we could teleport to Ewing.
We sat in silence for several minutes, Marco glancing into his rearview mirror regularly for signs of trouble. Finally, I was so frazzled I reached forward and turned on his stereo system. Country music filled the car.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t handle the silence.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “Tell me about your talk with Hank this morning. Sounds like it got a little heated.”
That seemed like days ago rather than a couple of hours. “It did, but we worked it out. He told me what happened the day Walter was murdered.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He prompted me with an expectant look.
“Sorry,” I said, worried about his reaction. “I feel like it’s not my story to share.”
He was silent for a long moment before he nodded. “I get that, and I understand.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If you felt I needed to know, you’d tell me. Right?”
“As Marco drove through town, we looked searchingly at the tavern and Wyatt’s garage. We didn’t see any sign of Wyatt at either place, and his red truck wasn’t parked in front of the garage like it usually was.
“Where do you think he went?” I asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Had he gone to tell Derek and Louise that I’d found something in Jerry’s belongings?
I still couldn’t believe he’d betray us. Not like that. He’d attempted to protect me enough times that I knew he didn’t want me dead.
Marco took the turn toward Ewing, and he picked up the radio and gave the dispatcher an ETA of twenty minutes. Both of us tensed as he took the twists and turns of the road, but it wasn’t until we were about halfway there, on a particularly twisty part of the road, that a black truck appeared in the rearview mirror.
“Marco.”
“I see it,” he said, sounding strained. He grabbed the radio receiver and told the dispatcher we were being followed by the suspect who’d run Jerry Nelson off the road, sharing the license plate number and Derek’s name and description. The dispatcher told him there had been a multicar accident north of Ewing, but they’d find a unit to send out.
“What’s that mean?” I asked, dismayed when I realized the black truck was gaining on us.
“It means we’re not likely to get backup soon.”
He took the next curve so fast the tires screeched on the pavement. Another one came up, and he took it just as fast, but when we got to a short straightaway, the truck had edged even closer.
Marco sped into the next curve, and the top-heavy Explorer felt unstable as he whipped around first that one and then another. A large delivery truck blew past us in the opposite lane, and the Explorer shook from the wind gust. Marco fought the wheel. We took one more curve before we reached the short downhill straight portion of the road. The black truck was only twenty feet behind us.
I turned around and saw Derek behind the wheel, a maniacal smile on his face.
“How did he find us?” I asked.
* * *
“Me,” Marco said. “I probably alerted him when I radioed dispatch. I knew it was a risk, but I wanted to keep them aware of what was going on in case we encountered some trouble, with Bart, or him and Louise.” He shot me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop. You did the right thing. I suspect he would have found us anyway. At least now if he manages to run us off the road, we won’t be missing for hours before anyone starts looking,” I said, gripping the door. “Just keep driving.”
We went through another set of curves before we came to a straightaway that stretched on for several hundred feet, trees on either side.
The truck sped up and slammed into our back bumper.
The Explorer shook and skidded to the side of the road before Marco righted it, but the truck hit us again, and Marco braked hard. The Explorer went sliding, weaving all over the road, then shot over the shoulder and down a ravine.
My seat belt locked, cutting into my neck, and I clutched the door and the console as we bounced down the hill and crashed into a tree.
Then everything faded to black.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Carly? Carly!”
I could hear Marco’s voice as he shook my shoulder.
I felt like my head had been split in two, and when I cracked my eyes open, the light made me want to close them again. There was an uncomfortable pressure on my chest, and my arms felt heavy. As I opened my eyes,