Then she was winding her way through the growing crowd of college kids rushing into the Student Center to study, meet friends, grab a quick bite to eat, or kill time between classes. One…two…three…
“What?” Pink One screeched over the growing echo of voices filling the Student Center. “How did she… That can’t be right!”
Cheyenne ducked aside as a nineteen-year-old bro shoved his friend toward her, and she let herself smirk. I’d be the worst teacher in the world.
It took her fifteen minutes to walk back to her Focus in the student parking lot. She unlocked the driver’s side door and slipped the burner phone out of her pocket to check the time: 10:13 a.m.
“Great. I couldn’t drive two hours away in forty-seven minutes even if I had a Corvette instead of this thing.” She gave the Focus, with its peeling coat of matte paint and red-brown rust stains, a loving pat. “But I don’t need a car to get everywhere, do I?”
Shifting into her drow form for speed wasn’t an option in the packed student parking lot on a Wednesday morning. Cheyenne moved her backpack to the passenger seat, slipped behind the wheel, and started the car. “Okay. We’ll take turns.”
Chapter Fifty-One
The clock on her dash read 10:37 by the time Cheyenne pulled into the Mechanicsville Park & Ride off Interstate 295. She turned the car off and grabbed her backpack to stick it in the trunk. This time, she locked her car and took the keys with her. Almost got the cigarette smell out. Definitely don’t need anyone else squatting in my car for however long this stupid meeting with Rhynehart takes.
With a last glance at her car, she reviewed a mental checklist, then Cheyenne headed across the Park & Ride toward the long stretch of open partially landscaped grass along I-295. No one else occupied the lot, and she waited for a lull in the highway traffic. With no cars nearby, no one saw her transformation from pale skin and black hair to purple-gray skin and bone-white hair. She shook her hands out, the chains on her wrists clinking together, and broke into a dead run. The half-drow all but disappeared in a streaking blur of gray, black, and white, a handful of weeds and tall grasses ripping from the dry earth in the aftershock of her departure.
Cheyenne ran as fast as she could, considering the bullet wound in her hip was still giving her problems. The trees and bushes lining the highway appeared as a continuous line of green and brown. On her right, southbound traffic made a gray line in her peripheral vision.
Three minutes later, she paused and braced her hands on her thighs, gulping huge breaths of air. A giant black Ford with tires that belonged on a monster truck honked three times, the horn blaring as it passed her.
“Yeah, okay.” Cheyenne shook her head. “Idiot.”
Then she was off again. A Nissan Altima at a comfortable seventy in the sixty-mile-per-hour stretch of highway jerked left when a black, gray, and white blur shot past with a startling crack. The trees beside the highway bent toward the blur, leaves and pine needles stripping off the branches.
A residential painter’s van blared its horn as the Altima veered into the middle lane. The accountant behind the wheel shrieked and jerked her car back into the right-hand lane, and from there to her client’s office in downtown Richmond, she drove fifty miles an hour instead of seventy.
* * *
Cheyenne stopped several minutes later to take the exit from I-295 onto Route 207 toward Maryland. Her hip ached, but she couldn’t spare time to rest it. Breathing heavily, although less winded after her second stretch, she brushed her white hair out of her eyes and watched the uninterrupted traffic rushing past.
“Great. I get to cross the highway. Fun times.”
Cars honked as they passed, although whether it was at the chick standing dangerously close to the lane or at the person with purple-gray skin and pointy ears, she didn’t know.
Cheyenne slipped the burner phone out of her pocket. Okay, fifteen minutes. I can make it.
She watched oncoming traffic for a little while, then made her move. Another crack split the air over 207, and she darted out at the perfect time to avoid being taken out by a Bugatti Veyron barreling down the passing lane. The shockwave of her speed made the Veyron fishtail a little, but the driver corrected and floored the gas pedal to get away from whatever had nicked his rear fender.
Cheyenne sucked in a breath and pushed herself across the highway and down the on-ramp while avoiding two SUVs driving side by side in the middle and right-hand lanes. The man behind the wheel of the first SUV stared at her with a blank look, his index finger two knuckles deep in one nostril. The woman in the second SUV froze mid-shout, the light on her Bluetooth headset illuminating the side of her face, her right hand poised to slam down on her steering wheel. Cheyenne safely got past and sprinted onto the off-ramp for Highway 234.
The next time Cheyenne stopped to catch her breath, she was a few miles away from the spot Rhynehart had indicated in his text.
Not an address, but whatever. I can make it.
The air around her popped when she slowed, peppering her hair and face with leaves and twigs and discarded food wrappers. A semi barreling down the right-hand lane rocked sideways with the shockwave and laid on the horn for a full five seconds before it stopped its dangerous fishtail and corrected.
“Sorry.”
Another wave of leaves and trash fluttered around her as a second semi blasted past, and the half-drow stumbled into the shallow ditch on the side of the highway.
I have a whole new appreciation for roadworkers.
She pulled out the burner phone and puffed a massive sigh
