Think, man! Think!
He’d been taught how to slow his heart rate, but the usual trick didn’t work. The stupid organ was doing its best to make a jail break through his rib cage. He’d been drilled on tactical breathing. But no matter what he tried, his lungs continued to work like bellows. The only part of his training that seemed to be functioning normally was his ability to ignore pain. Because even though he knew on a strictly intellectual level that his thigh was screaming with the effort he was putting it through, he didn’t really feel it. All he felt was…
Desperation.
The thought of never seeing Samantha grin at him over a steaming cup of coffee, or never hearing her take him to task for not combing his hair, or never smelling that soft, powdery scent when she leaned close to elbow him after a good joke was—
He couldn’t even countenance it as he shifted gears and blazed through a red light. A black Beemer laid on its horn and its brakes at the same time. Its front bumper clipped Violet’s back fender with a loud whack. The contact was enough to send Ozzie fishtailing as prickles of dismay skittered across the back of his neck. Thankfully, the little collision wasn’t enough to make him lose control of the big bike.
“Come on, come on,” he encouraged the motorcycle, urging more speed from her, more maneuverability. In response, she roared like a caged beast. The sound echoed against the buildings lining the street, drowning out all other noise. It was enough to have most people stopping and staring.
Most people…
A woman carrying a double handful of shopping bags and wearing headphones suddenly stepped into the street in front of him. He missed her by inches, her scream of alarm piercing his eardrums like daggers as his heart kicked up another notch. He’d barely completed his livesaving swerve before a cyclist darted between a couple of parked cars, forcing him to wrench his handlebars hard right and take the motorcycle onto the sidewalk.
No longer on the road, he felt his vision tunnel, his concentration complete as two trash cans, a newspaper dispenser, and a fire hydrant rushed by in crystalline clarity. Then he hopped back onto the street, his rear tire bouncing off the curb with teeth-clacking force. Luckily, the unexpected maneuver had gained him some ground. The white van was visible four blocks ahead, darting and weaving between slower-moving cars and honking like it was the end of days and the devil himself was riding shotgun.
Ozzie knew where the asshole was headed. The on-ramp to I-90. And if the van made it to the interstate, Ozzie would be hard-pressed not to lose it. There were so many exits. So many cars that could cut him off. Not to mention, Violet was made to look pretty and run smooth at around sixty-five miles per hour, a cruising piece of art as opposed to a racer. When M?tley Crüe sang about a custom-built bike doing one-oh-three, they hadn’t been singing about Violet. He didn’t know what the van had under the hood or if it could outpace his motorcycle, but he sure as shit didn’t want to be put in a position to find out.
“Shit!” he yelled when a woman pushing a stroller tried to cross against the light. He slammed on Violet’s brakes, feeling the bike’s fat front tire dig into the pavement at the same time as her rear tire threatened to leave it. The smell of burning rubber and hot brake pads tunneled up his nose. “You idiot! I should report you to child services!”
The woman turned and shot him a double bird, screaming at him to do something with himself that was anatomically impossible. Shaking his head, he revved his engine and darted across the intersection at his first opportunity. As fate would have it, the white van was stuck in traffic, closed in on all sides by cars waiting at a red light.
A hard thumping noise made Ozzie wonder if he’d pushed Violet too hard. Then he realized it was his own heart. The wind sent fingers of warm air tunneling through his hair, alerting him to the fact that he hadn’t taken the time to put on his helmet. The protective headgear was still strapped to the back of his seat, where it wasn’t doing him any good.
Too late now.
He tightened his grip on the handlebars and shifted gears. His world existed in the distance between him and the van. Between him and Samantha. Closer. Closer. Closer still. Each inch coincided with a beat of his heart.
Looking at the red light, Ozzie wished with everything in him that it would stay that way until he got there. Knowing it wouldn’t, he realized what he had to do…
Chapter 12
“Let me out of here, you bastard!” Samantha screamed, slamming her hand against the wire mesh separating the cargo hold of the van from the two front seats. Her head ached. Her vision was a little wonky, spots occasionally blooming in front of her eyes and bursting like fireworks.
She still wasn’t sure what had happened out on the sidewalk. Although she was fairly certain it wasn’t an anvil that landed on her head. I mean, that doesn’t happen in real life, does it? Who uses anvils anymore? All she knew for sure was that one second, she was talking to her boss and digging for her keys, and the next second…Bang! Zoom! Only she wasn’t headed to the moon. By the looks of things, she was headed toward the highway.
Bulldog turned and snarled, “Sit down and shut up, bitch!” His breath was ripe with the smell of chewing tobacco and greasy chili with onions. It had the room-clearing capacity of a bad fart, and Samantha gagged, stumbling back.
Bulldog laid on the horn again and again, and the noise felt like a violation. A cleaver to her cerebral cortex. She grabbed her head and felt the lump behind her left temple. Probing it gently, she winced at the pain. A brief inspection concluded that her skull was still intact. She’d live. At least for the next couple of minutes.
And since she would live for the next couple of minutes, she should use them to her advantage. Her first thought was to look around for her phone and her purse. But a quick scan told her she’d dropped them on the sidewalk. Her next thought was to try to escape the van. But the rear doors revealed no interior handles. There was no way to open them from the inside.
Honk! Honk, honk, honk!
Bulldog would not lay off the horn. Samantha couldn’t imagine what the stupid dill weed was thinking. He was stuck at a light, bumper to bumper with the cars around him. Even if the drivers had been inclined to listen to his insistent honking and wanted to open up an avenue of escape—and, come on, Chicago motorists were not known for being the obliging sort—there was no way they could have moved. Not even an inch.