Ill Wind Page 0,110

the pressure of air against the car suddenly drop off.

I turned into the skid, smelled burning rubber and my own nerves frying, and the Viper fought me and fought the road like a bucking bronco.

I hit the brakes gently, gently, struggling with the wheel as we did one last, slow spin and jerked to a stop, still on the road.

I was about two inches over the dotted white line.

It would have been a real good moment to open the door and throw up, but I had no time for any of that. The yellow Xterra had been just a few hundred yards behind me, and a higher-profile vehicle stood no chance at all against that wind wall. The force would flip the truck over like a toy.

No time or energy to do it the careful way, the right way; I just brute-forced an equal and opposite force by slamming cold air down into the stream, and held it there while the Xterra blasted through. There was still enough wind to shake it, but not enough to flip it over.

I slipped Mona back in gear and popped the clutch, and we flew toward the city limits with Marion's SUV right on our tail. I expected trouble. In fact, I counted on it.

You can imagine how spooky it was not to have any at all, not even a hint, all the way into the suburbs, all the way to the merge with I-40. There was more and slower traffic now, and I had to slow Mona down from our breakneck gallop. Every passing car made me flinch, because this was a recipe for disaster; if Star wasn't choosy about the body count, this could end up in one of those spectacular forty-or fifty-car pileups, the kind that make the evening news and have the words "death toll" in the tag line.

But nothing happened.

I got Star's cell phone and dialed it one-handed from memory.

"Crisis Center," said a voice that sounded too young and too friendly for comfort. What kind of grade school had they raided now? Had I been that young when I'd been on the Help Desk? Probably. It just raised chills and goose bumps to think my life and everybody's around me now might rest in the hands of somebody barely old enough to buy a legal drink.

"Hi, this is Joanne Baldwin, Weather. I'm in Oklahoma City, and I need to call a Code One general alert."

Dead silence on the other end of the phone for at least ten seconds, and then a very quiet, "Excuse me?"

"Code One," I repeated. "General alert. Look it up."

"Please hold." She was gone for thirty full seconds this time, and when she came back on, her voice was trembling. "Um, Warden Baldwin? I've been told that you need to surrender yourself to the Wardens who are following you. Please."

"Well, here's what I'm telling you: Oklahoma City is about to be a wide smoking hole in the road if you don't do exactly as I tell you. Call a Code One. Right now."

She sounded stronger. There was probably a supervisor standing over her. "Can't do that, ma'am."

"Do not ma'am me, kid. Let me talk to whoever you've got quoting rules and regulations at you."

I'd been right about the supervisor. There was a click, and a basso profundo male voice said, "Jo, you got any idea how pissed off I am right now at you?"

"Paul?" I couldn't help it; beaten, scared, half-evil, I still grinned at the sound of his voice. "Save it for later. I'm on my way to Estrella Almondovar's house, or I will be as soon as you give me the address. Marion and her crew are on my tail."

"Pull the car over, and let them do their jobs! Jesus, Jo, Bad Bob was right all along about you. You got any idea what kind of hell you stirred up out there? Killer storm, followed by so much hellfire in the aetheric that we might as well call it a day and evacuate the whole friggin' state. And don't tell me it wasn't you. I saw you up there."

"Shut up and listen. I've got a Demon Mark, so does Lewis, and we're about to go at it down here. If you don't want to be cleaning up a whole hell of a lot worse than just some blown-down shacks and road signs, I