Page 145 of Rear View
“No, Xavier, I—”
“We’re good, you and me,” he said, the words thick. “We’ll always be good. Never doubt that, yeah.”
The spotlight from the helicopter left Barlowe’s car and tracked to something that approached us from behind.
Barlowe’s eyes darted to the rear view. I spun in my seat to see what was happening. The loud cracking rumble of an engine carried up the mountainside. A car drifted around the switchback behind us, snow arcing high in its wake. That spotlight caught on its neon green shade and decals…when it could keep up.
Xavier.Xavier!
My heart pounded in my chest, beating against my ribs.
Farther below, the cops climbed, headed our way. Barlowe shifted, his arms straight and hands locked on the wheel as his savage stare fixed ahead of us. He had no more options. No way out. Which left only one of two possibilities on the table: surrender, or—
I followed his line of sight toward the jagged rock face to the right, then to the sparse trees and empty air of the mountainside to the left, before landing on the guardrail several hundred feet away—one with a devastating cliff beyond it.
Barlowe hit the gas harder. He wasn’t slowing.Why isn’t he slowing?
My lungs seized. The cliff. Oh, God. Thecliff! “No, Barlowe. Don’t do it! No, no,no!” My voice broke as I cried, “Xavier!”
His answer was a low rumble through the speaker. “I’m comin’, darlin’!”
Barlowe laughed. “I’m sure you are, Xavier. But you won’t get to her. Not in time.”
“No matter how this shakes out,” my rally driver vowed, “you die tonight.”
“I’m well aware of my fate…and hers.” Barlowe hit the gas again. “Before this ends, I wanted you to know she’s mine. You had her for a while, but your time’s up. And you’ll never have her again. I wanted you to hear her voice. Wanted you to hear her beg so you spend the rest of your life with the echo of her cries in your mind.”
My hands flew to my mouth. “Please, Barlowe,don’t!”
“CHRIST!” Xavier said, “I’m almost there, Ryah! I’m fuckin’ comin’!”
His rally car sealed in, but he couldn’t stop us. Barlowe closed in on the guardrail. That cliff.
Three hundred feet.
I needed to say it. To tell him. My words trembled when I breathed, “I love you, Xavier.”
“Fuckin’ hell. I lov—”
Barlowe cut the call.
“NO!” I screamed. I wanted to hear him say it. One more time. I needed to!
His smile was feral and vengeful and resigned. “Let him live with knowing he never said it back.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks, staining my skin with that agony. I reached for his phone to call Xavier back, but Barlowe snatched it away.
Do something, Ryah!
Maybe if Barlowe had come for me before my life had changed, before my heart started beating again, before I’d met Xavier, maybe then I’d have rolled over and died. But it wasn’t before. And I wasn’t the same.
When Xavier had lost his brother, he hadn’t quit. He’dused it to break free. I wasn’t strong like him, but that didn’t mean I was out of options.
Barlowe had taunted me. Led me where he wanted until he’d cornered me like a pathetic little mouse.
But I wasn’t pathetic anymore.
My gaze raked over the steering wheel and his seat belt before it landed on him.
