He knew Lia’s name.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked.
“Who me? I could be anybody.” The dude smirked as he glanced sideways at me. “And if you don’t get that piece out of my face, I’m going to ram this car into the fucking barrier.”
I wasn’t going to give him that chance.
I fired.
The driver slumped forward on the wheel.
The car began to turn wildly to the left.
Lia screamed.
With my hands against the side of the bucket seat, I hauled myself into the front and grabbed the wheel. My legs were still behind me—trapped between the front and back sections of the car—but I at least had my hands on the wheel. I tried to get it straightened out, but we were heading into the fast lane of traffic and skidding at the same time. I didn’t want to overcompensate and flip the car.
With the unlikely cabbie’s body sliding into me and trying to push me right off the steering wheel altogether and Lia screaming in the backseat, I tightened my grip on the wheel and managed to ease it to the right just enough to stop the sliding. We were still heading straight toward another car, though, and I couldn’t get my feet out of the back to bring the rest of my body into the front seat to hit the brake.
“Lia! Shut up and grab my foot!”
“What?” There was so much panic in her voice, and I needed her to calm down before we crashed.
The car in front of us swerved into another lane and we whizzed by.
“My foot is stuck,” I said with as much calm as I could. “Get it unstuck.”
I felt her hands wrap around my boot and give my ankle a painful twist.
“Ow! Shit!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Just get it out!”
A twist in the other direction still hurt, but my foot popped free, and I pulled it over the center console and pushed it between the dead man’s legs to get to the brake. I had to kick his leg out of the way but finally felt the pedal against the bottom of my boot.
As I sat in his lap, I managed to slow us down and get over to the side of the expressway with only a handful of horns honking at us. I didn’t have time for any other bullshit, so I just opened the door, shoved the body out the driver’s side, and sped off again.
Lia was practically hysterical.
“Calm down, baby.”
“I-I-I can’t!”
“Yes, you can,” I corrected softly. “We’re okay now.”
“You killed the cab driver!”
“He wasn’t a fucking cab driver.”
“What?”
“Just...just hang on for a bit, okay? I need to ditch this car.”
I pulled off the expressway, onto a side road, and down a narrow street. It was lined with buildings containing boarded up windows, which was as good a place as any to stop.
“Hold on to Odin,” I instructed. “I’ll get the shit out of the trunk. We’ll have to walk a ways and get another cab.”