Pop.
The car fishtailed wildly, and Terry fumbled the card and the open Scotch bottle down into the floorboards in favor of gripping at the seat for balance.
“What the fuck?”
“We blew a tire, sir,” his driver called, as he wrestled with the wheel. The car gave another lurch, and then slowed, and steadied. “I’ll have to pull over.”
“A tire.” Right. Yes. That was the pop that had sent his heart into his throat. Just a tire. He could feel it, now: thelub-lub-lubof the Town Car limping along. “I’ll call–”
His voice was drowned out by a roar, a growl that surged up on their left. An engine? He had a glimpse of a headlight, and then the driver’s side window fractured into splinters. There was another sound, one he couldn’t identify, then the bright red flare of a taillight, and the engine roared off ahead, into the night.
Just as his driver slumped over sideways, and the car surged forward.
Terry was so rattled it took him a moment to make sense of what was happening. To register the neat hole in the driver’s window, the dark spray of blood across the windshield. To realize that his driver had been shot, and that his foot, in death, had fallen heavy on the accelerator.
“Jesus…Jesus Christ–”
Scrabbling between the front seats, reaching for the wheel, the oak tree reared up in the headlights, and then…
Nothing.
For a while.
A noise woke him, which meant he wasn’t dead:ding-ding-ding-ding. It sounded…sounded like a car, when you opened the door with the key in the ignition.
He cracked his eyes open and then closed them again against the burn of the overhead lights.
He was in the Town Car. On his back half-between the front seats. On top of something lumpy.
The engine.
The gunshot.
His driver…
He tried to scramble up, but everything hurt, and he was so dizzy, and old besides – God, he was old, and he was going to die, wasn’t he? This was it. He was–
“Hello.”
His blood ran cold. One word.Hello. Like the card. And Terry knew. Heknew.
He forced his eyes open, blinked at the tears that gathered, and cried out in pain when he turned his head to look through the now-open driver-side door.
A wraith stood there, all in black, hair covered with it, face smeared with it. He caught a flash of white teeth, and the vivid shock of very blue eyes. “Hello,” the wraith said again, and for some reason, it was even more horrifying to realize he had a British accent. “Senator.”
A gloved hand darted into the car, and closed around his throat. It squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed…
And then it was dark.
~*~
The night stank of gasoline as Reese joined him, empty can clutched loosely in one gloved hand. Tenny gripped his cigarette with his teeth and peeled his own gloves off; stuffed them in his back pocket and pulled on fresh, free of Terry Windmere’s DNA. He’d burn the others later, when he tossed the gun he’d used.
Reese settled beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder. “You should have just shot him.”
“Probably, yeah. But this was more fun.” He fished a pack of matches from his jacket pocket. “Night night, Senator.” He struck one, and flicked it into the nearest puddle of gas; watched the flames light and go racing toward the car.
He bumped Reese’s elbow with his own. “Come on.” He threw up a salute for Evan, perched yards behind them in a tree, and turned around. “I’m hungry. What do you feel like?”