Having fun? Hauck glared in his mirror behind, trying to make out the driver’s face.
The truck behind him honked. Hauck caught a glimpse of the driver. White. Baseball cap. Reflective sunglasses. He honked again.
The truck in front began to slow.
That was when it dawned on Hauck that these assholes weren’t playing a game with him at all.
So here’s the welcoming committee, he said to himself. Courtesy of Alpha and RMM.
That sure was quick.
The rig in back picked up its speed again. With mounting alarm, Hauck thought for a second that he was about to be dead-on rammed. He sped up, hugging the Colorado license plate of the rig in front. They were all cruising along at fifty. He glanced behind. He noted to himself that if the guy in front of him suddenly stopped …
Hauck’s blood started to tighten.
He was in one of those compact, four-cylinder SUVs. Not a lot under the hood. He saw a clear path up in front of him now and decided to gun it and make a run for it. He gave it everything he had.
He shot out into the oncoming lane. His speed was up to seventy now. Eighty. He pulled alongside the truck in front. Ninety. The sonovabitch picked up his speed as well. Keeping pace.
Asshole.
Hauck kept the pedal to the floor and got about halfway past when he saw a filmy object on the road far ahead and realized he couldn’t risk this. He immediately hit the brakes, letting the front truck shoot by him, and ducked back into his lane, barely squeezing in as the creep behind him was tight on his tail.
Seconds later, a UPS truck whooshed by. What Hauck would have met head-on if he’d continued to pass.
Now, it was crystal clear what was going on.
The road curved along the river now and he couldn’t pass. The cab behind him was virtually on top of him. He was trapped. They were toying with him. He hoped they were only toying. This was a game of cat and mouse, and clearly he was the one with the big ears and long whiskers. His heart began to beat with some urgency.
They could flatten him at any moment.
Doing sixty, Hauck glanced at the road’s shoulder on the right. The road was slightly elevated, with a drop-off of three to four feet between the shoulder and a dried-up field. Enough to send his car into a deadly roll if he went over. The sonovabitch in back had pulled up on his tail. Hauck had the sense the guy was about to ram his rear. He kept on looking behind him and then ahead, his pulse going as fast as the car. He had to do something. And do it now. His nerves picked up as he glanced at the side of the road. Behind him he heard the rumble of the truck’s engine hitting another gear.
His car was a rental, and he was on the hook for it, but hell, he decided, as he saw it coming right on top of him, a thousand-dollar deductible was a whole lot better than his life.
He jerked his wheel sharply to the right, forcing his SUV onto the pebbly shoulder, where he spun into a shaky, screeching turn, trying to hold it together. Spraying gravel, he tumbled over the three-foot embankment, his SUV nosediving into a ditch, then righting itself with a huge bounce that nearly flung him out of his seat. He came to an abrupt stop in a cloud of dust and flying pebbles.
Hauck’s heart flew into his throat. “Sonovabitches!” Dust was everywhere. He watched the other two rigs drive off down the road, the drivers probably laughing to themselves over the radio. They could have easily killed him if he had rolled. He couldn’t see if the trucks had kept going or stopped. If anyone was coming back for him. His breaths were heavy in his chest and his heart was pulsing, seeming about three times its normal size.
He had an urge to gun the car and turn around and head back to Greeley, and give McKay a sense of how he appreciated the escort.
But he had Dani to pick up. He put the SUV in gear and went to climb back on the road, when up ahead, from the direction of Templeton, he saw another vehicle racing toward him.
The real welcoming committee.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Flashing blue-and-red lights came into focus. A white-and-blue police SUV drove up at high speed.
The committee chairman, Hauck said sarcastically.
It slowed as it came in sight, slowly bumping over the elevated shoulder, and pulled up next to him, about five feet from Hauck’s car.
The driver stepped out, khaki uniform, bald on top, short red hair on the sides. The requisite shades. Above the gold shield on the door it said, TOWN OF TEMPLETON, COLORADO.
And beneath it, CHIEF OF POLICE.
“You all right, mister?” The cop stepped over to Hauck’s vehicle.
“Fine.” Hauck lowered the window. “Just a friendly driving lesson from those two rigs that probably just sped right past you going around eighty. Guess I flunked.”
“Yeah.” The chief cackled amusedly. “Those big ones sometimes act like they’re the only ones on the road. You really have to watch yourself out here. Glad I was coming by.”
Yeah, just coming by, Hauck snorted to himself. McKay was probably on the phone to him the second Hauck left his office. “Thanks. You the chief there?”
“Until they take the job away from me …” The policeman grinned. “Riddick,” he said. “So where you heading, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Back your way,” Hauck said. “I’m picking up my niece.”
“She lives here?” Riddick asked, almost as if he knew.
“No. We only came in yesterday.”
“Not much to see in Templeton but onion fields and the potato festival. And that’s in July.”
“We came for a funeral,” Hauck explained.
“Ah … Chuck Watkins’s boy. Real sad … Tried to be there myself. You’re sure your car will make it out of there? I could run you back if you need to.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hauck said, giving the engine a rev. “However, if you come across those two again, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you’d give them each a choke hold from me.”
“You wouldn’t, would you?” The chief chuckled again. “Just consider yourself lucky. What did you say your name was again?”