Next, Tom ripped the blindfold from his eyes. His vision blurred by drugs and not yet adjusted to the light, he could see only Lange’s silhouette closing in fast. Maybe he was reaching for a gun, but Tom couldn’t tell. Falling to the ground, Tom slithered his body underneath the car and emerged on the other side. He used the car’s door handle for leverage to stand but still stumbled getting back to his feet. Tom noticed bright headlights to his right. They were shining on him.
He remembered they had used a car’s headlamp to illuminate his wrists when they bound them. The driver-side door looked open. Tom staggered toward the car. A gunshot rang out, but Tom didn’t turn to see what direction it came from. Instead, he jumped into the car, fumbled for the ignition, found the key, and fired up the engine.
Tom pressed down on the gas, and the car lunged forward, wheels bouncing into potholes and over rocks. He made four quick observations. First, they’d brought him to a clearing in the woods. He could see trees all around him. Second, there didn’t appear to be any other roads around, so the way in must also be the way out. Third, he’d actually taken his own car in the escape. He was driving the Taurus. Lange must have brought him to the clearing in the Impala, and the other guy had driven his car to the rendezvous spot. Maybe they were going to ditch the Taurus after Tom told them what they wanted to know.
The fourth observation was the only one that really mattered.
Lange was driving right behind him.
Glaring white lights from Lange’s Impala made it difficult for Tom to see the road ahead. A powerful jolt jarred his whole body. Lange had slammed Tom’s car from behind.
Here we go. Ford versus Chevy, thought Tom.
His heart raced and sputtered. His skin felt afire, but scratching didn’t abate the sensation. He wondered how long the drug would stay in his system. Lange bumped his car again. Tom kept driving, decelerating when he thought he saw traffic moving up ahead. He glanced down at the speedometer. Couldn’t read a single number.
The dirt road seemed to be ending. Tom jerked the steering wheel hard right and skidded onto a paved road. He heard Lange’s tires screech against the same asphalt not more than a hundred feet behind him.
The red taillights from the cars up ahead blurred together to form a single long and wavy neon light that danced before Tom’s eyes. Tom found his way into the center lane of a wide three-lane road. Cars were on every side of him. He could no longer see the road’s white-painted dividing lines. He didn’t know Lange was behind him until he felt another bump, this one hard enough to snap his head forward. The Taurus fishtailed several times, but Tom managed to straighten it out.
Tom pulled his car hard to the right. Glass broke and metal crunched as he plowed into the side of a car he didn’t see traveling beside him at the same rate of speed. The Taurus’s side mirror snapped free with a loud crack. Tom’s body shook violently from side to side, and he heard tires screeching and car horns blasting at him from all directions. He looked left and saw that Lange had pulled parallel to him in the adjacent lane. Tom jerked the steering wheel hard to the left and applied just enough brake to keep the Taurus from spinning 180 degrees around.
Sweat poured out his body and soaked his loose-fitting T-shirt. It stung at his eyes, making his already impaired vision even worse.
“Are you buckled?” Tom said aloud. He kept the pressure on the accelerator at a constant, while his hands held the steering wheel on a straight-ahead course. What little vision he had left went completely dark. Tom felt his eyelids begin to descend, as if lead weights were pulling them closed. His mouth had gone even drier, if that were possible. He didn’t know if he could hold his head up any longer. He just needed to sleep… to close his eyes… for just a moment.
Wake up! Wake up!
Tom came to. His internal voice had been screaming at him. His vision returned slightly, just enough for him to see a ball of red light coming toward him. As it neared, the ball grew from a barely visible speck to a blinding red glow. He could see other balls of red. Cars, Tom managed to think. Stopped at a traffic light. No time to brake.
Tom turned the wheel and punched the gas pedal to the floor. The car lurched forward with a force that made his stomach drop and his body go tense. He felt a violent jolt, and his whole body shook when Lange’s car slammed into the side of the Taurus. Their cars locked together.
Tom bit his tongue until blood began to seep into his mouth. The shock was just enough to counter the drugs. His vision cleared slightly. He was in the center lane, with Lange’s car pressed up against his door.
Tom saw the opening he needed.
He saw a light post, too.
His escape.
He jerked the wheel and broke away from Lange’s car. He pushed against the gas pedal as far as it would go. He kept the car on a diagonal trajectory as it rocketed forward. Lange pursued Tom from behind.
Tom threaded the Taurus between two cars and, having seen the light post through the gap, spun the wheel to avoid a direct hit. He counted on Lange not having seen what he maneuvered to avoid. The side of Tom’s car scraped against a light post cemented into the sidewalk. He glanced over his left shoulder, just in time to see Lange’s vehicle slam into that very same post without slowing. Lange’s car folded in on itself as the stone post crushed metal and glass.
Tom’s car hadn’t stopped moving, as he hoped it would. Instead, it listed hard to its side, two wheels lifting off the ground. Then it flipped over onto its roof. The car began to slide down an embankment. Tom was knocked unconscious. Otherwise, he would have been screaming.
Chapter 50
“Tom…Tom, can you hear me?”
Tom blinked. The darkness receded. In its place came a flood of light so intense that it forced his eyes shut again.
“Tom… try one more time. Try to open your eyes.”
Tom blinked again and kept blinking, because each flash of light hurt too much to keep the lids open.
“Good. You’re doing great,” the voice said.
Tom continued to blink until he opened his eyes wide. The first thing he saw was a face staring down at him. His vision was blurry, but the face was clearly a man’s, though Tom didn’t recognize him. He tried to lift his head, but the pain exploding from someplace behind his eyes was nothing short of extraordinary. He grunted and fell back onto a soft pillow.
“Don’t try to do too much at once,” the man said. “I’m Dr. Paul Prince. You’ve been in a bad accident. You’re in the hospital. Do you remember anything about that?”
Tom let his mind relax so that he could process the man’s words.
A doctor. An accident. A hospital.
Tom’s throat felt parched, but he wanted to speak. “No. I don’t.”
“Well, that’s not uncommon from a patient coming out of a coma,” the doctor said.
He tried to move his right hand to scratch his cheek. His hand moved only two inches toward his face. He heard the sound of metal scraping against metal, and his hand jerked to a sudden stop. He looked down and saw a handcuff secured around his right wrist. The other end was locked around the bed railing.
“What the hell? What’s going on?” Tom’s strength returned with an intense rush of anger. He managed to work himself into a seated position, though it took some maneuvering of the handcuff and a little help from Dr. Prince. “I demand an explanation,” Tom said, though he was breathless because it hurt that much to move.