She took her foot off the accelerator, pressed down on the brake and moved the lever. Then she stepped on the gas again.
The engine roared and the car started to shudder, but it still wasn’t moving. She realized she still had the brake pressed down to the floor, so she let it go.
The car kicked up gravel and shot forward into the drive with a squeal of tires, swerving wildly from side to side. Sarah panicked and trod hard on the brake without taking her foot off the gas. The car slewed into the shrubbery that lined the drive, hit the base of a small palm tree and skidded to a halt.
Sarah banged on the wheel and let her head drop. Tears blurred her vision. She couldn’t do it; she couldn’t possibly control this monster. She had felt the same way that time trying to drive out in the desert.
The engine had stalled, and all she could hear was Stuart’s uneven breathing. Then she heard the noise of a car starting break the silence behind her, and she realized he was coming after her.
She didn’t have any alternative now.
She started the car up again. The problem now was that she was out of the range of Stuart’s motion-sensor lights, she couldn’t see where she was going. Headlights. Where was the headlight control switch? It had been daylight in the desert.
There were dozens of switches and buttons on the dashboard, all with little symbols that were supposed to make them easy to use. Sarah couldn’t understand a bloody thing, and she’d got the windshield wipers going and country music playing on the radio before the beams of light shot out and lit up the gravel drive and the road about fifty yards ahead.
Stuart shifted and groaned on the floor. His knees were wedged up against his chest, and his head rested between the edge of the seat and the door. He clutched his stomach with both hands, as if to keep his insides from spilling out.
“Stuart, can you talk?” Sarah asked.
“Bleeding... hurts... ” was all she got out of him.
“I’m going to get us out of here,” she said. “Just hang on.” Stuart groaned.
Sarah saw headlights in the rearview mirror.
His headlights.
She put the car in drive again, eased her left foot off the brake and put her right foot on the accelerator, not too hard this time. The car coasted down the drive. At the end, Sarah turned right onto the road, but the arc of her turn was too wide.
A horn blared and two bright lights came straight at her. She held the wheel straight, and the oncoming car skidded across the road with a squeal of rubber, hit the curb and turned over.
Sarah kept her foot down.
She had no idea of how to judge the car’s width and guess how much space she had around her. The Caddy was a big car, and she had always felt nervous when Stuart drove by the rows of parked vehicles in the street, sure he was so close he would hit someone getting out, or at least clip a wing mirror. There must be some secret to it. Lacking any knowledge of what it was, she decided the best she could do was stick with the car ahead and follow its taillights.
The windshield wiper squeaked across the dry glass every few seconds, and Garth Brooks was singing about a broken heart on the radio. Sarah loathed country and western, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the road ahead for a second and she didn’t want to risk fiddling with the buttons and switches again.
A couple of oncoming cars blinded her with the dazzle of their headlights, honked their horns and veered away to the right at the last moment, when they realized she wasn’t going to give way. It was a fairly narrow road by Los Angeles standards, and Sarah realized she must be hogging the center.
The red taillights were still in front of her, and behind she could still see the glare of his headlights. There was a cloying, slightly metallic smell in the car now, and she realized it was Stuart’s blood. Her hands felt sticky on the wheel and her jeans and T-shirt were stuck to her skin with blood and sweat.
At least Stuart was still alive, moaning on the floor beside her. The windshield wiper squeaked over the glass every second or so. Garth Brooks had given way to Tammy Wynette singing “Stand By Your Man.”
Then she saw the intersection up ahead. Sunset. And a red light. The car in front edged as far left as he could without being on the wrong side of the road and stopped. His left-turn indicator started to flick on and off.
Sarah followed him over, took her foot off the gas and pressed down on the brake. At least she knew how to indicate a turn, and she pushed the lever by the steering wheel. As she waited for the lights to change, she took the opportunity to press a few buttons on the dashboard and stop the windshield wiper without turning off her headlights.
But her respite lasted only a brief moment. Just when she had succeeded in getting Tammy Wynette to give way to The Doors singing “Love Her Madly,” a set of headlights grew bright in her rearview mirror. He was still behind her.
She had no plan. She had to get Stuart to a hospital, that was clear enough, but where was the nearest one? There was a big medical center in Santa Monica, but she didn’t know how to get there. It was all she could do to stay on one winding road following the car in front, let alone negotiate right and left turns through the LA urban maze.
Before she could come up with any ideas, the light began to flash green and the car in front turned. Sarah took her foot off the brake, pushed down on the accelerator again and started to turn the wheel as she shot forward.
But she had put her foot down too hard and she didn’t turn the steering wheel far enough. Instead of gliding smoothly and effortlessly around the ninety-degree bend, she skidded too far toward the right.
The Caddy bumped over the curb. Metal scraped against the low stone wall of the house beyond the grass verge with an ear-wrenching scream, and Sarah saw sparks fly.
Instead of stopping, she kept her foot on the accelerator, and before she lost control completely she twisted the wheel sharply to the left. The back of the car clipped a signpost, then Sarah felt a bump as she passed over the curb and back onto the road again.
By now the traffic lights were favoring through traffic on Sunset, and Sarah managed to drive another two cars off the road in a blare of horns, blaze of lights and banshee screech of tortured rubber.
Christ, she thought, mouth dry, heart pounding in her throat, this was Los Angeles. She was more likely to get shot by an angry motorist than stabbed by a crazy fan. Surely a cop car would come along soon?
Now she was back on the road again, staying in the outside lane, with taillights to follow, the going was a little easier. She could afford to think for a moment about what to do.
Her best bet, she reckoned, was to stay on Sunset and hope a police car came along. She kept looking around for flashing red lights, listening for sirens, but she couldn’t hear any. She must have forced about five cars off the road already. Had nobody reported a crazy driver in the area yet?
She could try to drive Stuart to Cedars-Sinai. It was miles away, but all she had to do was keep going along the same road.
She thought she saw the lights of a garage at Barrington, but the traffic light was green and she was going too fast to pull over safely. Sunset wound on, all gentle curves and dips, nothing but curb, grass and houses on each side. There were no streetlights, and dark trees overhung the road.
But Sarah didn’t dare risk turning off. She might get lost, get stuck on some dead-end street, and he would be right behind her, just waiting for her to make a fatal error.