Free Shattered by Dean Koontz Page B

shoulder of the road,” Alex said, lightly pumping the power brakes.
        “Why?”
        “To see what he does.”
        “You think he'll stop behind us?” Colin asked.
        “Maybe.” Doyle sincerely hoped not.
        “He won't. If he really is an FBI man, he'll be too smart to fall for that kind of trick. He'll just zoom on by as if he doesn't notice us, then pick us up later.”
        Alex was too tense to play the boy's game. His lips set in a tight, grim line, he slowed the car even more, looked back and saw that the rental van was also slowing down. His heart beating too rapidly, he drove onto the burm, gravel crunching under the wide tires, and came to a full stop.
        “Well?” Colin asked, excited by this turn of events.
        Alex tilted the rear-view mirror and watched the Automover pull off the highway and stop just a quarter of a mile behind them. “Well, he's not an FBI man, then.”
        “Hey, great!” the boy said, apparently delighted by the unexpected turn the day had taken. “What could he be?”
        “I don't like to think about that,” Doyle said.
        “I do.”
        “Think quietly, then.”
        He let off the brake and drove back onto the interstate, accelerated smoothly into the traffic pattern. Two cars came between them and the van, providing an illusory sense of isolation and safety. However, within a very few minutes the Chevrolet passed the other vehicles and insinuated itself behind the Thunderbird once more.
        What does he want? Doyle wondered.
        It was almost as if the stranger behind the wheel of the van somehow knew of Alex Doyle's secret cowardice and was playing on it.
        The land was now even flatter than it had been, like a gigantic gameboard, and the road was straighter and more mesmeric.
        They had passed the exit ramp for Effingham; and now all the signs were warning far in advance of the connecting route for Decatur, and marking the tens of miles to St. Louis.
        Alex kept the Thunderbird moving five miles faster than the speed limit, sweeping around the slower traffic but staying mostly within the right-hand lane.
        The van would not be shaken.
        Ten miles after their first stop, he slowed down and pulled over to the burm again, watched as the Chevrolet followed suit. “What the hell does he want?” Doyle asked.
        “I've been thinking about that,” Colin said, frowning. “But I just can't figure him.”
        When Doyle took the car back on the road again, he said, “We can make more speed than a van like that. Lots more. Let's leave him in our dust.”
        “Just like in the movies,” Colin said, clapping his hands. “Tromp it down all the way!”
        Although he was not as pleased as Colin was about the prospect of a high-speed escape and pursuit, Doyle gradually pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor. He felt the big car tremble, shimmy, then steady down as it raced toward the performance peak which was being demanded of it. In spite of the Thunderbird's nearly airtight insulation, the road noises came to them now: a dull but building background roar underlying the rhythmic pounding of the engine and the shrill, protesting cry of the gusting wind which strained through the bar grill.
        When the speedometer registered a hundred miles an hour, Alex looked in the mirror again. Incredibly, the Chevrolet was pacing them. It was the only other vehicle in sight which was using the left-hand lane.
        The Thunderbird picked up speed: one-oh-five (with the road noise like a waterfall crashing down all around them), one-fifteen (the shimmy back, the frame sighing and groaning), then the top of the gauge, beyond the last white numerals and still moving, still increasing speed…
        The median posts flashed past in a single, faultless blur, a wall of gray steel. Beyond that wall, in the eastbound lanes, cars and trucks went past in the opposite direction as if