I rammed the duplicate brass key into the ignition cylinder and turned it hard.
The starter screamed against the flywheel for one terrifying half-second before the six-cylinder engine caught with a roar. I shoved the floor shifter into first gear, dumped the clutch, and hammered the accelerator toward the floorboards.
The rear tires spun furiously in the wet shoulder gravel, spitting mud and broken stone backward into the ditch. Vance lunged toward the driver door, his face contorted in rage, his free hand clawing at the open window frame. His fingers caught the sill for a fraction of a second before the limited-slip differential locked, the tires bit into the crowned asphalt, and the truck leaped forward into the blind curve of Mile Marker Nine.
In the shattered side mirror, I saw Vance stumble into the center of the lane, his weapon raised, his silhouette framed against the yellow parking lights of his cruiser. Behind him, high up on the timber haul road, the second set of halogen headlights snapped on, blazing white through the hemlock branches as the unmarked chase vehicle dropped into gear to cut off the pass.
CHAPTER 3: The Toll Gate Behind The Cut
The cracked side mirror vibrated so violently against the door mount that the headlights behind me smeared into a double yellow streak.
Rain lashed sideways across the windshield, overwhelming the aged rubber blades as the Ford bounced across the cattle guard at Mile Marker Ten. The cab smelled of hot oil, sulfur from the spent casing that had grazed the window pillar, and the metallic copper reek of Arthur Cross’s blood on my cuffs. My right hand stayed glued to the floor shifter while my left clamped the wheel at nine o’clock, muscles bunched to fight the ruts where runoff had chewed out the shoulder. Inside the zipped inner pocket of my wool vest, the cold acrylic cylinder of the third blood vial tapped rhythmically against my ribs.
Half a mile up the grade, the twin halogen beams of the chase truck broke through the tree line, slicing between the wet trunks of black hemlock.
The vehicle wasn't a county squad car. It sat high on heavy off-road tires, running a steel bull bar and no emergency overheads, throwing clean, high-intensity white light that picked out every spray of gravel kicked up by my rear axle. It was the depot’s private yard rig—the heavy three-quarter-ton diesel the Blackwood Chemical Transfer facility used to escort liquid nitrogen transports down to the freight railhead.
Vance hadn’t just called for a private wrecker; he had staged the company’s internal security on the upper switchback before he ever stepped out to flag my hazard lights.
I didn't take the main descent toward the Blackwood valley floor. Two miles down that road, the low-water bridge over Blackwood Creek would have two more county patrol cars idling across both lanes, ostensibly establishing an accident perimeter for Arthur Cross’s fatal rollover while a flatbed hauled the wreckage into an impound barn that the state police couldn't search without a warrant.
Instead, I jammed the clutch down, hauled the wheel hard to the right, and dropped the front end into the access slip for the abandoned county scale house at North Cut.
The truck slammed into the washboard dirt, the rusted front coils bottoming out against the bump stops with a loud, metallic clatter. Tree branches scraped down both doors, snapping off small twigs that plastered themselves against the wet glass. Fifty yards in, the track dead-ended at a padlocked chain stretched between two rusted steel bollards—the old commercial bypass road the state forestry service had shuttered when the bypass opened five years ago.
Behind the chain sat the scale house: a cinder-block box with broken storm windows and an open bay door that once held the road master’s inspection tools.
The diesel truck behind me took the turn fast, its front tires howling as they dug into the clay. Its high beams caught the back of my cab, flooding the rear glass with blinding light that pinned my shadow against the sun visor.
I didn't brake for the chain.
"Come on, dad," I muttered through clenched teeth, leaning over the wheel.
I dropped the transfer case lever down and back, hauling it through the stiff detent into four-wheel drive low with a harsh, mechanical thud. I stomped the throttle. The Ford’s steel bumper took the middle of the heavy chain at twenty miles an hour. The left rusted eyebolt ripped out of the rotted timber post with a sound like a rifle shot, the chain whipping sideways and scoring a deep groove across my fender before the front tires rolled over the fallen steel links.