Free Bring Him Back by Scott Mariani

locked and washed out from under the machine as it toppled over with a scraping clatter. The rider tumbled to the road, but sprang up again almost instantly, and Ben could see he wasn’t hurt. No time to hang around and help the guy straighten his bent handlebar. Drew and Carl were getting away.
    Cursing and ignoring the pain from his scraped knee, Ben ran on after them. People stared and pointed. The motorcyclist yelled after him. Ben lost sight of the father and son among a crowd of shoppers, then saw them again, fifty yards further up the street, battling against the tide of pedestrians. Drew had lost his hat, revealing the black-dyed hair beneath. There was nowhere they could run. Ben sprinted up the road, avoiding the pavement. He could catch them.
    A guy in a florid shirt was getting into a white open-top Ferrari that was parked at the kerbside. Drew grabbed him by the collar, spun him away from the car, snatched the key from his hand and leapt behind the wheel, dragging Carl in with him. The car roared into life and took off with a squeal, leaving snakes of rubber on the road and its owner standing bellowing and shaking his fist.
    The Ferrari came belting down the street towards Ben, and he bounded onto the kerb to get out of its way. He caught a glimpse of the boy gaping at him from the passenger seat as the car streaked past, heading back the way they’d come, towards the straight and past the scene of yesterday’s crash.
    Ben stood in the gutter, helplessly staring at the disappearing car. People were looking and pointing in alarm. The Ferrari’s owner was screaming murder. It wouldn’t be long before the police turned up, bristling with weaponry.
    Ben had little chance of catching Drew now, but went sprinting down the street after the Ferrari anyway, yelling at frightened pedestrians to get out of his way and making them scatter. Ahead, a little old woman emerged from a fashion boutique laden with boxes, and he almost ran right into her. ‘Watch where you’re going, asshole!’ she shrieked at him. Across the pavement, a chauffeur in uniform and cap was opening the back door of a stately Rolls Royce to let her in. Its engine was purring softly.
    ‘Thanks for the ride,’ Ben said to her, and before the chauffeur could stop him, he jumped into the Rolls and floored the accelerator. The car was ungainly but powerful, and Ben was pressed into the red leather of the driver’s seat under the acceleration. The swinging open back door scraped a lamppost and crashed shut. Glancing in the mirror, he could see the little old woman and the chauffeur standing speechless on the pavement.
    The Ferrari had long since vanished around the hairpin bend at the bottom, past the café. Ben gunned the Rolls down the straight at full throttle, overtaking everything in sight as if he was trying to re-enact the Grand Prix. But it was no racing car. As soon as Ben entered the bend and felt the heavy bodywork begin to pitch on its soft suspension, he knew it was about to go into a slide. He eased off the gas and changed course, clipping the corner and mounting the kerb. There was no avoiding the empty café tables in his path. The Rolls trampled several of them down. Another flew up onto the bonnet, smacked off the windscreen and went tumbling in his wake.
    He hit the gas again as the road straightened up ahead. Still no sign of the Ferrari. Unless—
    Yes, there it was, a long way up the road, speeding past the traffic. Ben was still in the chase. As he raced after it, he saw its brake lights flare as it stopped for a red light. Drew wasn’t exactly schooled in the art of urban high-speed pursuit, which only helped even the odds a little in Ben’s favour. The Rolls quickly caught up. He was thirty yards behind the Ferrari when the lights changed and he heard the rasp of its exhausts before it took off again like a bullet fired from a rifle.
    The Rolls sped through the junction after it, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car as Ben