Page 12 of Saving the Last Heir
Sweat ran in rivulets down my neck and back as I took the twisting turns of the road that prevented me from getting the car back up to speed.
From my right, an inky black shadow burst from a side street. The Maserati.
“Shit,” I cried, swerving away from him so he couldn’t side-swipe me.
“You’re dead, motherfucker,” the driver screamed out the open window. “You arefuckingdead.”
Swallowing and nearly choking from my dry mouth, I hit the gas and took the very next turn. Now that I understood the car’s size and weight, I’d gotten a handle on it. With this turn, I used the heft of the car as well as its power, and feathered the brake and gas together, pushing into a controlled spin.
The shifters chasing me fell for my feint. They slammed on their brakes to follow me. Instead, they slid by, slowing to a complete stop as they overshot the road. The Ferrari slid farther than the other and hit the curb, front tires exploding. The nose of my car faced the direction we’d come from, and I stepped on the gas, barreling down the street and flying by the construction crew, who looked on in shock. The wind from my passing blew one’s baseball cap off his head.
The Maserati made a quick, tire-squealing turn and rocketed after me, coming alongside me on the driver’s side. Again, the window rolled down, and a big guy acted like he was going to climb out and jump onto my own car. A glance at the speedometer told me we were going nearly a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour. This guy was fucking nuts.
“Don’t do it,” I shouted, though I doubted the guy could hear me through the closed window and the roaring wind.
As if emboldened by my warning, he pulled a knife from a sheath on his boot as the driver swung his wheel. The car and the psycho hanging out the window lurched toward me.
I yanked my wheel to the right, and a loudpingechoed from outside. My stomach twisted as the driver’s side mirror spun away into the night after striking a light pole.
“Fuck!”
I waited until the driver swung toward me again and slammed all my weight on my brakes.
My chest lurched against the seatbelt, and the car itself shuddered under the sudden stop. The Maserati swung hard, wanting to nudge me off the road, but all it found was empty air. The guy hanging out the window shifted to his wolf form and leapt free of the car, slamming into the passenger window of a parked Honda. The glass shattered from the impact. The Maserati jumped the curb, struck a pickup truck, and flipped onto its roof.
Exhaling in relief, I gunned my engine again, glancing back to make sure no one was following. Rather than head straight for the interstate and home, I took a circuitous route until I parked at the rear of an old gas station with boarded-up windows.
I got out of the car and walked around it, breathing deep trying to calm my nerves. Remarkably, there was no damage other than the mirror that had been sheared off. There were a few small scratches around it, but nothing major. The problem was, this wasn’t how Joseph wanted the car. He said not a speck of dust,not a single scratch. I’d have to get this fixed before I turned it over.
Pulling my phone out, I did a quick search, looking for garages nearby that could handle something of this caliber. My hands shook as the adrenaline faded from my system, but scrolling through the internet actually helped me ease back down.
Finally, I found a place that looked like a possibility, and it was only a couple miles away. The website showed a bunch of old-school custom muscle cars and higher-end luxury sedans. Tuyuc Auto Services. That was where I’d have to go. There was no time to waste. My sister’s life depended on it.
4
SHYANNE
Iglanced at the clock on my desk. The digital numbers glared at me. One-fifty in the morning. My eyes itched from exhaustion, but I needed to get this finished before I went home for the night. I could sleep later, though the lines on the spreadsheets were beginning to waver and blur no matter how hard I focused on them.
Picking up a new work order, I checked the estimate and the cost of supplies, praying we’d gotten it right. This was a big one. One of the starting linebackers for the Texans had purchased a vintage Porsche 356 Roadster at auction. The thing was a shell that needed to be completely rebuilt. He’d chosen our shop based on our past work. If we did a good job on this, then there was a chance that our star might rise and we’d get even more high-end work.
Dad had started the garage back when he’d been a cocky twenty-year-old with a box of tools and a hope and a dream. He’d begun by doing oil changes and tire rotations for local people while he enhanced his skills. Then he moved on to bodywork, engine rebuilds, and transmission overhauls. By the time I was tenyears old, he was working on classic cars and high-end luxury stuff. There was real money in that, but our location wasn’t great, and we’d had a few assholes who screwed us over. One of those assholes had been running some sort of Ponzi scheme. Dad had taken on a full rebuild of an eighty-five Mustang as well as a custom transmission for a mint condition ninety-eight Acura NSX. We’d been halfway through with both when the IRS had seized everything and the guy went to jail, leaving us with no payment and not even the chance to sell the cars off to recoup our losses. We’d already been in the hole due to the loss of a longtime customer, and that had put us deeper into financial trouble.
“Boss, do you need anything else? I’m heading home.”
I flinched. “Jesus, Carlo!” I gasped and put a hand to my chest. “Why the hell are you still here? I thought everyone went homehoursago.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry. I was out back in the storage building doing inventory. I thought you knew.”
“Carlo, it’s almost two in the morning. That could have waited until tomorrow.”
He grinned. “Better to get it done sooner, right?”
Sighing, I opened my mouth to agree, then frowned and glanced at my computer again. “Hang on, I signed off on payroll three hours ago.”
Carlo’s smile dipped.
I narrowed my eyes. “You were clocked in while you were doing that, weren’t you?”
