closed in around them, boughs scraping the car’s sides and blotting out the sky. Headlights washed through the back window as the SUV started up the hill.
On the downslope now, Sam started to accelerate, but immediately tapped the brakes as the road veered right and deeper into the trees. Behind them the SUV’s nose cleared the crest, went airborne, then slammed down again.
“He’s going to miss it,” Remi said.
She was right. Still bouncing from its impact, the SUV overshot the turn and skidded to a stop, its hood buried in the trees. Sam glanced in the mirror in time to see the SUV’s brake lights pop on just before the Lancia plunged down another slope. Sam caught a fleeting glimpse of washboard ruts ahead and shouted, “Hold on.” Wheels thumping and shock absorbers shrieking in protest, the Lancia bumped over the patch, then up another slope, down the other side, and onto a straightaway. Sam accelerated. Branches slapped at the windshield, pinecones bouncing over the hood and over the roof. The SUV reappeared behind them, its headlights bouncing wildly as Kholkov negotiated the washboard.
While more durable and powerful than the Lancia, the SUV was also two feet wider, a disadvantage Sam now saw was bearing fruit. Where the pine boughs had simply swiped at the Lancia, they were thrashing the SUV’s hood and into the hole where the windshield had been. Branches were snapping off, jutting from the grille, and becoming entangled with the windshield wipers. The headlights fell back.
“Sam, watch out!”
He tore his eyes from the rearview mirror in time to see a boulder looming ahead. He spun the wheel hard right, sending the Lancia in a sideways skid. The boulder filled Sam’s window. He stepped on the gas as the Lancia lurched forward, but not quickly enough. With a crunch, the rear quarter panel glanced off the boulder and the rear side window shattered. The impact spun the Lancia’s tail around, off the road, and under the pine boughs. The side bumper smashed into a trunk and they jerked to a stop. The engine sputtered and died. Pine needles rained down on the windshield.
“There goes our deposit,” Remi said.
“Everybody okay?” Sam asked. “Remi?”
“Fine.”
“Splendid,” called Umberto.
“Bianco?”
“Still napping.”
Out Sam’s window they saw the SUV’s headlights filtering through the trees. He turned the ignition. Nothing.
“Still in gear,” Remi said.
“Damn. Thanks.”
He put the shifter into park and turned the ignition again. The engine chugged and wheezed but didn’t catch. He tried again.
“Come on, come on. . . .”
Down the road the SUV was halfway down the straightaway and approaching the boulder.
The Lancia’s engine caught, revved up, then coughed out.
“Cutting it close, Sam,” Remi said, teeth clenched.
He closed his eyes, said a quick prayer, tried again. The engine caught. He shifted into drive, spun the wheel right, and accelerated back onto the road.
“Umberto, slow them down!”
“Okay!”
Umberto stuck his Luger out the window and squeezed off two shots, and then two more. The bullets thudded into the grille, shattering the driver’s-side headlight. The SUV swerved left, heading straight for the boulder, then jinked right. The side mirror scraped the rock, shattered, and bounced away into the darkness.
The SUV’s lights filled the Lancia’s interior. Sam squinted and slapped the rearview mirror off-angle. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a hand holding a gun jut through the windshield gap.
“Down, get down!” he yelled. Remi slid to the floorboards.
The gun roared from the SUV, muzzle winking from the darkened interior. Umberto poked his head up over the seat, said, “I’ll slow them down,” then leaned out the side window with the Luger.
“No, don’t!”
Two more shots. Umberto screamed and rolled back into the car. “I’m hit!”
“Where?”
“The forearm! I’m okay,” he gasped.
“The hell with this,” Sam muttered. “Brace yourselves!”
He stood on the brakes for a two count, then punched the gas again. The SUV skidded, swerved, then slammed into the Lancia’s bumper. Sam had timed it well, accelerating just before the moment of impact. They pulled ahead of the SUV: twenty feet . . . thirty . . . four car lengths.
“Whoa!”
Abruptly, the trees disappeared from either side of them.
Remi popped her head up. “Oh, no!”
The Lancia’s wheels thumped over a berm and they were airborne. Open space loomed in the windshield. The Lancia landed again and bounced, the tires spraying gravel.
“Shoulder!” Remi called.
“I see it,” Sam replied and spun the wheel left. The Lancia went into a tail skid. He eased right, compensating, then straightened out. Out Remi’s window a boulder-strewn embankment dropped several hundred feet into a ravine.
Engine roaring, Kholkov’s SUV sailed over the berm and slammed onto the road.
“He’s not going to make it,” Remi said.
“Let’s hope.”
The SUV went into its own skid, but Kholkov overcompensated. The passenger-side rear tire crunched into the rocks along the shoulder and slipped over the edge. Carried by its own momentum, the rear third of the SUV’s chassis scraped over the dirt, edging inch by inch over the precipice until it stopped, partially suspended in space.
Sam took his foot off the accelerator and let the Lancia coast to a stop. Fifty feet behind them the SUV was seesawing at the road’s edge. Aside from the faint rhythmic groaning of stressed metal, all was quiet.
Remi sat up, looked around.
“Careful,” Sam whispered.
“Are we going to help them?” she asked.
A hand emerged from the darkened interior of the SUV and grasped a windshield wiper. A muzzle flashed from within the cab.
A bullet thunked into the Lancia’s bumper.
“The hell with them,” Sam said and stepped on the accelerator.
“That’s gratitude for you,” Remi said. “We could have bumped them into that ravine.”
“Something tells me we’re going to wish we did.”
CHAPTER 28
GRAND HOTEL BEAUVAU VIEUX PORT, MARSEILLE, FRANCE
Even as Sam tipped the bellhop and shut the door behind him Remi was dialing the iPhone. Selma answered on the first ring. “Safe and sound, Mrs. Fargo?”
“Safe and sound,” Remi replied as she sat on the bed and kicked off her shoes. “Now will you tell me why we’re in Marseille?”
After leaving Kholkov and his mustachioed partner teetering on the precipice, they’d driven at the Lancia’s
