Chloe Carter's Arc

Chapter 12 of 12

The ice on the switchback took her weight in a way the road never had. Chloe went down on one knee before she'd made it ten feet from the sedan. Below her, the boots kept coming. She could hear them now without straining. Whoever he was, he wasn't running. He didn't have to. She was on foot on a glass road with a paring knife, and he knew it. She turned back to the car. The knife wouldn't save her. The car might. The sedan sat crossways on the bend, rear bumper kissed to the guardrail, nose pointed up the grade. If she could pull it off the rail and let it roll, gravity would do what the engine couldn't. Downhill was toward him. That was the point. A two-ton car on ice was a weapon he couldn't outrun. She scrambled back. Her palm slapped the fender and slid. She hauled herself along the door and dropped into the driver's seat. The dome light showed her hands shaking. She let them shake and worked anyway. Key. Ignition. The engine caught on the second turn. She left the headlights off. She cranked the wheel hard left, toward the downhill drop. She fed the gas in a soft, steady press the way she'd learned climbing out of the snowdrift. The rear tires spun on the rail, screamed once, then bit against the metal itself. The sedan lurched. The bumper scraped free with a sound like a can opening. The car swung. Gravity took it. She pumped the brake once to test it. Nothing. The pedal went soft on the ice. She let go. The sedan gathered speed down the curl of the switchback, tail drifting, nose finding the fall line on its own. She steered into every slide and kept her foot off everything. Headlights, she thought. Now. She punched them on. He was closer than she'd guessed. Twenty yards, maybe less. The beams caught him full — long black coat open at the run, hood shoved back, teeth bared in a face she'd never seen and would never forget. He had time to understand. He tried to go sideways. On the ice there was no sideways. The sedan hit him at the hip. The sound was dull, not sharp. His body folded over the hood and slid off into the guardrail on the outside of the bend. The car kept going. Chloe kept her hands on the wheel. She rode the grade down through two more curves before the tires found grit and the brakes came back. She stopped on the flat where the highway bent. Her breath came in one long shudder, then evened. She didn't cry this time. She didn't need to. The gauge read just under an eighth. The road ahead was dark and unknown. The car was hers again, and she pointed it forward.