Kelly nodded, grimly. “I know that, which is why I don’t want you in the car with me. Now move aside.”
Sarah hobbled away as the Sherpa rocketed towards them, its engine screaming. It was going very fast, and if Kelly was going to do what she thought she was, someone was probably going to get very badly injured. She could only prey it would be her wicked husband and not the kind woman detective who had just saved her life.
“I must be mad,” Kelly said as she engaged first gear, slipped the clutch and began to rev the car into the red. “Steady, steady,” she told herself, waiting for the optimum moment. If she moved too quickly, he would simply swerve around her and then he would be free.
The van was really motoring now, and she could see the driver’s face clearly enough to see that the bastard was smiling.
He thinks he’s going to get away, she realised. Well, we’ll see about that.
A chilling thought occurred to her; what if he had caused the explosions? What if he had deliberately blown up that building, killing her colleagues – her friends – in the process, just to evade capture? Suddenly, all that mattered was stopping him, even if it meant putting herself in harm’s way.
At the last moment, when the van was almost upon her, she lifted the clutch and floored the accelerator, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white. The wheels spun and the Escort surged forward into the path of the advancing Sherpa.
The sound of the impact was deafening from inside the Escort. As any science student knows, anything that has mass and velocity also has kinetic energy; the heavier a vehicle is and the faster it is travelling, the more kinetic energy it has. That’s all very well and good, but when said vehicle suddenly decelerates – as it does in a crash – the kinetic energy has to go somewhere. In this case, it went straight into the side of the Ford Escort, crumpling it into the shape of a boomerang.
Despite wearing a seatbelt, the violent momentum of the collision whipped Kelly’s head sideways, smashing it straight into the driver’s door window – and although the front impact airbag went off with a loud bang, deploying at 300 kilometres per hour, it did very little to help.
Everything went silent for a moment as the world around her froze. But that moment passed quickly, and then the world sped up with a vengeance. The frame of the Escort contorted around her as it was shunted sideways with tremendous force and, for a terrible moment, Kelly was convinced that the car would flip over and go into a roll. Her windshield seemed to disintegrate, showering her with glass fragments. The sound of metal twisting and shearing as the mangled frame of her car caved in around her was agonisingly loud – but Kelly was too busy drifting in and out of consciousness to pay much attention to any of this.
When she came around, seconds or hours later – she wasn’t sure – she found herself slumped forward in her seat. The car had stopped moving but she could still hear the engine clicking over, and steam was coming out of it. As her senses returned, the first thing Kelly noticed was the smell of radiator coolant; there was something else, too – something much stronger. It took a moment for her befuddled brain to process that the smell was leaking petrol. By some miracle, her car hadn’t rolled over. She groggily unfastened her seatbelt and forced open the driver’s door, which protested noisily. Somehow, she managed to drag herself out of the car, motivated by a fear that it might catch fire at any moment. She staggered around the front and, as a wave of dizziness swept over her, leaned on the bonnet to catch her breath.
◆◆◆
Inside the van, Pritchard’s chest slammed into the steering wheel during impact, knocking all the air out of his lungs, and breaking three of his ribs. His head collided with the inside of the windshield with a sickening thud, which seemed louder than the crash itself.
His ears were ringing as the van came to a jarring halt, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. It really hurt to breathe, and he suddenly coughed uncontrollably, covering the dash in frothy crimson. He knew he was badly injured. The blood he’d coughed up was most likely a result of a broken rib puncturing one of his lungs. He ignored the pain; he needed to keep moving or they would catch him and it would all be over. There was so much more than his freedom at stake if he failed to complete the fifth and final ritual.
What the hell had the brainless idiot driving the car that had just pulled across his path been playing at, he wondered? Not realising that the act had been deliberate. He hoped that they were in a far worse condition than him. Had it not been for his pressing need to get away, he would have gone after them with his knife.
Clutching his side, he stumbled out of the van and started to head for the road. And that was when he saw her, standing beside the bonnet of the little blue car he’d crashed into, swaying like a drunk.
“You!” he said, shocked to see the whore who had been with his wife when he returned from reconnoitring the warehouse. “What are you doing here?”
Kelly turned to face him. She had to squint to make him come into focus because her vision had gone all blurry. At the moment, there seemed to be two people standing in front of her, but then they merged into one. Why are your words so slurred, she wondered, feeling very confused, “and how are you making your voice echo like that? To her, he sounded like one of
