door of the shed opened, and two burly men stepped into the rain. They scanned the area. Maria crouched as low as she could manage and tried again. “God, I’m going to need some help starting this car.”
Her fingers were clammy as she gritted her teeth and turned the key again. The motor sputtered to life. “Yes!” she shouted. “Hang on, Hank. This is going to be bumpy.”
The men swiveled their heads toward the noise. The taller one reached inside his jacket. The shorter one with the build of a fire hydrant broke into a run.
Maria slammed the car into drive and peeled out from under the tree.
Through the smear of dirt and moisture on the windshield, she could see the men’s mouths drop open in surprise. The tall one had a couple of teeth missing on the bottom. He shouted something that she couldn’t decipher.
The car screeched around the side of the shack, tires slipping on the wet gravel. The men turned to follow her progress. A sudden whistle of air rushed through a round hole in the passenger’s-side window. Two more appeared in the front windshield.
Her jaw dropped open as her brain fought to make sense of the situation. “They’re shooting at us!” She wheeled the car onto the tarmac and floored the gas pedal. For a moment she considered doing a tight U-turn and driving right back into Tall Man and Fire Hydrant. That would really teach them a lesson. Of course, that would also give them a splendid opportunity to kill her and Hank. Just take the chance God gave you to survive, Maria. Get out of here now.
She squished down as far as she could in the seat, expecting at any moment the agony of a bullet crashing into her skull. Then she headed toward the only way out of the nightmare: the winding road that the murderous men had taken on their way in.
As she started up the grade, she looked at her plane in the rearview mirror. The thought of leaving it sent a twist of pain through her heart. She had worked so hard for that beautiful machine, and it was everything to her: freedom, independence, escape. She hoped Jacko would at least close the hatch.
She dashed the tears from her cheeks. “Goodbye, old friend. I’ll come back for you as soon as I can, I promise.”
The rabbit sneezed from the backseat.
“It’s okay, Hank. We escaped from those guys, and we’re on our way…somewhere.” There was only one option at the moment so she pushed ahead as fast as she could. The grade grew steeper and more wooded as the Dodge bounced along.
Far below, the sedan was just leaving the runway.
Like an ugly black insect it began a merciless march up the slope, heading right for them.
TWO
Duke must be quite a character, Maria thought in the midst of her frantic getaway. The wobbling plastic flamingo swayed on the blue velvet dashboard. She wiped her damp palms on her pants and glanced down at the gas gauge, continuing to push the car as fast as she dared on the steep road. Three-quarters of a tank. That would be enough to get them to some kind of help, provided she wasn’t overtaken before she reached it.
The black sedan was a bigger car and she knew it wouldn’t take the grade as well as the Demon, but the men had determination stamped all over their shady mugs. The whole thing was ridiculously surreal, like a cheap dime-store novel. Did they really work for Shell, or was he an innocent in all this, too? Why were they still after her anyway? Surely they’d found their box of drugs. Did they need to kill her because she could identify them? She swallowed hard. If that was the case they would continue hunting her like a prized duck.
She gripped the wheel and pushed the car a little faster. There wasn’t any chance to turn onto a side road to lose them. She was hemmed in on both sides by dense shrubbery and massive pine trees. There was only one way out of the predicament and that was to get to the top of the mountain before they did. Hopefully there would be some sort of civilization on the other side. Or at least a working phone.
The sky was still heavy with moisture, but the rain had slowed to a trickle.
She knew they were rumbling through the foothills of the Cascades, but that was all she could be certain of. Mount Hood was the only other landmark, but the fog obscured the horizon under an impenetrable blanket.
The engine temperature gauge edged into the hot zone as they wheezed to the top of a steep grade. Maria used the wipers to clear some of the muck off the windshield. Drops of moisture made it through the bullet holes, and she wiped them away with her sleeve.
In a couple more yards she would have a good vantage point to see what lay below. There had to be a town, a gas station, something. Her excitement mounted as they crested the top. She leaned forward to get a better view of…
Nothing.
Nothing except for a vast expanse of wooded hills, a thin ribbon of dubious road and acres of spring wildflowers in a palette of pastel hues. If it hadn’t been so beautiful she would have cried. She flipped open her cell phone only to remember the battery was almost dead.
Resisting the temptation to smash her head against the steering wheel, she rolled down the window and listened, ignoring the mist that dampened her face. Maybe the men had given up. Maybe their car had died several miles back or they’d decided to return to the plane, figuring she’d head back to the airstrip.
The sound was soft but unmistakable, the faint clatter of an approaching motor. Her hands clenched the steering wheel. “This is bad, Hank. Really bad. We don’t have any choice. We’re going to have to make a break for it or we’re both going to be murdered.”
She hit the accelerator and took off down the road.
A quarter tank of gas later, they came to a turnoff. The signpost directed travelers to a series of small towns she had never heard of. One of the signs was pockmarked with bullet holes, making it practically unreadable. Her choices were few. Should she stay on the main drag or venture farther into no-man’s-land? She looked at the mucky road that led away into hills as green as cut emeralds. Gently she eased the Demon onto the turnoff.
Time ticked by in agonizing slow motion. It was pouring when the sun slowly mellowed into the horizon. Maria’s jeans were damp from the water coming in the windshield holes, her skin chilled.
“Does it ever stop raining in Oregon?” She blinked hard, trying to ward off the heavy blanket of fatigue. She longed to be back in Los Angeles, warm and completely insulated by a blanket of smog. Was it really only one day since she’d left her tiny apartment in California?
Three hours later she was…where? In backcountry Oregon during a torrential downpour, driving a car with a velvet dashboard and holes in the windshield. This whole thing had to be a bad dream, a nightmare really.
There had been no sign of the scary sedan men for the past few hours. She probably outwitted them with her “road less traveled” trick. Another bit of good fortune came when she’d found the phone charger in her backpack, the one with an adapter that fit into the cigarette lighter of Duke’s car. Hopefully she’d be able to make a phone call in a few hours as soon as she made it past the mountains, and the whole sorry nightmare would be over.
A rickety store nestled on the side of the road as they rounded a tree-lined curve. The sign read Food, Sundries and Gas. Her mood brightened. She wasn’t sure what a “sundry” was but the food part was definitely a welcome thought and she figured topping
