Marcus flinched as if struck. The cruelty of his actions over the past two years flashed before his eyes—the students he had beaten, the fear he had demanded, the sick pride he had taken in hearing people whisper his family’s name with dread. He had thought he was becoming a warrior. In reality, he had just been a spoiled attack dog on his father’s leash.
I’m sorry, Marcus whispered. I didn’t know. God, I swear to you, I didn’t know what was in those trucks.
Save the guilt, Dana said sharply. Look at the side mirror.
Marcus blinked, snapping out of his misery. He leaned toward the glass and looked into the dark distance behind them.
Two miles back, winding down the mountain pass through the trees, four pairs of high-intensity xenon headlights had just crested the ridge. They weren’t police cruisers—there were no flashing light bars, no sirens. They were moving at terrifying speed, accelerating down the wet asphalt like a pack of wolves hunting wounded prey.
Deputies? Marcus asked, his voice tightening.
No, Dana replied calmly. Deputies use standard halogen bars and cruiser searchlights. Those are heavy-duty tactical brush guards. Commercial haulers.
The words had barely left her mouth when the lead vehicle behind them crested the lower curve, its high beams slamming into their cab, blinding Marcus through the side mirror. It wasn’t an SUV. It was a massive, matte-black Peterbilt 379 semi-truck cab, stripped of its trailer, fitted with a custom, reinforced steel cattle guard the size of a railroad plow. Stenciled in faint, reflective silver along the side of the towering hood was the logo: VANCE LOGISTICS.
Behind it were two heavy Ford F-350 dually pickups, lifted high on mud tires, their beds packed with armed men.
My dad’s freight division, Marcus stammered, his knuckles whitening as he grabbed the dashboard. That’s the heavy transport team from the south rail terminal! Those guys are former prison guards, mercenaries… they don’t answer to the sheriff, Dana! They answer directly to my dad!
Hold on, Dana said.
She slammed her left foot onto the clutch, downshifted into third with a brutal, mechanical shove, and buried the gas pedal into the floorboards. The old truck’s modified supercharger whined like an enraged hornet, the rear tires breaking traction on the wet blacktop for a fraction of a second before biting down and propelling them forward. The speedometer needle swung past eighty, eighty-five, ninety miles an hour.
The road twisted violently through a sequence of sharp, descending S-curves. Dana drove with terrifying precision, cutting the apex of every turn, utilizing the vehicle’s weight transfer to keep the truck from sliding into the jagged rock walls.
Behind them, the Peterbilt was an unstoppable iron behemoth. The driver was clearly a professional, using the immense weight and momentum of the stripped commercial rig to barrel down the highway at nearly one hundred miles an hour, closing the distance with terrifying velocity.
The semi closed in to fifty feet. Thirty feet.
Its massive steel cowcatcher loomed in the rear-view mirror like a wall of iron teeth.
Marcus looked back, his eyes wild with terror. He’s going to ram us! He’s going to push us off the ridge!
Get your head down! Dana ordered.
A deafening metallic crash tore through the cab as the Peterbilt’s steel plow slammed into the truck’s rear bumper. The violent impact propelled them forward, lifting the rear axle off the ground. The truck fishtailed wildly toward the edge of the asphalt, where the guardrail had long since rusted away into the abyss.
Marcus screamed, bracing his arms against the ceiling.
Dana didn’t fight the skid with panic. She steered directly into the slide, tapping the throttle in short, controlled bursts to regain rotational stability. The rear tires caught the wet shoulder, kicking up showers of gravel and mud, before snapping back onto the centerline.
The Peterbilt lunged forward again, its massive air horn roaring through the night like a mechanical demon.
At that exact second, the two heavy pickups pulled up alongside them—one on the left, attempting to force Dana into the oncoming lane, and one on the right, boxing them against the limestone cliff.
The passenger window of the left pickup rolled down. A man wearing tactical goggles and a black rain poncho leaned out of the window, raising a short-barreled tactical 12-gauge shotgun.
Shotgun! Marcus yelled, dropping his head between his knees.
Dana didn’t swerve away from the threat. She swerved into it.
