Читать книгу The Rebel’s Revenge - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 18

There were no lights on in any of the neighbouring homes, but the street was full of the hard white glare that blazed from the headlamps of a black car in the middle of the road, double-parked beside his Tahoe with the driver’s door facing Lottie’s entrance gate. It was too dark to see what kind of car it was. Some kind of long, wide, old-style American saloon. Its engine note was the deep, rumbling clatter of a V8. A big, powerful, thirsty engine, harking back to the distant days when gasoline was as cheap as water. The tang of exhaust fumes cut through the sweetness of the night air. The unseen driver was impatiently gunning the throttle, as though urgently waiting before he could take off.

As Ben ran down the path towards the gate, he realised why. The running figure of the person the driver was waiting for had just cleared Lottie’s entrance gate and was sprinting towards the waiting car. The driver’s accomplice. Lottie’s attacker. A classic two-man team, perp and getaway driver. Ben heard the clap of the guy’s running footsteps on the sidewalk, echoed by his own as he gave chase. He saw the dark figure flit across the white glare of the headlights, crossing the front of the car to make it to the passenger side.

Ben ran faster. He reached the gate and vaulted over it and raced towards the car. The escaping figure wrenched open the passenger door, and for a brief moment the car’s interior was lit by the flare of its courtesy light, and as he ran Ben caught a glimpse of its two occupants. Both male, both white, both around the same age, older than their twenties and younger than their forties. The driver had long reddish hair tied back, the passenger had short reddish hair and wore a dark jacket over a white T-shirt.

That was all Ben was able to take in before the door closed and the car’s interior went dark again. By then, the driver was already slamming the transmission into drive and booting the gas. The V8 roared and smoke poured from the rear wheels as the tyres spun and screeched on the road.

Ben reached the edge of the sidewalk and ran out in front of the car, dazzled by its headlights which were suddenly veering right towards him and forcing him to dance back out of its path. The car roared by him, almost running over his toes. Because he’d gone to bed wearing his jeans, the Tahoe key was still in his pocket.

More choices. And it still wasn’t a perfect world. By the time he’d run to the Tahoe, got it fired up and into drive and away, the attackers would be gone. Chasing after the escaping car on foot seemed crazy, but he couldn’t afford a moment’s hesitation.

He sprinted after the car for all he was worth. It was still accelerating, the driver’s foot right down on the floor. Giving it so much gas that the power delivery of the big V8, designed for pure brute muscle back in the days long before US automotive engineers conceived of anything as sanitised and wimpy as traction control, was losing its grip on the road and fishtailing all over the place and spinning the tyres so hard that Ben could taste the molecules of burning rubber mixed up with its exhaust smoke. In seconds, it would get away from him. But for a few precious instants he could still catch it.

What he thought he could do once he caught it, he had no idea. He just knew he had to try.

He ran faster than he’d ever run before. Legs pumping, heart pounding. If he ran any harder he risked tripping over his own feet. But it was working. He was catching up, thanks to the driver’s own haste. Ben was within just a few strides of the back of the car’s swaying, screeching, gyrating rear end when he saw it had some kind of raised wing perched a few inches above its tail-lights, like a racing car. Something to hang on to, if he could make it. He didn’t hesitate. He hurled himself at the rear wing.

Pain lanced through him as his body slammed against the back of the car, but it would have been a lot worse if they hadn’t both been travelling in the same direction. His fingers latched on to the horizontal blade of the wing and held on with an iron grip. He was being dragged now, the toes of his boots scraping the road, clinging on for all he was worth with his chest pressed hard against the rear panel of its boot lid. Chrome lettering wide-spaced across the rear bodywork that spelled out the word M-U-S-T-A-N-G digging into his flesh through his shirt. Burning red tail-lights either side of him. Hot exhaust from its twin pipes searing his legs like dragon’s breath.

He held on. The car gained more speed. They were already a long way down the street. On the outside it felt like eighty miles an hour. In reality the car was probably just hitting forty. But soon it would be fifty, then sixty.

If he could somehow drag himself up onto the big, wide boot lid, maybe he could kick through the back window and scramble inside. It wasn’t much of a plan, but he was angry and upset and didn’t have time to think. All he knew right now was that he couldn’t let these two men get away.

But Ben also knew that all tactical plans had a way of going to hell the moment bullets start to fly. That was what was about to happen to his, as Lottie’s attacker suddenly leaned out from the passenger window. They must have spotted Ben in the rear-view mirror, or sensed from the car’s handling that someone was clinging wildly to the back. The guy hung out as far as possible, clutching tightly on to the roof sill with one hand while pointing something back at Ben with the other. Something small and black that glinted in the peripheral glare of the headlights. The guy’s aim wavered, swaying this way and that with the gyrating motion of the car. Not great conditions for target shooting. But Ben was just a few feet away. A sitting duck. He tried to shrink away behind the bodywork but there wasn’t anywhere to take cover.

Two gunshots snapped out, muted by the roar of the engine and the rush of wind in Ben’s ears. But no less deadly for it. One round punched through the metal of the rear wing a couple of inches from his hand. The other passed over his right shoulder with just a hair’s breadth to spare.

Yet more choices. He had only two, and little time to decide between them.

Hold on, get shot.

Let go, take your chances with the road.

He let go.