Quiet.
Alexis said, ‘You couldn’t imagine a world without you in it.’
Heidi pursed her lips.
Then smiled.
No reason to smile.
Until Alexis felt the gun barrel soft against the back of her own head and understood.
How had Petr snuck back up on her? That big stumbling buffoon couldn’t have closed the gap.
Then a voice that certainly wasn’t Petr’s said, ‘Alright. Party’s over. Now let’s lower that gun real slow.’
American, with a Boston accent. Party’s ovah.
She didn’t need to turn around to know it was Frankie Booth.
67
Petr’s car tore onto Washington Avenue, missing a white Tesla by inches.
Air hissed, tyres screeched, horns blared. The vehicle swerved violently and then slowed a touch, like the near-miss had truly rattled him. King watched it all play out and leant heavier on his accelerator, taking the same risk, if not greater.
He had to.
Miraculously he found a gap in the oncoming traffic and barrelled through into the other lane. It concerned him that the roads were still busy this late at night, but he guessed that in hyper-capitalist San Francisco, peak hour started earlier and finished later.
King’s guts twisted, but not from the avoided collision.
He didn’t know if he’d made the right call. He wouldn’t until it was too late. He couldn’t spin a U-turn and gun it back to the flood control channel, not now. If doubt made you change your mind in the heat of the fight, it usually led to you making two terrible decisions instead of one mediocre one. So he committed to the pursuit, but the possibility that Alexis was in danger gnawed away in the back of his head. Danny would do what King had asked. He’d bunker down and keep his head down until it was safe. But if Alexis saw an opportunity, she would’ve pounced. She must have. There was no other reason for Petr to be fleeing. The Russian hadn’t banked on another pursuer. He’d cut his losses and stolen Frankie’s car right as it pulled up before he noticed King careening toward it.
It might’ve been his imagination playing tricks on him, but as they roared into the loop that merged onto I-880, King swore he noticed Petr driving safer. Obviously the Russian was still dozens of miles per hour above the speed limit, but he wasn’t throwing his life into every turn anymore.
Either the near-collision with the Tesla had spooked him or…
King remembered what Alexis had said. He’s coked up, erratic. I could hear it over the phone.
She’d told him that maybe thirty minutes ago.
So the cocaine in Petr’s veins could be fading, dissipating, its effects wearing off.
King processed that, then reduced his own level of risk in turn. He didn’t slow down, but he checked the interstate traffic before he surged forward across three lanes to stay on Petr’s tail. He could’ve nearly broken the old car apart in an attempt to close the gap, but he held off. It went against all his programming. Intuition told him it was the right call.
He kept the speedometer at a hundred miles per hour and hoped the engine didn’t give out on him. At this speed the interstate lights were a golden blur, the road a treadmill cranked up to maximum. Petr held the same speed in Frankie’s car, maybe a couple of hundred feet ahead. Neither of them swerved into other lanes. Theirs was clear, and they whipped by staggered traffic on either side, travelling nearly double the speed of every other car on the road.
King bided his time.
Took no offensive action.
His brain screamed to get this done, that the longer he dragged out a high-speed vehicular pursuit, the greater the chances he’d end up smeared on the side of the road in a puddle of goo.
But he ignored it, and waited for the inevitable to happen.
It happened.
Maybe two minutes after they merged, Petr’s car jolted like its chassis had been electrocuted. The untrained eye would merely find it odd, but King knew what it meant. Petr had jerked the wheel in a frenzy, because the chemical top-up had just hit his bloodstream. King knew if the old dog used cocaine to amplify his jobs then it’d be ingrained into habit, and he wouldn’t be able to function in combat without it.
All King had needed to do was wait for Petr to take another hit.
Then Petr started taking risks, just as King imagined he would. The Russian swerved the car across two lanes, climbing to nearly a hundred and ten miles an hour, and whipped by a couple of vehicles travelling the speed limit. He deliberately attempted a close call to lose King in the rear view, but King didn’t need cocaine to take the same level of risk.
Putting his life on the line was as simple as clockwork these days.
He climbed to a hundred and ten too, giving the engine all it had, and mirrored Petr’s actions by crossing the lanes. He avoided the same two cars by a hair and then pushed faster, refusing to accept any slack. He maxed the speedometer by keeping his foot crushed against the pedal. He fought to keep the rattling vehicle on the road, let alone travelling in a straight line.
But he closed in on Petr.
The Russian panicked, but had to touch the brakes when a semi-trailer and its cargo loomed to their left, travelling under the speed limit. Its right-hand blinker flashed as they both surged toward it, a precursor to sliding into their lane. At the speeds they were doing, the driver might not see them coming, might trundle over just in time for both of them to rear-end its bumper and disintegrate into nothingness.
King thought, Now or never.
He didn’t brake.
It was a wild guess, but sure enough the truck stayed in its lane, the driver drifting slightly right and then snapping back into position when he saw the encroaching headlights coming toward him at a hundred and ten miles an hour.
If he’d been wrong, and had been forced to swerve, the
