“An old lady with a shotgun?” Kendra said. “Seriously?”
Blake shrugged. “You never know where the next threat is coming from.”
Lynch passed what appeared to be a homeless man. He ducked behind the figure and fired two shots through a shop window.
More breaking glass, more fake blood, and a “dead” sniper figure slumping though the opening. Lynch fired a shot into the homeless man’s head, and the target flipped back to reveal he was wearing an explosive vest.
“Rough neighborhood,” Kendra said.
“Yeah.” Blake was looking in amazement at Lynch’s score on his tablet.
Lynch spun around, ejecting the ammo cartridge and snapping another in place before the first even hit the ground. He fired two more shots at second-story windows. More splattered blood, and an “Aieeee” scream.
Kendra cocked her head. “I know that yell.”
“That’s because you’ve heard it in almost every movie ever made,” Blake said absently. “It’s called a Wilhelm. Our sound guy couldn’t resist.”
Lynch whirled toward a messenger carrying a large tube on a bicycle. He let the messenger pass but focused his attention on a white pickup truck moving down the street. The truck veered onto the sidewalk heading toward a group gathered around a small produce market. Lynch fired two shots into the drivers-side windshield. The glass shattered, and the truck veered harmlessly into a lamppost.
Then Lynch was running to the end of the street.
He raised his hands. “Time!”
Blake pushed a button on his tablet and looked at the result total. “Unbelievable.”
Lynch holstered his gun and strode back to the start of the course. “Ready to go, Kendra?”
“Sure.”
Blake held up the tablet. “Don’t you even want to see your score? It’s a course record.”
“No, thanks. I’m done here.” He took Kendra’s elbow and nudged her toward the Ferrari. “I’m satisfied. We can leave now.”
Kendra was looking over her shoulder at Blake standing dumbfounded as he gazed at the scores on his tablet. “I don’t believe Blake found the last couple minutes in the least satisfying,” she murmured. “But I enjoyed them enormously.”
“He irritated me,” Lynch said. After they climbed in the car and shut the doors he added, “And it was a way of getting my own back without actually killing the son of a bitch. Though I would have been willing to go that route, too.”
“You were … phenomenal.” She was silent for a long moment. “You don’t think that damaged gun was an accident, do you?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I’d say today was the first time that gun was in his shoulder holster. It usually holds a gun quite a bit smaller than that one. You could tell by the impressions in the leather.”
Lynch smiled. “Well, you can tell.”
“Anyone could tell, if they paid attention. Before this morning, that holster has probably held only one gun and it wasn’t that one. That damaged Walther was there for you.”
“That’s what I thought. But for what reason? It could have been used to test me, one of Blake’s little games, but that would have been risky. I don’t respond well to games and Blake would know that. Or it could have been a warning.” Lynch started the car and peeled out of the lot. “I tend to go in that direction. You know … outside of a government spy agency, if there was anyone capable of pulling off that cloak-and-dagger style attack on you, it was Brock Limited. And now, thirty-six hours later, the company vice-president puts what amounts to an explosive device in my hands.”
“But why?”
“Obviously they don’t want us pushing on this. I suspect they’re more afraid of you than me. Elena Meyer was trying to get to you when she was killed. But there’s more to it than just one dead woman on a city street.”
“But where does this leave us? We still don’t have anything on Brock.”
“They’d make damn sure we didn’t. They’re good at what they do.”
Lynch turned the wheel as they climbed a hill and took a curve in the road. The car sped up as they rounded the bend.
Kendra gripped the armrest. “Slow down. All that talk about Ferraris and hot cars did not impress me.”
Lynch wrinkled his brow. “I know it didn’t.”
The car’s engine raced.
Something was wrong. “What’s happening?”
“Shit.” Lynch gripped the wheel as his car spun dangerously around another curve in the road. He jammed his foot on the brake, but the car slowed only slightly as a metal-against-metal scream sounded from the undercarriage.
The car lurched forward.
“We have a runaway engine.”
“A what?”
The wheel vibrated harder. “A runaway engine.”
“That’s a thing?”
“Afraid so. Bad oil seal, fuel injectors, maybe an onboard computer glitch.” He pulled the emergency brake, but it only made the car even more difficult to control.
“Lynch…?”
“We’re in trouble.”
They rounded another bend on the desert road, kicking up gravel as the left rear wheel skated over the edge.
“The brakes aren’t working?”
“The brakes are the only thing keeping us from flying off the road at 200 miles per hour right now.”
The rear end fishtailed!
Kendra looked ahead, where the road climbed higher and even more curvy. “Lynch…”
“I see it. Shit.”
The car sped up and went airborne as they jumped a small hill in the roadway. The front bumper struck the road as they landed. Lynch fought to keep the car on the pavement.
“It’s getting harder to handle. Twelve cylinders is a hell of a lot of car.”
The Ferrari roared over another bump in the road.
Kendra’s looked at Lynch’s face. She’d seen him in many dire situations before, but this expression was one she hadn’t seen on him before.
Fear.
The steely focus was still there, but there was also perspiration on his brow and a clenched jaw. His sweaty hands tightened on the wheel. “This car isn’t stopping. At least not in one piece.”
“What do we do?”
“We need to get out without killing ourselves or anyone else. A little difficult to do at eighty miles an hour.”
His eyes flicked to a foothill towering over the road ahead.
“I’m going to try something.”
He drove for a moment longer as his face contorted into a grimace.
“That promising, huh?”
“Hold on to something. We’re about to leave the road.”
“What?”
“It’s going to get bumpy.”
She braced herself against the console. “Where are we going?”
He pointed to the ridge. “Straight up.”
“This is insane.”
“Probably. But it’s the only thing that can slow us down enough to jump out.”
“We could also flatten ourselves against it.”
“Trust me.”
“I do.” She moistened her lips. “It’s the laws of physics I have a problem with.”
“You have to do exactly as I say, when I say. Do you understand?”
She shook her head, her pulse leaping crazily. “Insanity.”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Get ready…” He turned the wheel hard right and spun off the road.
She felt her teeth and spine vibrating in her skull. The Ferrari rocketed over—and through—brush and small stones on the unpaved hillside.
Rocks kicked up and peppered the windshield with spider-web cracks.
If anything, they seemed to be going faster.
“It isn’t working!” Kendra shouted.
Lynch squinted to see through the cracked windshield. “I’m taking us up. Get ready to unfasten your seat belt.”
Kendra placed her hands over the re
lease and looked at the speedometer.
85 MPH.
80 …
70 …
Smash!
A large rock flew up and completely shattered the windshield in front of her face.
Kendra flinched, instinctively turning away.
“Are you all right?” Lynch shouted.
“Yes.” She turned back toward the speedometer as more rocks struck the windshield.
60 …
55 …
50 …
Lynch swerved to avoid a pair of boulders embedded in the hillside.
45 …
40 …
“Unbuckle your seatbelt. Now.”
Kendra looked at his face. This was the Lynch she knew. Calm in the face of overwhelming danger. Totally in control. As potentially deadly as their situation had become, his confidence was exactly what she needed.
She unbuckled her seatbelt.
“When we drop below thirty, open your door and jump. Roll away as fast and far as you can.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“Your seatbelt’s still on.”
“I’m staying behind the wheel until you get out.”
“Lynch…”
“Don’t argue.”
The car suddenly felt as if it was travelling straight up, though she knew it was impossible. Gravity pulled her back into her seat.
“Get ready,” Lynch said. “Thirty-five…”
He steered the car toward a grassy expanse of the ridge. The engine roared as the tires slid and chewed up the soft earth.
“Now!”
Kendra threw open the door and jumped out. Her right hip landed hard on the hillside as she rolled away. She stopped herself and looked up just in time to see Lynch tumbling down the ridge above her.
She looked up to check the runaway car’s trajectory.
The car.
It was rapidly approaching a sheer ninety-degree angle, which meant …
Oh, God.
It flipped backwards and flew downward.
Directly toward her!
“Kendra!” Lynch shouted.
There wasn’t time to stand. She scrambled across the hillside, half-rolling, half-crawling, with no idea if she was moving toward or away from the car’s path.
The roaring engine filled her ears.
Where in the hell was it?
Bammm. The car rocketed past her, tumbling down across the spot where she’d been only seconds before.
Her gaze followed the car down as it hit the bottom in a cacophony of twisted metal and broken glass. She smelled gasoline. Flames danced in the wreckage.
Lynch was climbing down to join her. “You okay?”
She wasn’t sure. Her heart was pounding, her hands were shaking. “Yeah. I think so.” She panted, “You?”
Lynch nodded. “Better now.” Then he was next to her, pulling her into his arms. “Be still.” The words were smothered in her hair. “Don’t move for a minute. Just let me hold you. I was scared to death.”
She wasn’t about to move. She was clinging to him and the world was slowly beginning to right itself.
It took her a few minutes but she finally managed to let him go. She looked up at him. “It was Brock, wasn’t it?”
“No question.” Lynch stared at his burning car. “I’m sure of it.”
“But we were only away from the car for ten or fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve known people who could do far more in far less time.” Lynch reached into his pocket. “I’ll call Griffin. We’ll have the FBI tow in my car and inspect it. Not that it will probably do much to—”
The Ferrari exploded, casting chunks of burning debris hundreds of feet!
Lynch sighed. “Or at least inspect what’s left of it.”
* * *
THE FBI EVIDENCE RESPONSE Team arrived within ninety minutes and Griffin and Metcalf arrived soon afterward.
Griffin stared at the burned-out husk of Lynch’s car at the base of the ridge, forty feet from the road.
“Wow,” he murmured. “Adam Lynch without his Ferrari. Only now do I realize that my mild annoyance at seeing you in that car was rooted in pure envy. Lord, it was a beautiful machine.”
Lynch looked at him in surprise. “And here I thought you just came out here to gloat.”
“I may have. But the sight of that wrecked car put things in perspective.”
Metcalf joined them and nodded solemnly. “Tragic.”
Kendra looked in disbelief at the three men staring so forlornly at Lynch’s car. “You’re joking, right?”
They weren’t joking.
Kendra stepped between them and the car. “Forgive me for not giving that Ferrari due appreciation at this automotive wake. But, in case anyone’s forgotten, this is the scene of an attempted murder.”
“We realize that,” Metcalf said. He motioned toward the car. “You’re right, but that beauty deserves a little respect, please.”
The twinkle in his eye told her he wasn’t being entirely serious.
“Look, I expect Lynch to go into mourning, but there’s no excuse for anyone else here,” she said impatiently. “I’ve seen some of these same Evidence Response people making jokes while stepping over dead bodies. But for a smashed-up Ferrari, they’re downright grief-stricken.”
“Okay, okay,” Lynch said testily. “I know you’ve never understood. It takes a certain mind-set.” He looked between Griffin and Metcalf. “Any theories about what may have happened here?”
Griffin approached the still-smoldering car. “I talked to Jerome in the garage. He won’t know until he looks at it, but he thinks it could have been a computer hack.”
“I had the same thought,” Lynch said.
“You think someone hacked your car?” Kendra asked.
“Most modern cars have computers more powerful than anything we have in our homes. If someone can access them, they can do a lot of damage.”
“But how could they access it? I know how you coddle that car. That Ferrari was locked and alarmed tighter than a Brinks truck.”
“Much tighter. It was a custom alarm system made especially for me. The key fob and my phone would shriek if anyone even attempted to break in, no matter how far away I was.”
“And we were never more than a hundred yards away from your car while you were playing Superman. Wouldn’t we have known if anyone tried to tamper with it?”
Metcalf looked intrigued. “Superman?”
“You would have had to have been there,” Kendra said.
“It’s good they weren’t. We didn’t need anyone else to stumble over when we were dodging that runaway car chasing us down the hill.” Lynch knelt beside a charred object that may have been a headrest. “And we wouldn’t necessarily know about any tampering. You’ve enjoyed my car’s onboard Wi-Fi. Even though I had CIA-level encryption, nothing’s uncrackable. They could have hacked in and burrowed into my car’s computer system from a mile away.”
“That’s scary.”
Lynch frowned. “I took every precaution, but I guess the only thing that would have worked is if I’d bought that 1963 Aston Martin DB5 I was looking at.”
Metcalf, who had been looking through the rubble, instantly raised his head. “If you get one, can I drive it?”
“We’ll see.”
“Just once, Lynch.”
“We’ll see. In any case, I think a breach of my car’s computer system is a good guess.”
“And can you guess who might have done this?” Griffin asked.
“Kendra and I both have a guess. That’s not the same as proof.”
Griffin looked back at the training center. “Brock?”
“Possibly. It’s too great a coincidence that this happened on their doorstep.”
Griffin nodded. “I agree. And I’m surprised that explosion didn’t bring them running. We’ll go talk to them in a few minutes.”
Lynch glanced behind him. “Or now?”
Blake climbed out of his car, clutched his heart, and gave Lynch a sympathetic look. “Dude!”
“Not the reaction I was expecting,” Kendra murmured.
Blake started to join them, but Griffin raised his hand. “You’ll have to stand back. This is a crime scene.”
Kendra moved toward Blake and made the introductions. “FBI agents Michael Griffin and Roland Metcalf, this is Brock Limited VP Josh Blake.”
“Crime scene?” Blake said. “You’re joking. One of my instructors drove by and told us there had been an accident involving a Ferrari. I was worried.” He grimaced at the sight of the burned-out wreck. “You’re lucky to be alive, Lynch.”
Lynch fixed him with a cool stare. “Yes. We are. Twice in one day. How could that happen?”
“But a crime scene?” He shook his head. “It sounds a bit paranoid. Did someone force you off the road?”
“Paranoid?” Lynch’s expression was no longer cool but icy, Kendra thought. He took a step forward as if he was about to demonstrate the head-twist-neck-break move on Blake.
Griffin probably thought so, too. He quickly stepped between them. “Mr. Blake, we’ll be happy to fill you in. But we need to talk to you about what happened here today.”
He looked puzzled. “Why?”
“Just a few questions. Would you mind if we stopped by your facility in a few minutes?”
“I’d be delighted. But I’m afraid that conversation can’t happen until I have one of our attorneys present.”
Griffin stared at him in disbelief. “What?”
“Company policy. Brock Limited employees can’t speak to any law enforcement officer about anything without an attorney.”
“You spoke to us,” Lynch said.
“If I’d known the purpose of your visit, our attorney would have been there.” He turned back to Griffin. “I’m happy to cooperate in any way I can, but first we’ll have to make arrangements for counsel.”
“Do you realize how suspicious this makes your company look?” Kendra asked.
“It shouldn’t. It’s been our company policy for over a year. Check it, you’ll see. I’m afraid my hands are tied.”
“Such a shame,” Lynch said.
“Well, I’m glad the two of you are all right. That’s what’s important.” His smile was beaming. “We have a helicopter heading downtown in a few minutes. If you’d like to hitch a ride, there are two extra seats. I don’t think that Ferrari is going to get you very far.”
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