dripped down the inside of her sleeve and she tried stanching the flow with her good hand. Don’t look. It only makes it worse. She leaned her head against the cool glass of the window, closed her eyes and wished she could sleep, make everything go away. Another jolt knocked her hand free. It was covered in blood.
“Here. Use this.” Dom waved a handkerchief. His knuckles were white as they gripped the steering wheel and his hair billowed in the wind from his rolled-down window.
Her mind barely registered the car rounding another sharp corner but the pain in her arm had sharpened even more. Dom grimaced as he looked in the rearview mirror. He didn’t act like one of those monsters, but she knew what she saw.
So when Dom’s darkened gaze met hers, the blue of his irises completely gone, she remembered the monsters in the Jeep and everything went dark.
DOM LOOKED IN his rearview mirror. The freak was still on their tail. Must be a fortified engine in that rig. He should’ve been able to put more distance between them by now. If he couldn’t outrun them, he wouldn’t be able to head to the loft. He’d have to think of some other way.
The Porsche practically flew over the bridge, catching air a few times, and he banked it sharply to the left into the SoDo district. The sound of his suitcase thumping against the side reminded him he wasn’t catching that flight to San Diego tonight after all.
Punching it, he saw he had put some distance between them. With the Jeep’s high center of gravity, it wasn’t able to make the turn as tightly as the Porsche had. The key to outrunning it would be in the cornering, not the straightaways.
Dom turned up and down various roads heading into downtown. The Jeep still followed and even though it fell farther behind, he didn’t dare take a chance and head to the loft. They weren’t that far ahead.
As he cranked the vehicle under the Alaskan Way Viaduct, he heard the horn of the ferry up ahead, signaling its departure.
If only…
He slammed on his brakes and veered into the holding area, flashing his pass at the ticket booth. The last vehicle had been loaded, the tie ropes cast off, and a ferry worker reached for the neon orange netting to secure the car deck.
Laying on his horn, he sped down the loading chute. The worker jumped out of the way as the Porsche caught air and flew onboard, skidding to a stop behind a delivery van.
Thank God the terminal was quiet this late at night. Doing a mass mind scrub wasn’t an easy task for one.
“What the hell. Are you crazy? You can’t do that.” The ferry worker ran toward them, grabbing his walkie-talkie from its shoulder holster. Dom jumped out of the car and flashed him his identification.
“You still can’t…”
Dom brushed a hand across the man’s temples.
“We paid at the gate and were the last car on the ferry before you attached the netting and pulled away from the dock.”
The man blinked a few times and said, “You staying on the island or heading to the peninsula?”
“Not sure yet,” Dom said and watched the Jeep screech to a stop on the dock as the ferry churned through the water away from the city.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“STAY HERE.” A door slammed shut. Mackenzie turned her head slowly, as if she were in a dream, and blinked a few times, but all she saw was the empty driver’s seat.
Where was she? Who was that? Her eyes couldn’t seem to focus as she looked out the window, the muscles in her neck ached, and her arm throbbed. A narrow steel tunnel? She heard the deep low blast of a marine horn and felt a shuddering movement beneath her. She was on a ferry. As the sound faded in her ears, its familiarity contrasted with something she’d heard not long ago. What was it? An unearthly sound. Laughing—oh God, awful, hideous laughing. And the horror of the night imploded on her.
With every last ounce of energy she possessed, she wrenched open the car door and clambered onto the deck. An icy blast of wind whipped her hair around, roaring in her ears, and her knees collapsed to the pavement.
Run, her mind told her. Run.
Before she could move, strong arms lifted her from the ground and pinned her tightly to a warm chest. The scent of sandalwood filled her nostrils and a tidal wave of relief