Right in front of the car.
Staring at me with victorious eyes.
Thinking he’d won.
But he hadn’t won.
And I’d never felt more kindred to Coast as I did right that second.
Because I was driving a weapon.
And I was going to drive it right over the bastard who was threatening me and my baby.
If he died, he died.
I saw his smirk die as he saw the car lurch forward.
He threw his body to the side.
Mostly out of the way.
But I still felt a slam as my car collided with some part of him.
I didn’t know what.
I didn’t care.
All I cared about was that he was out of my way.
There was no time for relief, for a feeling of victory, though.
Because his friend had gone to get the car.
And the absolute last thing I needed was a car chase through the roads of Golden freaking Glades.
One of the several perks to my job, though, was that I knew every single street around the area like the back of my hand.
So I flew down the street, refusing to look in the rearview, to see if I was being followed, knowing that if I was, I would panic, I would make mistakes.
I forced myself to focus, to avoid the next side street because it ended in a dead end. Then the next one too because it only looped back to the same street once again.
The third road was the sweet spot, cutting down out of sight from the side street, then spitting us out on the main drag out of the area.
My hands slipped on the wheel, making me wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts one by one.
“Shh, baby, shh,” I called to the hysterical Lainey. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
She had to be.
I turned down another street, knowing it ran parallel to the main road and that I could cut back at any time, but it would be more rural, so I could be sure if someone was following me.
What did I do?
Did I drive to the closest police station? Tell them I was being followed?
But what then?
Admit that I’d run one of them over?