Free Runner by Thomas Perry Page B

road she had from driving it in the opposite direction and partly by staring down at the blur of lines coming at her from the darkness like projectiles, then slipping past her left tire. After a couple of minutes she caught herself letting the moonlight on a stretch of bare ground ahead fool her into interpreting it as part of the pavement, but she managed to correct the car's course and stay on the road. She looked into the rearview mirror for a second, but saw no sign of the cars from the roadblock, not even a glow of headlights approaching the top of the rise. Jane returned her eyes to the road ahead, and after the next turn, the rise was out of sight.
    A set of headlights appeared far ahead of them, then another set. "Two cars," said Christine. "Do you think it's the others?"
    Jane squinted at the two sets of headlights coming toward them. One car pulled to the left as though to pass, but it was the front car. Now there was one car coming at them in each lane. Jane switched on her headlights.
    The car approaching in Jane's lane blinked its high beams on, then off.
    Jane switched on her brights and left them on. She kept her foot on the gas pedal, maintaining her speed toward the car in her lane.
    "Don't play chicken with them!"
    "I'm not playing," said Jane.
    The pair of cars stayed together, streaking toward them. In one of the cars, the driver punched the horn three times, then stiff-armed it, holding it down so the sound started high and seemed to go down the scale as the cars approached.
    The row of four headlights kept growing bigger and brighter. The two cars seemed to be linked, impossible to separate, impossible to avoid. Christine put her hands in front of her face. "Oh God oh God," she said.
    The car in Jane's lane wavered a little, then altered its course slightly and moved to the shoulder of the road to allow Jane to pass between the two cars, but Jane muttered, "It's not that easy." She pulled onto the shoulder, too, so she was once again on a course to collide with the car.
    "Stop! You're crazy!" Christine shouted.
    The driver of the car that was approaching them had no choice except to veer farther to the left and sail off the shoulder in the only direction that was open, into the sloping field below the road.
    Jane and the remaining car passed each other at high speed, and she looked into the rearview mirror as she moved along the highway. The car in the field was stopped, enveloped in a cloud of dust. Jane couldn't tell how badly it was damaged. The car on the road pulled over. Its white backup lights came on, and it backed up until it was close to the spot where the other car had stopped. Jane saw the dome light go on and off, and someone ran from the car across the road, and then she lost sight of them.
    Jane drove faster now, searching for the junction she had remembered, and then took the turn. She glanced at Christine. "You okay?"
    Christine was breathing heavily, as though she had run a race. There were tears running from her widened eyes. "I can't believe you did that."
    "I didn't chase them. They chased us."
    "You know what I mean."
    "They're hired hands. That means they're willing to kill us for money. It doesn't mean they're willing to die for money."
    "You bet our lives on that? And my baby's life, too. You weren't just trying to get past. You wanted to force that car off the road."
    Jane turned to look at her in curiosity. "Of course." Then she returned her eyes to the road and kept driving.

    Carl McGinnis lay on his back, exactly where the white car had thrown him, on the damp, weedy slope beside the shoulder of the road. He could smell the sweet aroma of crushed plants near his head. He knew he was hurt badly. He suspected he might be in some kind of shock, and he suspected that if he moved what was waiting for him was pain, so he had not tried to move yet. Breathing was difficult, so he supposed he must have broken some ribs. He lay there staring up at the sky with an expression like a man