something akin to euphoria — her plan worked! — when a bullet shatters the back window. Maggie ducks. The cold again rushes in. With one hand still on the gearshift, she pulls the steering wheel hard to the left. Another bullet whizzes above her head, shattering and knocking out the front windshield.
Now what?
Just keep your foot on the gas pedal.
She does. Up ahead she sees another black-suited man aiming his gun at her. She aims the car at him and stays low. He ducks away.
She hears bullets, but nothing hits.
Now what?
She checks her phone.
Are there enough bars?
She hits send again. No reason to look anymore. Just keep hitting the send button and hope for the best.
She can see now that the front gate is closed. Can she ram the car through? She doesn’t think so. The car is old and small. The gate looks foreboding, built for security. A man stands in front of it, gun drawn.
She veers to the right and takes a road up the side of a hill.
A black SUV is following her now.
Shit. Another gun blast.
Her tire explodes.
She swerves, but she keeps her foot on the accelerator. The Ferrari still has enough firepower. She keeps her foot down. The car fishtails up. She has no front windshield anymore. The cold digs deep into her face. She can barely keep her eyes open.
The black SUV chases her, moves alongside. The tire is gone now. She’s driving on the rim. Another bullet rings out.
Maggie feels something tear in her shoulder.
It’s over now. A part of her knows that. There’s nothing she can do to control the car anymore. She takes her foot off the accelerator, tries to hit the brake. But either her foot or the car won’t obey.
The Ferrari veers off the road. Maggie’s eyes are closed now. She feels rather than sees the plummet. She tries again to hit the brake or turn the wheel. But nothing happens. Nothing slows down. The descent continues until the car slams into a tree.
There is no seat belt in the Ferrari. Not that Maggie would have had time to put it on. But there is nothing to keep her in place. Maggie feels her body lift and rocket forward through what remains of the front windshield. Shards of glass slice her skin before she smacks into something hard.
Her body goes slack. Everything leaves her. Everything turns cold, so cold, a deep, hard, bone-crushing cold she’s never experienced before.
And then, mercifully, everything turns black and there is nothing.
Chapter Thirteen
Porkchop spreads the printouts on the bar. Sharon stands over him. They are at Vipers for Bikers. It is eight a.m. Last year, Porkchop started opening for a Full Throttle Breakfast with specials like Rise and Ride, the Biker’s Breakfast Slam, and the house specialty, Pit Stop Pancakes. It’s proven to be a hit with the tourists.
“Okay,” Porkchop says, “explain to me what I’m seeing.”
“There is a proprietary beta UX app I created on Maggie’s phone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It contains certain features involving the Doppler effect, CDRs, GPS, triangulation—”
“Sharon,” Porkchop says.
“Yes?”
“Are you saying you can track Maggie?”
“Yes. No. Well, I could. Maggie didn’t explain what my new program can do, did she?”
Porkchop gives her a look. “You know I don’t own a smartphone, right?”
“It’s why I took the first train here,” Sharon says.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“So Maggie never mentioned an app?”
“An app to me is chicken wings,” Porkchop says.
Sharon nods. “Of course she wouldn’t,” she says, more to herself than to him.
“I’m not following.”
“It’s...” Sharon shakes it off. “Never mind, it’s not important. What’s important is that the app was on her phone. It’s an important app. For her. For me. It could one day also be worth a lot of money. She visited you when she came up to see Doctor Barlow, right?”
“Right.”
“And then she took some job. Something very lucrative. All of a sudden, all my debt was gone.”
Porkchop nods. “I know. He flew her someplace.”
“Russia,” Sharon says. “A remote region near Gelendzhik north of the Black Sea.”
“She told you this?”
“No. Look at the printout. It follows her route.”