“Fuck!” She struggled with the wheel, losing speed. Metal screeched as they hit her again, the sedan scraping up the side of Nick’s car before she shot ahead.
The reprieve wasn’t going to last long. Time to suck it up and use the big rolling hunk of metal she had at her disposal. She unrolled her window halfway and slapped her hand on the roof. The connection was instantaneous, the energy just waiting for her to direct it, and to her relief, it was cool and exciting rather than hot and frightening.
But how could she use it? The car chasing her was bigger than anything she’d tried to move with her mind before, and she wasn’t sure she could do telekinesis through the window, on the move, even with something small.
The sedan surged up beside her again. This time Riley slowed to let them get ahead of her, then took her hand off the wheel, held her palm out toward the car, and concentrated on shoving it off the road. It veered, the back end fishtailing slightly, before the driver corrected. She had to grab the wheel again when the Charger swerved. Her sweaty palm slid along the roof, but she refused to let go of her power source or change her contact to the door, where her arm could be more easily crushed between vehicles.
The road lay straight ahead for a while. She braked and tried again, pushing harder at the sedan, and this time managed to get it to skid off to the far shoulder before the driver righted them. She floored it and pulled her hand inside. The sudden ebb of power made her dizzy. She gripped the wheel and blinked hard, shaking her head to clear it.
“In…one mile…bear right…and then…turn left,” the GPS told her.
Riley’s heart rate sped up even more. She was so close to safety, to Sam. But she didn’t want to lead these yahoos to Quinn and risk interrupting the transfer. She thought briefly of the pistol in the glove box, but she’d never used one before and had no idea if it was even loaded. If she could get far enough ahead, maybe the turn onto Route 1 would help her lose them…
She was almost out of time. She’d crossed the line into Rhode Island and was in Westerly now, the road dense with homes. The sedan was back on the road and gaining. Okay, she had to admit it. Without full concentration, the car was too heavy for her. So she needed to move something else. She scanned the side of the road ahead of her. A dead tree stood among those bursting with new leaves. Riley put her hand back on the roof, balanced the steering wheel with her knee, and aimed the other at the tree, imagining grabbing it and ripping a huge branch off. There was a satisfying crack as she drove under it, and she watched in the rearview mirror as a shower of dry branches clattered down behind her. Most hit the ground in front of the sedan. The biggest one bounced up onto its hood, then banged up and over the roof as the sedan bumped over the ones on the ground.
But they were still right behind her.
She squealed through the intersection of 234 and Route 1, the light flashing to yellow above her. Riley blinked as she sped. Were the trees blurring because she was going so fast, or was something wrong with her vision? It seemed harder to breathe now, too.
And the sedan had made the light.
God, what if she didn’t get out of this? What if they stopped her?
“Turn right…in…one mile…and then…merge right.”
That wasn’t going to work. This was too residential, had too much traffic. She slammed on the brakes at the flash of taillights ahead of her and wracked her brain to remember the map of the area she’d studied last night. GPS was great, but she didn’t like not knowing what she was looking for.
A sign for Route 2 flashed by, and a couple hundred feet later, she turned left. She couldn’t lead these guys to the others. For all she knew, they only wanted her as bait for bigger fish. She had to find a spot where she could confront them and stop them once and for all.
The GPS stopped recalculating and flashed instructions on the screen. “In…eight hundred yards…take the exit ramp…right.” That was Route 78, and meant she was only minutes away from Chloe’s place. Her brain fuzzed. Thinking grew harder. She zoomed up the ramp onto the blessedly empty highway. Thank God for the off season.
The two cars hurtled down the two-lane highway bisected by a solid median and surrounded by forest on both sides. Half a mile along, she decided things weren’t going to get any better than this. She held her breath and wrapped her hands tightly around the steering wheel to yank it to the left, slamming on the brakes at the same time. The car spun so its back end was perched on the edge of the ditch at the side of the road and blocking the lane with just a narrow gap between the front end and the concrete barrier.
Riley slid across the front seat and pushed out the passenger door, coughing in the swirling dust kicked up by the tires. Her feet skidded on the gravel, and she scrambled to reach the right front fender and face the sedan over the hood. Blessed strength flooded her when she pressed her left hand hard to the metal. Her vision cleared, and the dust settled enough for her to breathe.
A car raced straight at her. Sunlight glinted off it, though, so she wasn’t positive it was the right vehicle. She couldn’t risk injuring some innocent driver—there could even be kids in the car. She squinted, too many seconds ticking by, until she recognized the dip in the car’s hood.
She pulled hard at the energy and aimed it at the back end of the sedan. It rushed through her, dry liquid surging over all her cells. She gasped, her body rocking forward behind the force of the energy as it left her.
It hit the car just right.
This time when the driver tried to correct the swerve, he sent it into a spin. It screamed across the road, the rear quarter panel heading straight for the Charger. Holy shit, it was going to hit! Riley had no time to run, no time to panic. She closed her eyes and pushed, the sound of squealing tires filling her ears, her arm shaking as the car resisted. It smacked into the side of the Charger. The vehicle rocked, knocking Riley to the gravel. Her head bounced off the stones and sent the bright sky above her into an explosion of stars.
She didn’t hear car doors opening, but when the stars cleared two figures loomed over her. The prickling increased, as uncomfortable as a hand or foot that had fallen asleep. Riley tried to shut it off, but it only prickled faster.
Trust-Fund Guy reached down with a bloody hand. Riley swatted it away, but the other guy—this one bigger, brawnier, with a purpling goose egg already rising on his forehead—grabbed her upper arm and hauled her to her feet. Pain burst in her low back, her neck, her head. Her feet shuffled. She was too weak to pick them up and walk properly.
If the guys said anything to her, she couldn’t hear it, the ringing in her ears still sounding like the sedan’s tires.
They halted her at the front of the Charger, both men cursing. She blinked and fought for clarity, and the ringing in her ears faded, fog clearing from her skull. She tilted toward the car, desperate for the metal, but the guy holding her arm yanked her back a few feet, well away from both vehicles. He cursed again and pressed his free hand against his side, hunching as if to protect injured ribs.
“What are we gonna do now?” Trust-Fund Guy limped over to further block her access to the Charger.
“Change the friggin’ tire, you idiot.”
“How? We’re blocking the road. Someone’s gonna call the cops if we take the time to fix it. And we’ve got to get her out of here.”
“Figure it out, asshole!” The fingers around Riley’s arm tightened. Strength trickled into her biceps and shoulder, and she realized he wore two rings on that hand, the metal making contact with her skin. She scanned the rest of him for any additional metal that might feed her body.
“Move the fucking car across the street!” he yelled at the other guy, who stood scratching his head. “We’ll take her car.”