hated driving so recklessly, but I didn’t want to find out what the other driver was after, either.
There, an open space, a straight shot, and still the sedan behind me didn’t slow down: He didn’t know what I was up to. I turned right, signaling, hoping that he would follow me.
I pulled into the Lawton Police Station, grating undercarriage on asphalt, and the sedan followed. For a moment I believed that I’d been evading a genuine police officer, but then the dark sedan wheeled out of the parking lot with a screech. He made a U-turn, causing several other cars to brake suddenly, and took off in the opposite direction we had been traveling.
I had just enough sense left in me to put my car in park, and then I sat there, shaking like I had a fever, my head on the steering wheel. There was a sharp rap at the window.
Cursing loudly, I jumped, my left hand smacking out against the glass. I saw that there was a uniformed officer outside the car. I lowered the window.
“Evening. You mind telling me what that was all about?”
It wasn’t a request. Dry mouthed, I told him what had happened. At another nonrequest, I handed over my license and registration.
After assuring himself that I wasn’t the real trouble maker, he asked the question that I had been asking myself since I pulled over. “How did you know it wasn’t a real officer following you?”
“I think it was the car,” I said slowly, just working it out for myself. “I thought at first that it looked like an unmarked police car, but there was something about it that wasn’t right.”
“How not right?”
“It was the way the grill and lights looked,” I said, finally able to identify the problem. “It looked like more like a Japanese-style sedan, rather than an American one. All of the police cars around here are American-made, I’m pretty sure. And the light on his dash, it whirled. Don’t you guys use strobes?”
He cocked his head. “You notice all this when someone is trying to run you off the road?”
“Trust me, the screeming meemies have just caught up with me.” I took a deep breath, swallowed, tried again. “There was also the bashing into the back of me. I’m assuming you give people a fighting chance to pull over before you start trying to ram them off the road.”
“You’re funny.” He nodded, frowning. “Okay. You did the right thing. Did you get any other details?”
“I couldn’t see anything else,” I said, apologetically. “Dark, late-model sedan.”
He nodded, then walked around to the back of my car, where he could see the evidence that I’d been hit. “Well, it sounds like you had your hands full. How about you come in, fill in a report, and then we’ll get you out of here, okay?”
I went in, and that’s when the tears started. Officer Franco found me a tissue and waited patiently while I finished, but even then, I couldn’t stop shaking. My knees were like sponges: I’d had the benefits of an adrenaline rush, and now I was deep in the aftermath of the adrenaline dumps. Still, a tiny corner of my mind was active enough to be grateful. I didn’t have time to think, I’d acted on souped-up nerves, muscle memory, and a fast inspiration. I got out of it alive.
I told him the story, as best I could, hesitating when I got to the part where I admitted that I was afraid that it might be Tony, or someone in his hire. I told Officer Franco this, and he stopped chewing his gum.
“Put it in the report and I’ll give this Sheriff—Stannard, did you say?—a call. It sounds unlikely—it could just be some random nut case—but if we get any other complaints, we’ll want to know everything. That light on the dash is worrying. Could be a ruse to get young ladies such as yourself into…a bad situation.”
I nodded, and picked up a pen, willing my still-trembling fingers to be steady. Young ladies such as myself were already in a bad situation.
Chapter 8
IT WAS WITH A STRANGE MIXTURE OF APPREHENSION, vindication, and nerves that I told Brian about the chase when he got home. Apprehension, as if I was the one responsible for the chase and would be rebuked. Vindication, because trouble just kept coming, and sometimes, it still means something to be right, even when it’s your neck on the block. Nerves, because I had to relive the chase