Flash Burned (Burned 2)

He followed me to the garage. But as he made his way toward the Jeep, I told him, “That’s not the vehicle we want.” I grabbed the keys to the McLaren and tossed them his way. “We might need this car.”

“Oh, hell yes.” His eyes nearly popped from the sockets.

“Just going on instinct here. I could be wrong.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong. Still, it wouldn’t suck to squeal the tires on this baby. That’ll piss Dane off.”

“Try not to get too much pleasure out of this. We could be in serious trouble.”

“Not with me behind the wheel.” Kyle grinned confidently.

I settled into the passenger seat and hit the remote for the stall door. Then I pulled out my cell and called Amano, the only number that ever came through to me. He didn’t answer. As Kyle barreled through the gap in the gate at the entrance of the drive, I studied the numbers from the few calls I’d received and compared them. All the same.

What the fuck?

Why did I feel so off about this?

Our jaunt along the dirt road was a rugged, jarring one, but I barely noticed because we’d picked up a tail. I gazed into the side mirror first, checking out the silver Chevy Camaro that moved in behind us.

“Now would be a good time to speed it up,” I told Kyle.

“On this road?”

“Yep.”

He threw a glance my way as I twisted in the seat and peered through the back window. My nerves prickled.

“Well,” Kyle said, “the good news is that this is not my million-and-some-dollar car.”

We wound our way through the forest toward 89A. As we approached the main road, I tersely said, “We don’t want to stop. Not with whoever that is following so close behind us.”

“There’s a bit of traffic, if you haven’t noticed.”

“And we can’t go back to the retreat. We’ll lead them right there.” We reached the split in the road. “Hard left. Now!”

Kyle punched it and my heart leapt into my throat as the McLaren shot through a small hole of traffic that caused the slamming of brakes and a lot of blaring horns.

“Oh, Jesus,” I squeaked out as the sports car fishtailed and Kyle worked to get the vehicle under control. “Not good.”

Shifting in the seat again, I watched as the Chevy pulled almost the same move, three cars behind us. “This is going to get ugly.”

Kyle passed two trucks ahead of us, but he couldn’t shake the Camaro. We started up the switchbacks, a long, winding road cut into the craggy mountain and rising over four-thousand feet to the Mogollon Rim. At most points, there was no more than a sliver of a shoulder to our right—my side of the car—then the steep plunge into the oak- and evergreen-pine-covered canyon.

The speed limit was thirty-five. Kyle pushed fifty as he wove through the light traffic.

In a strained tone, I reminded him, “This is hardly the road for passing.” Hence the No Passing Zone signs and the double yellow line.

“We need some distance from this asshole,” he ground out.

Our first hairpin turn came at us—or we came at it—a bit too fast.

“For God’s sake!” I cried. “Slow down!”

The McLaren handled the sharp navigation beautifully. Kyle, however, didn’t have complete control again as we barreled down on a Toyota Prius barely creeping along as the driver likely took in the sights.

“Fuck,” Kyle grumbled, then dropped the hammer and swerved sharply into the other lane.

“You see that truck ahead of us, right?” I shouted, my eyes wide.