when you can’t see what you’re doing.”
I shook my head. “Good Lord. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“You didn’t really expect me to telegraph what I was about to do, did you?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“You guess not?
“That’s what I said.”
Nash sighed.
“And now there’s another body on our hands,” I said. “These things are kind of starting to pile up.” I was really going to have to start winning some cases so I could afford a therapist.
“Better them than you and me,” Nash said.
He did have a fair point. Since the black car was still trailing along behind us, I thought it might be a good idea to bring it up.
“Somebody’s following us,” I said.
“I know. Keep driving.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere but back to Gracie’s.”
I drove downtown and past my office. Then I took a right turn and drove several blocks towards the court house. I swung around and drove past Caliente, the grocery store, and then back by the office again. The black car stayed on my tail. The car was definitely following us. This was too circuitous a route to be a coincidence.
I wished Kettle had some dark alleyways full of garbage cans and punks—the kind you can pull into during a high speed chase, swerve back and forth a couple times, and lose the tail. But Kettle was open and spacious and made for easy driving. I decided I needed to get out of town and into the countryside.
I hung a left at my office and took Opossum Road to the outskirts of town.
The black car stayed right behind me, following noiselessly along like an eerie shadow.
Nash flipped open the passenger’s side vanity mirror and adjusted it so he could keep a close eye on the car.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think I wish I were driving,” Nash said. “You drive like a girl.”
I glanced sharply over at him, trying to figure out whether he’d said that with a hint of a grin, or if he was just being a jerk. I thought I maybe detected a hint of a grin, but I put the pedal to the metal anyway.
“I’ll show you who drives like a girl,” I said.
My back tires spun on the pavement, and to the serenade of screeching rubber, we were off.
A matching tire screech sounded behind me, and the black car stayed hot on our heels.
I fishtailed right onto Farm Road 1538, kicking up a cloud of dust behind me.
The black car followed suit, swerving right and then left, but still managing to keep up.
Nash flipped on the radio and turned it way up loud.
“What are you doing?” The noise of electric guitars and a heavy rhythm threatened to drown out my voice.
“Car chase music!” Nash yelled.
“Are you serious?”
“A little extra motivation!”
“I don’t need extra motivation! Running for my life with a dead guy in the back seat is motivation enough!”
“Then what are you still doing out on the open road? You have to get off these long stretches, or we’ll never lose this guy!”
I veered left onto a smaller two-lane road that led deeper into farmland area. At a hundred-and-ten miles an hour, I felt a little out of control of the car. If my tail was bothered by the speed, it didn’t show. The car kept on keeping up.
“Fence post!” Nash hollered, pointing at a thick metal pipe lying across the road.
I couldn’t swerve fast enough to miss it. It popped up under my car and hit the innards with a sickening thud, and then flew out behind me.
I watched my rearview mirror anxiously, hoping it would fly up and catch the pursuer in the windshield. It smacked into his grill and spun sideways, back to the side of the road.
I’d been watching the rear view mirror so anxiously I had forgotten to look where I was going.
“Cow!” Nash pointed at it, jabbing his finger toward it repeatedly. “Cow!”
I swung right off the road and narrowly avoided a deadly collision. I managed to steer through a hole in the fence into some open pasture. The car bumped and bounced across the dried up grass, kicking up a cloud of dust behind us. This definitely didn’t feel better than the open road.
I checked the rear view mirror again.
The black car veered left around the cow and missed it on the other side. Then it hurtled through the hole in the fence right after us. Not good.
“You look forward, I’ll look backward!” Nash yelled.
I raced farther into the pasture, keeping an eye out