Jenna heard the mechanical thump of the transmission shifting into ‘drive,’ but her attention was fixed on a dark shape about fifty yards behind them. It was a parked car that definitely had not been there when they had arrived only a few minutes earlier. As if to confirm her suspicions, the car’s headlights flared.
Zack had brought some friends along.
Mercy accelerated a little less dramatically, but in a few seconds the truck was cruising down the street well in excess of the posted residential speed limit. The twin headlights behind them halted their advance right in front of Mercy’s trailer, stopping only long enough for Zack to climb inside. Mercy turned a corner, and the car was lost from view. Just a few seconds later, Jenna saw the sweep of its headlights again, and she knew the pursuit was only just beginning.
She felt the truck slowing, and she whipped her head around to see what was happening in front of them. Mercy hit the brakes, slowing as she approached an empty intersection. “What are you doing?” Her voice was more frantic than she intended.
“Stop sign,” replied Mercy, but even as she said it, she seemed to grasp the foolishness of the automatic reaction, and accelerated again. “Sorry. This is a new experience for me.”
“Me too.” Jenna wondered if the same could be said for the men in the car. Probably not. In a situation like this, experience would count for a lot. She searched her memory, trying to recall all of Noah’s little critiques of the action movies they had watched together. “Turn off your lights.”
“What?”
“It will be harder for them to spot us if they can’t see our tail lights.”
“And harder for us to see where we’re going.”
Nevertheless, Mercy reached down and turned a switch. The dashboard went black. The road ahead of them was much harder to see, but the overhead streetlights cast enough illumination for Mercy to stay on the paved surface.
They passed dozens of trailer homes and a few other, more permanent-looking structures, and Jenna recognized where they were. “Take the next right.”
Mercy looked at Jenna, her expression unreadable in the darkness, then steered in the indicated direction. “Where are we headed?”
“For the moment, I just want to lose these guys.” It was such an absurd thing to say that Jenna had to suppress an urge to laugh aloud.
“And then what?”
“Homestead. That’s where Noah wanted us to go.”
“So we need to get to the highway without them realizing that’s where we’re going.” Mercy looked back to the road ahead. “Okay, I think I can manage that.”
Encouraged, Jenna craned her head around. She saw the pursuing car’s lights come into view at the intersection, about a hundred yards behind them. Mercy took another turn, back into the maze of neighborhood streets. She sped up, the engine revving as she pushed the gas pedal too hard, but then just as quickly, she slowed and took another turn. Jenna, who had never experienced the least bit of seasickness, felt her stomach begin to churn with the rapid maneuvers. She faced straight ahead, closing her eyes until the sensation passed.
When she opened them again, she recognized where they were. She saw familiar buildings: the boatworks, a Baptist church, a Tom Thumb convenience store. Mercy had her headlights on again, and maintained a steady thirty to forty mile-per-hour pace. In a few more blocks, they would reach the Overseas Highway that linked the Keys to the mainland. She risked a glance back, but instead of seeing just one set of headlights, she saw several, as well as the receding taillights of vehicles moving in the opposite direction. It was impossible to distinguish makes and models, but Jenna knew their pursuers would be facing a similar challenge.
Mercy pulled up to the stoplight at the highway intersection and made a rolling stop before taking the turn. She accelerated quickly, though evidently not quickly enough. An eastbound car traveling in the same lane caught up to them, let out a long irritated honk and swerved around them as if they were standing still. Mercy’s only reaction was to keep driving, and soon they were just a few car lengths behind the irate motorist, cruising down the tree-lined causeway toward Boca Chica Key.
“Were those the men that killed Noah?” Mercy asked, breaking the long silence.
“I’m not sure. I recognized one of them, Zack, one of the guys who put the bomb on the boat. So, I guess he would have to be, right? Unless all of Noah’s old enemies picked today to show up and settle…” She turned to face Mercy again. “This doesn’t make any sense. If this was just about getting revenge on Noah, why come after me…us?”
“Us?”
“They went to your place. They didn’t follow me there, so they must have been looking for you.”
Mercy shook her head but didn’t take her eyes off the road. “I’m listed as Noah’s primary emergency contact. They might have assumed that you would come to me.”
Jenna processed that with a frown. “Well, even if that’s true, it doesn’t explain why they are coming after me. They already got Noah.” She paused, recalling again her father’s reaction to the men posing as federal agents. I’m still missing something.
“This guy’s coming up fast.” Mercy said, squinting into the rear-view mirror.
Jenna looked back again and saw the headlights of a car, coming up fast in the inside lane. In a matter of seconds, it pulled alongside the pickup and then, at least from Jenna’s perspective vanished.
“Where did he go?”
“He’s pacing me.” Mercy tapped the brakes a little and the car pulled ahead for a moment. Jenna leaned forward, trying to get a look in through the car’s passenger side window, but all she could see was the reflection of the pickup’s headlights on the glass. The car was a mid-sized sedan, a newer Dodge model, with a conspicuous sticker on the bumper from a car rental agency. Zack and Ken had claimed to be tourists, on vacation. They might have had a rental. Jenna hadn’t been able to see the car that had been waiting outside Mercy’s trailer, so there was no way to know if this was it…but it could be.
The Dodge abruptly fell back, disappearing once more into Jenna’s blind spot. She leaned closer to Mercy, trying to follow its movements, and saw it easing back further still, its front end almost perfectly even with the truck’s rear tires.
Jenna saw what was about to happen like a premonition. “Brakes. Now!”
Mercy reacted without question, but in the fraction of a second it took her to translate Jenna’s cry into action, the sedan made its move. Just as Mercy was tapping the brake pedal, the sedan swerved sharply to the right and its front bumper crunched into the pickup.
The rear end of the pickup slewed wildly as, first the impact knocked it off course, and then as Mercy frantically compensated by trying to steer away. The Ford was too heavy to be shoved off the road by the smaller sedan, but the suddenness of the attack and the reflexive nature of Mercy’s response sent the vehicle careening toward the edge of the road. She managed to straighten it, but not before the right side struck the guardrail. The truck slid along its length with a shriek of tearing metal and a shower of sparks. The sedan rebounded away, weaving back and forth across both lanes ahead of the pickup, as its driver likewise fought to restore control. Mercy wrestled the truck back onto the road, but seemed uncertain about what to do next.
“Go!” Jenna shouted.
Mercy hesitated. “What about them?”
“They won’t try that again,” Jenna replied, unsure of how to explain what had just happened. “They’re outmatched and they know it.”
The driver of the sedan had attempted to do what Noah had once called a ‘pin.’ He would always complain about the way car chases were presented in movies, where the driver of the pursuing vehicle would ram their prey from behind. He would then explain that the way to force a car to stop was by pulling alongside and turning into its back tires. If done correctly, the impact would spin the fleeing vehicle around, stalling its engine as the sudden change in direction and the car’s own momentum created reverse compression in the motor. Jenna had recognized, almost too late, that the driver of the sedan was attempting exactly that. If Mercy had not started to brake when she did, they would have been dead on the road.