Chapter 3 - The Highway Chase
We hit Interstate 84 just as the morning commuter traffic began to thicken. I drove a ten-year-old Honda Civic with a dented rear bumper—nothing fancy, nothing that drew attention, but dependable. My purse sat on the passenger seat, containing our passports, birth certificates, a burner phone Officer Vance had handed me before dawn, and a backup portable GPS tracker I had ripped from the glove compartment and tossed into the bottom of my bag just in case they tried to track my personal phone.
"Are we playing hide and seek?" Lily asked from the backseat, her nose pressed against the glass as suburban strip malls gave way to rolling green hills and dense pine forests.
"Something like that," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.
For the first twenty miles, the traffic behind us looked ordinary: delivery vans, commuters in sedans, an occasional semi-truck hauling lumber. But as we passed the second highway interchange—the one leading toward the state line and Sarah’s small university town—a dark gray SUV slipped into the lane three car lengths behind us.
It was the same make and model as the vehicle that had lingered outside our house at dawn.
My pulse spiked, hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. I didn't panic; I calculated. If they had placed a tracking device in the dress, who was to say there wasn't another one hidden somewhere in the car? Or worse, had they managed to clone my phone’s location data through the carrier network?
I checked the dashboard clock: 9:42 AM.
We were still forty miles from the rest stop where Sarah was supposed to meet us. If I stayed on the interstate, the gray SUV would eventually box me in or force me off the road in a stretch of highway where cell reception dropped to zero.
"Hang on, Lily," I said sharply, flicking my blinker and jerking the steering wheel hard to the right, cutting across two lanes of traffic to take the Exit 44 off-ramp for Old Mill Road.
The Civic’s tires squealed in protest as we rocketed down the off-ramp, taking the sharp curve at sixty miles per hour. In the rearview mirror, the gray SUV reacted instantly, swerving across the painted gore zone to follow us off the highway.
Old Mill Road was a narrow, winding two-lane blacktop that cut through the old industrial logging district—abandoned mills, overgrown timber yards, and thick stands of oak and pine that blocked the autumn sunlight. It was a local shortcut, poorly paved and completely devoid of police patrols.
The SUV closed the gap rapidly, its high beams flashing a blinding warning through our back window.
Honk! Honk!
"Mommy, they're right behind us!" Lily cried out, turning around in her booster seat. "Why are they following us?"
"Look at your book, sweetie, don't worry about them!" I shouted over the roar of the engine as I pushed the accelerator to the floor. The Civic groaned, hitting seventy as we crested a steep hill and plunged into a thick canopy of trees.
Ahead was a sharp ninety-degree turn known locally as Dead Man’s Curve, flanked by an old rusted guardrail and a steep drop into a rocky creek bed.
I knew this road. My father used to bring me out here to teach me how to drive stick-shift when I was sixteen, barking instructions from the passenger seat about weight distribution and traction control. The irony tasted like ash in my mouth: the man who taught me how to survive these roads was now the one trying to run me off them.
As we approached the curve, I didn't brake. Instead, I downshifted manually, felt the transmission catch, and yanked the steering wheel hard left, throwing the Civic into a controlled drift across the damp asphalt just as the tires lost momentary traction on a carpet of fallen leaves.
The car fishtailed, the rear bumper grazing the rusted guardrail with a screech of tortured metal, before gripping the road and shooting forward down the straightaway.
May you like
Behind us, the gray SUV took the curve too fast. The driver slammed on the brakes, but momentum and the wet leaves betrayed them. The heavy vehicle skidded sideways, its front bumper smashing violently into the guardrail, sending a shower of orange sparks into the brush before it stalled across both lanes.
I didn't look back. I kept my foot down, watching the speedometer climb as we raced toward the state line and freedom.
