Page 86 of Lone Star

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Axelle had her foot on the gas before Michelle had her door shut. By the time the latch clicked into place, as Michelle was opening her mouth to say, “Go!” Axe was already gunning it.

The tires screeched when they grabbed pavement, but they were new, and they did grab. The GTO spun out in a wide arc, and then launched like a rocket, engine roaring.

She’d spent the last ten minutes quietly terrified, hearing gunshots ring out inside the garage, heart pounding as she worried about Eden, worried about the biker queen in the seat beside her. She badly didn’t want to have to tell an MC president that she’d gotten his pregnant old lady killed.

But now that she was driving, the GTO’s familiar vibrations shuddering through her bones, she’d slipped into that zone of perfect calm. She felt like a surgeon: precise, expert, balanced. Her pulse had slowed, her breathing evened, and she felt damn-near invincible.

She swung them into the short driveway of the garage, racing for the street.

“Car coming up on the right,” Michelle warned.

“I see it.” One of the black Mercedes that had pulled up behind the garage. Sleek, and powerful, but it didn’t have the jump on her.

She did a fast check for traffic on the road – and it was a busy one, in this industrial section of town – and spotted cars coming from both directions. She had time, though; cranked the wheel and floored it.

“Shit,” Michelle whispered.

The girl with pink and green-tipped hair let out a quiet shriek in the back.

“It’s fine,” Axelle said, like she would have to a scared animal. “It’s fine, it’s fine.”

The GTO slid neatly out onto the road, and she accelerated away from the car behind them.

The Mercedes, though, had come at the road from a tricky angle, trying to rear-end her. She saw the impending crash in a quick glance at the rearview mirror. The Mercedes slammed into the car behind them, an ugly crumpling of hoods and fenders. She heard the awful crunch of it; a horn got stuck, blaring shrilly.

She kept going, eyes on the road.

“Oh my God,” the girl said again, twisting around to look at the back window.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Axelle asked. When she didn’t get an answer: “Girl with the hair. What’s your name?” She pressed the gas and crossed the double-yellow line to leap-frog around the slow car in front of them. An oncoming dump truck laid on the horn, and she slid neatly back into place just before the truck rushed past, the wind coming off its top rocking the GTO side-to-side.

“This is Gwen,” Eden said. She was sitting mostly on top of Jinx, Axelle saw with another mirror check – he was passed out – and fiddling with her gun, checking the magazine. “Gwen, meet Axelle and Michelle.”

“We’ve got a tail,” Michelle said. She held her own gun on her lap, grip white-knuckled despite the calmness of her tone.

Another mirror check revealed the cool blue headlights of the second Mercedes, two cars back, but already trying to pass one.

“I see ‘em.”

There was a Dairy Queen up ahead on the left, with cars clogging the parking lot – but a clear lane through the drive-through.

“Hold on.”

Axelle cut the wheel hard, and steered through a tight gap between the two oncoming cars. The second one laid on the horn, and she caught a glimpse of the driver’s big-eyed, furious face before she slipped up the exit ramp of the drive-through and hit the gas again. The GTO gave a low, glad growl that echoed off the brick of the building and the retaining wall that hemmed in the drive-through.

A car was just pulling up to the order menu when they reached it, and the driver had to swerve and slam on the brakes to avoid them.

“Christ, sorry,” Michelle said, as if talking to the other car.

Behind the Dairy Queen, an open lane between two dumpsters fed into the bank next door. Thank God for interconnected parking lots. Axelle gunned for it, and swung a hard right, which aimed them at the four stalls of the bank’s drive-through teller setup.

“Watch the stanchions,” Michelle advised. She nearly sounded excited.

“We’re fine,” Axelle said, and threaded the needle perfectly through one lane. Then it was follow the arrow, down and out, and a big, swinging skid out onto the road again, a four-lane this time, cars swerving, braking, and honking as they blasted through.

“Have you ever crashed doing this?” Michelle asked, definitely excited now.

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