Whoosh.
An explosion rocks the night. A distance away on the right-hand side of the road, flames leap into the darkness. In the orange glow of the burning truck, the silhouette of the man is visible as he walks back toward me. His strides are powerful, but, like earlier, he seems in no particular hurry.
Me, I’m ducking down as far as the handcuffs allow, until I can barely see over the dashboard. I don’t dare to take my gaze off his tall and broad form. I don’t dare look away from the danger heading toward me.
Holding my gaze through the windscreen, he comes around to the passenger side, opens the door, and kneels on the tarmac. He leaves the gun next to him on the ground. My breaths come faster when he takes a flip knife from his back pocket and grips it between his teeth.
“What are you doing?” I ask in a cracked voice.
“Immobilizer,” he mumbles around the knife.
Obviously, he knows where to look. This isn’t his first car theft.
He tears the carpet off the floorboard and feels under the seat. Ripping out a handful of wires, he uses the knife to cut one of them.
“You’ve got the key,” I say, my nerves raging out of control at the sight of that knife in his large hand. A bullet kills quickly, but a knife can torture for hours.
He lifts his gaze briefly to mine. “They can track the car via the chip.”
They meaning the police. There’s a chip in the key that corresponds to the one in the car. Just as my hope climbs, he opens the plastic lid on the battery part of the key and removes a small metal disk with the tip of the knife. It falls with a soft clink on the road.
Not done yet, he unscrews the floorboard and flips it over. A small black box with a flashing red dot is screwed underneath. He unscrews that and crashes the box under the heel of his boot until the red light goes out.
“Tracker,” he says, catching my gaze on him.
He puts back the floorboard and chucks the carpet in the back. After pocketing the knife, he takes the gun and the broken tracker, gets in, and closes the door.
I watch him as he uncuffs me, battling to get my mind around what’s happening. He blew up his truck.
When my hands are free, he inserts the key in the ignition and says, “Drive.”
I swallow away the dryness in my throat. “Why did you do that?”
“The tracker? Isn’t it obvious?”
“Your truck. Why did you set it on fire?”
His smile is patient. “Evidence.”
Right. DNA and all that shit.
When I don’t react, he says, “The truck was running low on petrol.”
That’s why he needs Mint’s car. What has he done? What crime has he committed? This isn’t a hijacking. This is his getaway car, and I’m going to drive it.
Gripping my shoulder, he gives an encouraging squeeze, but my stomach drops as he points the gun at me. “Drive, baby doll.”
My brain shuts down. It’s the only way to cope. I act on autopilot, stepping on the clutch and turning the key. The engine roars to life.
“Gently,” he says when I push down too hard on the gas and the car shoots forward.
I’m acutely aware of the weapon he aims just under my breast at my ribs. At the second try, I get it right. The car rolls forward. I slip smoothly into the left-hand lane and manage to keep the car steady.
“Slow down,” he says when we reach an intersection. “Make a u-turn.”
“What?” I steal a glance at him. He’s watching me with a smile, his gaze so intent in the light of the dashboard display I quickly look back at the road.
“Turn around,” he says. “We’re heading north.”
It’s not difficult to drive the car. I love fast cars, and my dad taught me how to drive when I was only twelve, but I’m nervous, and when I change gears, it’s jerky.
“You’re doing good,” he says. “Keep within the speed limit.”
I clutch the wheel and blink several times to get rid of the tears blurring my vision.
“Boyfriend?” he asks.
“W-what?”
“The guy whose car this is, is he your boyfriend?”
I shake my head and say in a croaky voice, “First date.”
He chuckles.
“What?” I ask as anger catches up with me from nowhere, maybe a delayed shock reaction.
“What are you doing with an asshole like him?”
The words slip out before I can bite my tongue. “As opposed to an asshole like you?”
“If you were mine, I’d never have left you.”
“He didn’t have a choice.” I cut my gaze to the weapon in his grasp. “You have a gun.”
He lowers the gun. Letting it rest on his thigh pointing away from me, he drags his index finger over the barrel in an oddly intimate way, making it seem like a caress. “Maybe so. Still wouldn’t have left you.”