Instead of slowing down, the car continued to accelerate.
Chet felt a rush of adrenaline flow through him at the car’s strange behavior, but then figured out what must have happened.
The cruise control. He must have left it on and accidentally touched the Resume button.
But even as he pressed the brake to cut the speed controller out automatically and begin slowing the car, he realized that the cruise system didn’t work that way.
Whenever you came to a complete stop, the speed preset was automatically canceled. And if the engine was shut off, surely that would do it, too.
His right foot pressed down on the brake pedal, but instead of feeling the minute jerk as the cruise control disengaged and the engine, as well as the brakes, began to slow the car, he felt the engine fighting the brakes.
Jeanette glanced over at him worriedly. “Aren’t we going a little fast?”
Chet said nothing, pressing harder on the brakes. The car began slowing down, and the tension that had built up inside him began to ease. “Accelerator’s stuck, I think,” he muttered. “Probably something loose in the linkage. It won’t take more than a minute to fix if I’ve got a pair of pliers or a crescent wrench in the trunk.”
“Oh, Lord,” Jeanette groaned. “All we need right now is a big car repair bill.”
“There won’t be a bill,” Chet replied, his foot pressing yet harder as the engine continued to battle against the brakes. “If it’s the linkage, it’s hardly a problem at all.”
Suddenly he realized that the problem was more serious than he’d thought, for as the brakes heated up, they began to slip, and now the car was accelerating again.
Half a mile ahead of them was the first of the curves, as the road began snaking along a narrow cut carved out of the rock cliff that rose out of the sea.
“I’m trying to!” Chet snapped. “But the brakes are heating, and I’ve got to let up on them for a second.” He eased off on the brakes, and the car surged ahead, the engine roaring as it was freed of the drag provided by the brakes.
As Chet stared at it in sudden fear, the speedometer rose past sixty, then seventy.
“Chet, slow down!” Jeanette cried, sitting up straight in the seat and staring out the windshield at the sharp curve to the left that was only a few hundred yards ahead now.
Chet slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the car once more began slowing, but within a few seconds the brakes had overheated once more, and he felt them starting to fade away.
The speedometer needle dipped below seventy for a second, then once more began creeping upward.
Frantically, Chet jerked on the transmission lever, and when it failed to respond, tried to switch off the ignition.
The key refused to turn. The car seemed to be operating under its own volition.
They hit the first curve at seventy-five, Chet’s knuckles white as he clutched the steering wheel. The tires screamed in protest as they went into the turn, but the road was banked here, and the wheels held. Fifty yards farther on, the road twisted back to the right, and then, if Chet remembered right, went into the first of the hairpins, turning a full 180 degrees to head out on the northern wall of a deep cleft in the coastline.
The car survived the second curve, too, but both the Aldriches heard a violent grinding sound as they slued to the left, the rear fenders scraping against the low rock guard wall, the only thing protecting them from shooting off into the sea.
“Stop!” Jeanette screamed. “For God’s sake, do something!”
Chet got the car back into the right lane, but it was fully out of control now, still accelerating as it shot down a grade toward the hairpin turn and the narrow bridge that spanned the gap of the cleft at its tightest point.
“We’re not going to make it!” he shouted. “Get your head down!”
The car was doing nearly ninety when they hit the turn. Though Chet turned the wheel all the way to the lock, it wasn’t enough.
The front of the car nosed onto the bridge, but at almost the same instant, the rear wheels lost their traction and the big sedan spun out of control.
Jeanette’s side of the car slammed into the end of the concrete railing on the right side of the bridge, the door buckling in, the seat belt mounted in