‘I’m going. End of story.’ Evan read the signs. I-195W to the Miami airport. McNee inched over into the right lane. But then she wheeled over fast, taking the 195 East exit toward Miami Beach.
He looked through the rearview window; Bedford’s Navigator swerved around two cars, horns blaring, staying with them, narrowly avoiding a pickup truck.
‘What’s wrong?’ Evan said.
McNee flashed a look in the rearview mirror, gave a shrug. She pointed at the wire in her ear, as if to suggest she’d been radioed new instructions.
Pierce – the CIA guy in the front seat – unhooked his earpiece, fidgeted with a frown. Then he slammed backward into the passenger door and slumped down. McNee raced around a truck, putting distance between her and the Navigator.
Pierce wasn’t breathing. A bullet hole in his throat. McNee stuck the pistol in the drink holder.
Evan kicked at the reinforced divider as McNee swerved across more lanes of traffic. It didn’t budge. ‘She’s kidnapping us,’ he told Carrie.
Evan stared through the back windshield. Bedford’s Navigator vroomed up next to them, a black Mercedes in fast pursuit behind him. Bullets pinged against the driver’s side of the Town Car as McNee tore away from Bedford’s Navigator. Bedford, from his passenger window, shot at McNee. Flashes, the Mercedes firing at Bedford. But beyond the Mercedes, Evan spotted another car, a BMW, revving up next to the Navigator.
McNee cranked it to ninety, heading for Miami Beach. The towers of downtown Miami glittered beneath the clouds.
‘Stop or I shoot!’ Carrie ordered. McNee shot her the finger. Carrie fired at the divider, at a point between the dead man and McNee’s head: the glass was bulletproof, and the slug hammered flat into the faintly green material.
Evan tested the locks. They’d been stripped; the controls didn’t work. He kicked at the window. It was reinforced.
Bedford’s Navigator accelerated close to the Town Car, like a lion chasing down a gazelle, looking for the battle-ending tenderness of throat. The Mercedes roared on the Navigator’s other side in pursuit. Bullet fire from the Mercedes peppered the side of the Navigator’s windows, the glass popping into small concentric circles but holding.
Evan slid back the cover on the sunroof, framing a gleam of the moon as it slid between two heavy clouds. He thumbed the control. Sunroof stayed still. He pulled the Beretta from his laptop bag and fired into the sunroof’s glass. It held. The boom hurt his ears inside the closed car.
‘We have to get out,’ Carrie said. The Mercedes nicked the Navigator, sparks flying up between the cars like a fountain of light. Gunfire erupted from the Mercedes and the side windows in the Navigator shattered.
Evan saw Bedford return fire from the front passenger side of the Navigator. The Mercedes answered with a burst of bullets and Bedford collapsed, half out the Navigator’s window, a smear of blood along the door and the front window.
Bedford. Gone.
McNee’s voice crackled to life on the intercom: ‘Quit shooting, and you won’t get hurt.’
There has to be a way out. Not the windows, not the roof. The seats. Evan remembered a news report he’d seen about a trend in recent models, to make backseats more easily removable to accommodate the constant American hunger for trunk room. Please, God, don’t let the Agency have modified everything or we’re in a death trap. He dug his fingers into the seat and pulled. It gave a centimeter. He yanked again.
He glanced over his shoulder: McNee’s eyes burned into his in the rearview, otherworldly, distorted by the pocks in the bulletproof glass. He heaved again at the seat, and now he saw the Navigator veer behind them, its side crunched, Bedford’s limp body dangling over the shattered glass, with a horrifying percentage of his head pulverized away. The Mercedes approached to attack the driver’s side.
Frame wasn’t surrendering. He wasn’t abandoning them.
Around them, other late-night Miami Beach traffic sped and spun out of their way, cars steering to the shoulder, drivers reacting in alarm and shock to the war waging in the lanes. With bay on both sides, the highway offered no place to exit until Alton Road and the residential neighborhood edging South Beach.
She has to slow for the exit. Our chance to get out. Evan eased the seat back, exposing the dark of the trunk.
‘Go!’ Carrie shouted.
Evan wriggled through into the pitch-black. He swept his arm in the darkness ahead of him. Looking for the thin wire and handle that would release the trunk door from inside. Assuming there still was one. Maybe the CIA or McNee had removed it.
Bullets dinged above his head, hitting the trunk’s top.
The Town Car careened to the right, then again to the left. Evan lay wedged in the narrow opening, and the charging rocked him back and forth. He twisted, pulling himself through the tight gap, pushing their small luggage out of the way. Carrie pushed his feet and he popped through the leather canal into the full dark of the trunk. She pushed the laptop bag into the trunk after him.
Evan found and jerked the release cord.
The trunk popped up and the wind of traveling at ninety miles an hour boomed in his ears. The night lay vacant of stars, the clouds low and heavy over the city like a pall, and the Navigator drove up close to the bumper, ten feet from him, Frame’s face a white smear behind the dazzle of the lights.
McNee urged more from the engine, the speed surging past one hundred as she barreled onto the South Alton Road exit, blasted through a green light, standing on her horn, cars screeching as drivers slammed brakes to avoid crashing into the Town Car.
The Mercedes charged close and a man leaned out of the passenger side, gun leveled at Evan. Dezz. Grinning, hair flying around his face. Gesturing him back into the trunk.
Evan hunched down. Reached back into the rear seat, groped for Carrie’s hand. Nothing.
‘Come on!’ he yelled to her.
The Mercedes rammed the Navigator again and a second burst of gunfire flared. The Navigator flew over the median through a gap in the palms and flipped. Bedford’s body flew from the wreck and tumbled along the asphalt. The Navigator slid on its side in a shower of sparks, nose-diving into a darkened storefront, metal and glass splintering and shattering.
The Mercedes retreated to the right, then revved forward, coming up close behind the Lincoln. Dezz leaned out the passenger side, fired into the trunk hatch. The bullet hit above Evan, ricocheted into the night. Warning shot; he didn’t doubt Dezz could put a bullet through his throat.
Evan steadied his gun and fired.
Missed. He was no pro. He fired again and the bullet popped into the Mercedes’s hood. The Mercedes backed off twenty feet. He didn’t know the pistol’s range, but he wasn’t about to waste another bullet. And too many people around; he could miss, kill an innocent bystander.
McNee lay on the horn, driving with insane abandon, powering down Alton Road, through the maze of beautiful people in their beautiful cars. She would kill people, he couldn’t stop her.
But he could shoot out the tires.
The idea occurred to him with almost eerie calm. Before she killed innocent people, before she got back on a highway. It was the only way he could take command of the situation.
Evan leaned out again, aimed the gun at the tire below him. He wondered if the tire’s exploding would kill him, if the car would somersault into the night sky and kiss the unforgiving concrete. In the car, Carrie might survive. He wouldn’t have a prayer.
He held the gun steady and the Lincoln slowed.
They see me and they radio McNee. It’s like having a gun to her head.
He fired.
The tire detonated. The blast of pressure and the car’s swerve threw him back into the trunk. The Town Car spun into the oncoming lane; a banner for Lincoln Road passed above his head. Then the car stopped, amid a shriek of brakes.