Page 47 of No Place Left to Hide

My hair whips around me as I pop my upper body through the sunroof. The wind forces tears to my eyes and I blink them away as fast as I can. The Bronco looms behind me, but I can’t see inside past the headlights. Not that I need confirmation. Only one person would be stupid enough to pull this shit.

I grip the first can, throw my arm back, and let it go. The can flies toward their windshield, but the Bronco dips to the left and it bounces off the side view mirror and vanishes into the darkness.

Fuck.

I toss the cans in my arms one by one, but somehow he manages to dodge all of them. I slide back down into the car to reload, barely holding back a scream of frustration.

“Brooke, wait! This is so not a good idea,” Jena yells, the second I’m back inside.

“When you come up with a solution that doesn’t involve me blowing up my whole life to make the Heck family feel better, I’m all ears. Until then…” I pop back through the sunroof and try again.

This time I anticipate the swerve and aim a little more to the left. The can hits metal, not glass, bouncing off the top right of their windshield frame. The next can misses the Bronco entirely.

Fuck my life.

I slide back through the sunroof and snatch up an armload of canned green beans and ravioli. Watch that fucker dodge all of these, rapid fire.

“Brooke!” Jena shouts.

I pause, crouched to pop up through the sunroof again. A can almost tumbles over my elbow, but I catch it. “What?”

“What if you make him crash? You could end up in even more trouble. We need to find a different way to stop him.”

“A broken windshieldishow we stop him. And if he crashes, he brought this on himself.”

I hop back through the sunroof. My face stings as my hair whips me in the face. I hurl one can after another at the Bronco, and when they swerve to avoid them, I aim for where I think they’ll swing back. One can misses. The second glances off the top of the windshield. The third hits the hood and bounces straight over the car. The fourth hits dead on, but it doesn’t damage the windshield. My arms start to ache.

The Bronco slows, dropping back a bit, and I hurl my last two cans at the same time with every bit of strength I have left in me. They soar through the air and hit one after another.

The first spiderwebs the glass.

The second goes straight through and into the passenger side of the cab.

The Bronco slams its brakes and suddenly there’s a hundred feet of space between us. I cheer, throwing my arms in the air, and drop back into the Subaru.

“I did it! I fucking did it! They’ll have to stop now!”

I look out the back window. The Bronco’s headlights disappear as we round the next corner. I wait several long seconds, but they don’t reappear.

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me and I scramble into the passenger seat. “We got him!”

Jena grins and lets off the gas. “Maybe. He might be back.”

“Not before we’re out of reach. He can only drive so fast on this highway, especially if he has to stop to kick out the windshield. There’s no way he’ll catch us before we can find help. Maybe a house with a landline, or we can—”

Jena’s still slowing, but we round the next S-turn going at least thirty miles an hour over the limit, and halfway through the curve, we blow past a police cruiser parked in a dirt turnaround by the side of the road. Red and blue lights flicker to life behind us. Followed by a siren.

“—get arrested,” I mumble.

Seventeen

Before

September 2nd

It takes another ten minutes to get the bleeding to stop. At first I think Claire must’ve clocked a vein, until I realizenot allthe blood is coming from my nose. Jena draws my attention to this when I make the mistake of sharing a secret smile with her in the wake of Claire’s veryloudexit. Jena screamed like a naked girl in a horror movie, which was a little dramatic in my opinion, but Dylan also looked a little green until I rinsed out my mouth in the sink.

“Let me see,” Dylan says when I’m done, stepping into my personal space for the second time tonight. He presses the edge of his thumb to my upper lip and tugs it up, with a wince. “She cut your lip on your teeth. I’m going to get you some more ice.”

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