and steps on the gas, briefly veering into the opposite lane and almost smashing into a car head-on before she swerves back. Meanwhile, I’m holding my neck, trying to watch the Land Rover copying our every move and gaining on us.
This guy isn’t just following us.
He doesn’t want us to pull over either.
He means to kill us.
“Where the fuck are the police?” Blaise yells, his voice ripped by panic as we whir past traffic, trying to get out of the way. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” He brings out his phone, about to dial when it starts ringing.
It says Father on the screen.
Blaise stares at it for a moment, as if he’s not sure he should answer, as if he’d rather let it go to voice mail, as if we aren’t being fucking chased down the streets of Paris by a maniac.
“Blaise!” I yell at him, but it’s like he’s in shock.
Actually, he probably is in shock.
“I’m taking this exit,” Seraphine says and guns it up the ramp onto the bridge heading over the Seine into Hauts-de-Seine. There’s traffic on the bridge, but it doesn’t slow Seraphine down. She just maneuvers between the cars and the concrete side of the off-ramp, clipping the mirror on Blaise’s side.
But the traffic doesn’t slow the driver of the Land Rover down, either, who is hot on our trail, plowing through traffic just the same until we’re both racing over the bridge toward the other side.
“Well, are you calling the fucking police or what?” I yell at Blaise, trying to fish out my own phone. Just as I do, the Land Rover speeds up, darting to the left of us into the opposite lane of traffic and then bringing the car right into our side.
Seraphine screams, and I duck as the side of the Land Rover collides with our Fiat, the side windows shattering and sending a spray of glass all over me.
The car spins around, and, somehow, before I can even lift my head, I can feel the car gunning it the opposite way.
I sit up in time to see Seraphine driving as fast as she can, her arms and cheeks dotted with glass and bits of blood, and the Land Rover doing a sharp U-turn and coming around after us.
Relentless.
“Are you okay?” I manage to ask just as Blaise’s phone rings again.
Seraphine nods, but her lip is trembling, and it’s clear she’s surviving on just adrenaline and instinct now, much like I am.
I look over at Blaise, and he’s answering his phone.
“Father,” he says, his voice slow and methodical, “you have to call the police. There’s a man on the road trying to kill us. He’s driving a . . .” He pauses. “Yes, I’m with Seraphine and Olivier. I don’t know, I came along for the ride, I—” He removes the phone from his ear and stares at it. “He hung up on me. He must be calling the police.”
“I don’t think they’re going to arrive in time,” Seraphine says grimly as the Land Rover gets closer again. It’s almost as beat-up as this car, and yet it keeps coming, even faster now since I think either the Fiat or Seraphine is losing their energy.
I stare back at the car, trying to absorb the look of the driver, and then notice him answering his phone. In the middle of a high-speed chase, trying to kill us, he answers a call.
And then, just like that, he hangs up.
And he slams on the brakes, turning the SUV around and taking off in the other direction.
Leaving us alone.
Like he had never been there at all.
“What the fuck? He left!” I yell.
“What?” Seraphine yells, frantically looking over her shoulder.
Blaise turns around in his seat, frowning, watching with me as the Land Rover disappears over the hump of the bridge.
“Tell me you got that license plate number,” Seraphine says.
“I did, but I bet it doesn’t exist.”
“And I bet that car will be turned into scrap in about five minutes,” Blaise says slowly. “Maybe even sooner.”
“We have to go to the nearest station,” I tell them. “Then the hospital. Fuck, I’m surprised that we didn’t have news vans and helicopters for that . . . chase? What the fuck was that?”
“It stopped as quickly as it started,” Blaise says in a strange voice, staring blankly out the window.
I look at him closely. He’s way more shaken up than I thought. “Hey, you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
He shakes his head no. Then he blinks, as if snapping