Peter did wish it was a few years younger.
“You maintain this car?” he asked. The tires looked pretty good. He was very happy about the sunroof.
“Of course I do.” She sounded a little indignant. “She’s my girl.” She popped the hatch and dropped her pack inside.
“Shocks?” he asked. He retrieved her pack and propped it on the back seat beside his own. Better access from the front. “When did you change those?” He undid the traps holding the compound bow to the tie panel, then returned to the rear hatch and surveyed her neatly organized gear.
“Last year.” She was stretching her legs. “I had to do the whaddayacallits, too, ball joints and tie rods, the whole front end. It cost me, like, three grand. Why?”
Peter took out a dozen energy bars, some powdered lemonade, and four big bottles of water. He also found a nice wooden box with a lid, about eight by eight inches by three feet long.
He opened it up. More arrows.
“Bad road,” he said. “And you’re going to be driving fast.”
He hoped like hell she was a good driver.
? ? ?
WHILE JUNE TURNED the car around, Peter jogged back to the gate.
She rolled down her window as he walked the gate closed behind her. She had her seat belt on and snugged up tight. “How do we know they’re coming?”
Because they know every place you’ve been since they hacked your phone, Peter thought, but he didn’t say it.
“They’re pros. They already found you at least twice.” He jogged around to the passenger side and slid in. “They’re coming.”
“I can’t outrun them,” she said, revving the engine. It sounded pretty good. “Not in this old girl.”
“Don’t worry about the car,” he said. “Drive it like you stole it.”
She flashed that same fierce wild grin he’d seen in the tree. “I can do that.”
He patted her shoulder, then reached up and pushed the sunroof back. Got the bow where he could reach it. Put one end of the long box of arrows down by his feet, the other end propped up by the emergency brake. He looked up the road toward the trailhead parking lot. He thought he heard the rumble of a big engine starting up, but it might have been his imagination. “Better get moving,” he said.
June wore hiking pants that converted to shorts by unzipping the pantlegs at mid-thigh. At some point she’d removed the lower sections. Her legs were tan and sleek. She popped the clutch and cranked the car around the corner, spitting gravel from all four tires, shifting into second while they were still sliding.
Yeah, Riot Grrrl could drive. But he should have expected that from the way she attacked that zip line.
He turned in his seat to look out the back window, holding on to the lip of the sunroof for leverage. It was too wet for another car to raise a dust cloud, so he wouldn’t have much notice. Just the nose of the vehicle coming around the curve behind him.
He was assuming that the hunters would have a big American SUV, something like a Chevy Suburban or a GMC Denali, because that was what a lot of federal law enforcement people drove. Something big and powerful, great for eating up the highway, but also kind of a boat. Not particularly suited to a narrow twisting lumpy gravel road barely wide enough for two cars to pass at a crawl. He was hoping the little Subaru’s scrappy off-road handling would force the hunters to make a mistake. Lose it on a curve, maybe even end up in the ditch. That was best case. A hope, really.
If they came to a long paved straightaway, they were screwed.
Peter hoped it didn’t come to plan B.
He looked over at the speedometer. She was going about forty, both hands on the wheel. Already too fast for the road, but not fast enough. “How far to pavement?”
“About ten or fifteen miles,” she said. “Along the river the whole way. But the road gets better before that, maybe six or seven miles.”
Then he saw it, the big black vehicle coming around the curve behind them, the tires chunking up into the wheel wells with each bump, the red Chevy logo on the radiator grille getting larger by the second. It looked like a Tahoe, the short-frame version of the Suburban. Better turning radius, less likely to bottom out. A big engine.
“Here they are,” he said. “Punch it.”
June’s eyes angled up to the rearview for just a moment, and the Subaru’s little power plant wound up as the old car responded. She still had it in third, which wasn’t the worst way to go, especially if you didn’t care much about the engine. She could brake just by letting off on the gas, and the torque would let her build up speed again quickly. He looked out the back again and saw a man lean out the passenger-side window with a rifle.