Jimmy turned around in his seat and stared for a few minutes. “We’ve got a few candidates, but nothing conclusive. Two SUVs. One black, like the one on the interstate, and the other light gray. There’s a white pickup. Looks like a Ford 250 with big tires, a yellow VW, a little red Fiat, and a—nope, that one dropped out at the Walmart.”
“Good. That’s what I see, too. The VW and the Fiat are almost certainly harmless.”
“Agreed.”
“The white pickup we should keep an eye on, but usually what we have to fear from those guys is that they’ll drive so aggressively that they’ll kill us by accident. By the way, it’s a good idea to look for women.”
“You mean woman drivers?”
“Anywhere in the vehicle. There are a lot of bad things to be said about women, but they don’t get into this kind of work much. If you see a woman in any of the cars, we can pretty safely take it off the list.”
“That leaves the two SUVs.”
“Watch them for signs that we have a problem.”
“I’m watching. What am I looking for?”
“Signs that they’re trying to deceive us. Sometimes two cars will follow you by taking turns. One drops so far behind that you forget it exists, while the other keeps you in sight. Then they switch, so you don’t start wondering about the one you can see. When you see the first one again, you think it’s new. Sometimes a follower will get ahead of you for a while so you think you’re following them. Nobody who tries to fool you has a nice reason for it.”
Jimmy looked at her for a moment, then out the back window. “Did you know these things by instinct when you started, or have they all happened to you?”
“I’ve spent a lot of years helping people who are running away. All of them have someone chasing them. The important thing is to learn to trust yourself. If you look at anything—a car, a house, a person—and it seems a little off, avoid it. Simple.”
Jimmy stared out the rear window. “I brought this on by making that call home to my mother. I’m regretting it every minute. But I’m not sure I’ll see the next mistake before I make it.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Jane said. “The trick is to be alert. Always look for a way to improve the odds in your favor.”
“Those two SUVs are still back there.”
“I know,” she said. “I don’t like it either.”
Jane drove on. Route 11 became less heavily traveled as the hour grew late. The road moved away from the city into a rural landscape, and then narrowed to two lanes. When they went through a town it was always small, with darkened business signs and traffic signals that blinked yellow over deserted intersections. As they passed one that looked no different from the others, things changed abruptly.
A pair of black SUVs similar to the one that had attacked them on the interstate pulled into the road a few hundred yards ahead. One came from a driveway to Jane’s right that ran like a bridge over a small stream in a ditch beside the road. The other emerged from the lot in front of a gas station on the left. They met like doors closing across the road.
“Trouble,” she said. She hit her high beam headlights, bathing the two cars in light, and steered her car toward the spot just behind the car that had come over the ditch.
“There’s a ditch on that side,” Jimmy said. When nothing changed he said, “Jane. A ditch.”
“I see it.”
She held the wheel in both hands, still steering straight at the rear of the car blocking the right lane. “Make sure your seat belt is tight, but keep your head low. Remember the other one shot at us.”
Jimmy slumped lower, so he could barely see over the dashboard.
Jane sped up slightly, aiming her car at the SUV on the right. She could see a head in the front side window turned toward her. The man in the driver’s seat had the best view, and he was getting frightened. His eyes were open wide and he gripped the steering wheel tightly. Jane altered her aim slightly, just enough so her car would look to him like a projectile streaking straight for him.
Finally, he panicked. He threw his transmission into reverse and backed up quickly. He seemed to have forgotten how narrow the driveway was. His left set of tires found their way onto the driveway, but the right set slipped off into the ditch, and the vehicle tipped onto its side.
Jane swerved, but not toward the space that had opened between the two SUVs. She aimed at the remaining vehicle and sped up again. She adjusted her aim to be sure that if she hit anything, it would be the passenger door.
The driver blocking the left lane pulled forward to block the space that had opened up in the middle of the road.
Jane saw a wash of white light projected onto her dashboard from behind, and didn’t have to look into the rearview mirror to know that the SUV that had been following her for miles was coming up fast behind her.
In another second she was at the roadblock, flashing past with two wheels on the road and the other two on the pavement of the gas station behind the left SUV. She narrowly missed the first gas pump and adjusted her trajectory to make it back onto the road to avoid the telephone pole at the end of the lot.
The black SUV that had been following her shot past in the space between the two other black SUVs that had formed the roadblock, and began to gain on her.
Jimmy turned around in his seat to watch the vehicle behind. “I can’t believe this. Who the heck are these guys?”
“I can’t tell. They don’t seem to be good at stopping people without killing them.”
Jane was driving hard now, accelerating steadily, trying to hug the inside of each curve and straighten to aim at the next one. Jimmy looked at the speedometer and watched the needle climb over ninety-five miles an hour, a hundred, and still move higher. The broken white lines on the pavement streaked toward them like tracer rounds.
“You’re going too fast. What if a cop sees us?”
“What if two carloads of armed thugs catch up with us on a deserted highway?”
“Can we ditch the car somewhere and slip off on foot?”
Jane kept glancing in the mirrors, her hands gripping the steering wheel to keep the car from spinning out. “If I see the right place, we can try. I haven’t seen one yet. We’d have to get far enough ahead so they can’t see us bail out, and if I can accomplish that, we’re better off in the car.”
“But you’re going—”
“Jimmy.” She said it quietly, but he understood that she didn’t intend to argue. The car was going so fast that when she reached a slight rise, the car rose on its springs to be nearly airborne at the crest, and then burrowed downward into the shallow trough beyond it. Jimmy gripped the armrest, his teeth clenched so his jaw muscles bulged whenever he felt a bounce or a rocking of the car, but he was clearly determined not to remind her that what she was doing was dangerous.
Jane glanced in the mirror again. She reached a long, straight stretch, and kept her eyes on the mirror for a long time.
Jimmy turned in his seat and looked. “I don’t see them anymore.”
“Neither do I. Keep watching, in case one of them is crazy enough to follow us without headlights.”
She kept going, but she let up on the gas pedal a bit. They hurtled through the night for another ten minutes before she lowered her speed again, this time to only ten miles an hour over the speed limit. “Okay,” she said. “We’re looking for Route Twenty-two now. There should be signs.”
“Who do you think those guys are?”
“Enemies. Watch for the signs for Route Twenty-two.”
“Where will that take us?”
“Away from them.”