checking our phones, the white Porsche has reversed all the way to the other side of the center circle, turning around and then plowing through the wall of tires to get back to the track.
“Aaron, the Porsche,” I call out, but there isn’t much he can do. He’s going too fast to slow down, and the road is surrounded by fencing on the left side for a good quarter of the track before it opens to the woods. With the Porsche waiting on the right, and the other cars behind him, Aaron’s only choice is to go forward.
He guns it, but whoever’s driving the white Porsche is ready. They shoot onto the track and clip the front of the Camaro, causing it to spin in the mud, tires churning uselessly.
“Aaron!” I scream, even though I know I can’t help him from here. I watch in horror as the rear end of the Camaro slams into the fence, and the other cars swarm around it like flies to a corpse. Shit, shit, shit. I shove my way out of the car, but Victor is already cursing and hopping down from the roof. He takes off running with his rifle by his side.
“Stay here!” he commands me, but I’m not about to let Aaron be curb-stomped by Mitch’s crew.
“Bernadette,” Oscar warns when he sees that I’m about to make a break for it. I ignore him, taking off after Vic with the phone clenched in my hand, my gun bouncing against my back. I can hear Oscar’s footsteps as he curses and follows after me, grabbing onto my arm just as the window on the driver’s side of the Camaro is smashed in.
The Charter Crew converges as Aaron is yanked out of the broken window and thrown to the ground in a sea of angry fists and boots. Even from here, I can see blood.
“Let go of me, Oscar!” I snarl, trying and failing to pull from his grip. He jerks me back, wrapping an arm around my neck and effectively trapping me against him.
“Just wait,” he snaps back at me, his own heart thundering like crazy against my back. That terrifies me, feeling Oscar’s pulse race like that. He’s acting like everything’s under control, but his heart and his breathing say otherwise.
Callum appears like a specter on top of the fence. Likely he’s just climbed it. He doesn’t hesitate before rising to his feet atop the narrow metal pole. Without a second of hesitation, he lifts his rifle up and shoots one of the boys in the back of the head.
Blood spatters everywhere, showering the rest of the crew in crimson.
That gives them pause.
“What the fuck?” one of the guys growls out, whipping a semi-auto out from his waistband. For a split second, I have a straight view to Aaron, lying in the mud and bleeding. As I watch, he struggles to his feet, taking advantage of the confusion as he pushes up to a standing position and takes off like a shot.
He’s clearly injured but running off adrenaline as he sprints for a rusted hole in the fence and dives underneath, scrambling to his feet and continuing on without a hitch. I breathe a small sigh of relief as Oscar releases me, but this isn’t over yet, and we both know it.
Victor is now standing next to the fence on our side, waiting to see if it’s worth it for him to start running over there. But Cal just adjusts the barrel of his rifle and shoots the boy with the gun directly in the face. It’s fucking brutal; he is fucking brutal. He starts to pick them off one by one as they shout and scatter, deciding it’s better to flee than to try to shoot him.
As soon as he has an opening, Callum hops down, yanks open the door to the Camaro and climbs in. Off he goes, heading into the woods after Aaron.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Victor snarls as pandemonium breaks out on the racetrack. He turns back around and comes jogging toward us, clearly furious at me for even having made it this far. “Where is Hael?” he snaps, just before our redheaded friend appears from the direction of the snack bar area.
“Man, what a clusterfuck. I got one car done. One.” Hael grits his teeth, but there’s no time for us to sit here and lament the failure of our plan. Instead, we haul ass back to the Mercedes, climb in, and book it the fuck