Risk It All

by Katie Ruggle

  “Did they just ram us?” she asked in shock.

  “Yes.” Kavenski’s voice was grim as he pushed the car even faster. It shuddered with effort as they approached another sharp turn, but it wasn’t enough. They pitched forward as the SUV bumped their back end again.

  Cara bit her cheek to keep her scream inside and braced herself for the next hit. The car slid sideways as Kavenski jerked the wheel sharply, forcing them into the next hairpin turn. As the engine shrieked, the smell of burning rubber filled Cara’s nose. The wall of rock outside her window got bigger and bigger, and she shoved herself sideways toward Kavenski, sure that they were about to smash into the cliff.

  The back end of the car spun out, smacking into the rock in a glancing blow that jolted Cara hard enough to knock her head against the side window. The pain didn’t register, as fear took precedence in her brain.

  The car’s wheels grabbed the asphalt and propelled them forward. Cara sent up a prayer of thanks that their vehicle, although battered and crumpled in spots, was still functional. They flew up the incline and around another curve, and Cara locked her gaze on the side-view mirror, watching for the pursuing SUV.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked, needing to know. Right now, she felt like they were just flying by the seat of their pants, and that didn’t work for her. Unless it was an impulse stop by an ice cream shop, she wasn’t a fan of spontaneity…especially when it became a matter of life and death.

  Kavenski flicked her a lightning-quick glance before focusing on his driving again. “I told you. Get to the next town. Drop you off at the PD there.”

  “How far is that, do you know?” She hated the idea of darting to safety while he drove off with SUVs full of professional killers still following him, but she knew she wouldn’t win that argument. In fact, he probably wouldn’t even participate in that argument. Her brain spun with possible alternative plans. She couldn’t stop shivering, although she wasn’t sure whether it was from the cold or from stress and fear. The wind whistling through the car had grown icier, and patches of snow were caught on protrusions in the rock wall bordering one side of the road. They’d started pretty high up, judging from the thin, dry air at the cabin, and they were climbing even higher.

  “Five or six miles.” The engine gave an unhealthy-sounding shriek as they rounded the next turn.

  Cara felt her lips pull down into a grimace. Five miles seemed like a long way when being pursued by kidnappers with higher-powered vehicles. Her gaze moved to the side-view mirror again, and her heart gave a sharp snap in her chest. The SUV following them around the turn was barreling toward their back bumper. “Incoming!”

  Before the SUV could connect, Kavenski jerked the wheel to the left. They flew over the center line into the oncoming-traffic lane. The SUV darted up next to them, and Cara found herself staring at the driver just a few feet away from her window. The ski mask covering the driver’s face made the whole situation so much worse. She stared, mute with fear, as he lowered his window and lifted a handgun…pointing it directly at her.

  Chapter 9

  Kavenski said something too low for Cara to hear over the rush of the wind and the thrum of her frantically beating heart. The car shot forward just as the gun went off. With a sharp crack, the back-seat window shattered, the safety glass crumbling around a gaping hole.

  “Cara!” Kavenski yelled, reaching toward her as if he was going to retroactively ward off a bullet with his bare hand.

  “I’m okay!” She was screaming the words, unable to believe that she hadn’t been hit. “It missed me! I’m not hit!”

  Cara couldn’t stop twisting her head around and staring at the shattered window, knowing how close that bullet had come. The broken glass made her feel even more vulnerable as the SUV started catching up to them again.

  Forcing herself to face front, she realized that Kavenski was still trying to check her over for injuries while he drove. “Just drive!” she ordered, gesturing toward the windshield. “I’m fine.”

  Even though his expression was grimmer than she’d ever seen it, he turned his full attention back to the road. Bracing for the next turn, Cara felt her arms shake as she clung to the door with one hand and the dash with the other. A part of her randomly wondered if there was such a thing as overdosing on adrenaline. If so, she had to be approaching her limit—if she hadn’t already shot by it.

  Their car flew around the sharp curve, centrifugal force pulling her toward Kavenski. Her arm ached with the effort of holding on to the door handle, the cliff edge too close for comfort. From the way that he kept glancing at the narrow shoulder, Kavenski didn’t seem too happy about their position, either.

  As they rounded the final part of the turn, the car skipped sideways, the tires squealing as they sought to find traction. Cara’s fingers tightened as she cringed back against her door, certain that they were going to fly off the road and tumble to their deaths. Metal screeched against metal as the side of the car scraped against the guardrail, and Cara hoped desperately that her text to Molly had gone through. If she was going to die on this mountain, she at the very least wanted all her sisters to know that she loved them before she was literally flung off a cliff.

  The car bounced off the guardrail toward the center of the road, straightening and shooting forward. Cara blinked several times before the truth sank in. “We’re not dead?”

  “Not yet,” Kavenski answered through a set jaw, his fingers pale as he gripped the wheel.

  Sinking as far down in her seat as her seat belt would allow, Cara stared through the damaged windshield, willing the town to pop up in front of them. Instead, a dark shape appeared, and her spine snapped straight. The shattered glass, held together only by the inner film, mottled the scene in front of her, making it impossible to make out any details…except that it was getting bigger—fast. “What’s that?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  “Truck.” The way Kavenski snapped out the word made it sound like a warning, but there was nothing she could do except sit there and watch the distorted blob get larger and larger. She sent a frantic glance to her right, checking if, by some miracle, the lane next to them had opened up, only to see the masked driver pushing the SUV faster and faster until the two vehicles were almost parallel. Despite the driver’s face being covered, she could still see the gleeful look, the cold amusement that she and Kavenski and some innocent truck driver were all about to die. There was nowhere for their car to go.

  Kavenski suddenly braked, making Cara lurch forward before the seat belt and her grip on the dash stopped her. The first SUV shot past them, but the second managed to stop, filling the right lane as effectively as the other one had. The truck in front of them blared its horn, long blasts that turned wavery in Cara’s ears as time seemed to slow. The semi was getting so close that it filled the windshield, blocking out everything else. She could only stare and listen to the thrum and hiss of air brakes as she waited to be obliterated.

  As she braced her feet against the floor, both hands in front of her on the dash—despite knowing that none of that would do any good when they were hit head-on by a freaking semi truck—the car jerked to the left. The unexpected movement startled Cara out of her fatalistic paralysis, and she turned her head to look at Kavenski. The car shot toward the edge of the road, flying over the miniscule shoulder and over the edge of the drop-off, just as the semi hurtled by behind them.

  They weren’t going to be obliterated by the truck after all. No, they were going to be smashed to bits at the bottom of the cliff.

  Cara’s frightened scream somehow turned into an inhale instead, ripping against her throat and getting trapped inside her lungs. The tires bounced off the rocks, picking up speed with each jounce. When her terrified mental scream eased enough for her to think, she realized that they weren’t in the free fall she’d expected. Instead, they were on a steep rocky slope, one that she would hesitate to hike down, mu
ch less drive.

  “Did you just hurl us off a freaking cliff?” she demanded once she’d recovered enough to speak. Her voice still held a terrified squeak, but she felt that higher pitch was fully justified. “I thought the whole goal was to not fling ourselves into the void!”

  The car hit a sapling, shooting them to the right. “Better this than…” He paused as the car hit a particularly big rock and they went airborne for a horrifyingly long moment. The car landed again, bouncing hard enough to make Cara’s teeth clack together, and then continued hurtling down the mountainside. Kavenski picked up where he’d left off, as if there hadn’t even been a pause. “…being hit by that semi.”

  Cara watched, terrified, as rocks and evergreen branches flew by her window fast enough to blur. At the moment, this didn’t seem like a much better alternative than instant death. At least that would be over fast. Watching their downward slide was too terrifying, so she turned and latched her gaze on Kavenski. In just the short time she’d known him, she’d started to rely on his unflappable expression to calm her down. Whether they’d be crushed to death at the bottom of the cliff or not, her screaming and flailing wasn’t going to help. Staring at him, she could almost believe that he was still driving on a gravel road—well, a really bumpy, terrifyingly treacherous gravel road.

  There were subtle signs of tension in him, now that she was looking so closely. He had a death grip on the wheel, and his jaw was clenched so tightly that there were white streaks underneath his tan complexion. But even as they basically tumbled uncontrollably down a mountain, he was still in control, fighting to keep the car going in the general direction he wanted it to go.

  Dust, thick and choking, billowed up from behind the car and drifted into the broken rear window. Releasing the dash with one hand, she covered her mouth and nose with her arm, trying to breathe through the fabric of her hoodie to filter the air slightly. The right side of the car lifted, bucking underneath her as it hit ground again. A loud bang echoed across the cliffside, and the jolting became a hundred times worse.

  “Blown tire?” she asked, her voice still embarrassingly high-pitched. Just when she’d started to think that things might miraculously work out, something like this happened.

  “Yeah.” His voice matched his grim, determined expression as he jerked the wheel sharply. The car obeyed somewhat, but the flat tire didn’t allow him to maneuver well enough to miss a large pine tree altogether. The car flew closer, the right rear corner smacking against the tree. It bounced off, sending them sliding in a diagonal trajectory that Cara was pretty sure wasn’t even close to where Kavenski had originally planned to take them.

  The car lurched and jerked, ricocheting off larger rocks and gnarled trees as if they were in a giant pinball game. Kavenski twisted the wheel to muscle the car back into a nose-first position, but it was too late. Momentum had taken over, sending them on an uncontrollable dive down the slope.

  Cara grabbed on to the door handle with one hand and reached out with the other, needing the comfort of human contact during what could be the last moments of her life. Releasing the wheel, Kavenski grabbed her hand, tightly enfolding it in his huge mitt.

  The car rotated until it was completely sideways, skidding down the mountain driver’s side first. Smaller pieces of earth and rock bounced along with them, a tiny landslide knocked loose by their careening vehicle. A larger boulder protruded out of the side of the hill, and Cara stared at it through the driver’s window. As they got closer, she held her breath, hoping that they would slide right by, but they weren’t that lucky. With a loud crunching sound, the front of the car slammed into the huge rock.

  The force of the hit spun the vehicle again, turning it so that the trunk was heading downhill first. Cara swallowed a scream and clung to Kavenski’s hand. Somehow, it was even more terrifying to fly backwards down a mountain. She didn’t have to worry about that long, however. As it smacked into trees and rocks, the car flipped around in nausea-inducing changes of direction until a sharp ridge of rock brought it to a sliding stop.

  She didn’t even have enough time to take a relieved breath before the car was moving again, this time flipping onto its side. The metal groaned, and small rocks and bits of safety glass rained over them through the smashed windows. Unable to hold back her shriek of terror, she released Kavenski to grab her door handle with both hands, clinging for dear life as the car slid for what felt like forever before toppling over again, this time landing upside down. The air left her lungs in a rush, not giving her enough oxygen to scream. Instead she clung to her handholds, mentally shrieking as the car was tossed around like a toy.

  All the blood rushed to Cara’s head as she reached up—no, down—to brace her hands on the ceiling. Her body was squashed and confused, gravity pulling her down while her seat belt held her strapped to her seat.

  The car continued to slide, picking up speed, bouncing over rocks and dirt like a three-thousand-pound saucer sled. The upside-down view through the broken windows was blurred and surreal, and Cara couldn’t catch her breath as they flew down the slope. Sharp bits of wood and stone pinged against her skin, and thick dust made it even harder to breathe. It felt like they’d been hurtling down the mountain forever. Cara squeezed her eyes closed, mentally chanting At least we’re still alive. At least we’re still alive.

  The car jolted with a protesting creak of metal and plastic, slipping twice more before coming to a shuddering stop. Cara froze, her eyes still locked shut, unable to believe that they’d truly come to a halt. She held very still, waiting for the car to start moving again, to plunge them off a final cliff. As they’d crashed down, flipping from side to top, she hadn’t really believed they’d survive. Now that the car wasn’t moving, she didn’t dare believe the nightmare was over.

  It was unbearably quiet—even the engine must have been killed at some point—with only the light patter of pebbles that had followed them down the slope landing on the body of the car and the slight whine of the wind disturbing the utter peace. A tiny bubble of hope rose in her, expanding until her entire chest was filled with elation.

  They’d done it. They’d survived.

  A rough voice cut through the silence. “Cara? You with me?”

  It felt strange to speak, as if the trip down the mountain had taken fifty years and she’d forgotten in the meantime how to form words. When she first tried, a cough escaped instead, forcing the coating of dust and dirt from her throat. Her second attempt was more successful. “I think I still have all my pieces.” It was hard to tell, though. She tried to do a mental inventory, but her upside-down position was messing with her senses. “I need to get down.”

  “Hang on.”

  She laughed weakly at that and then wondered how she was able to find amusement in the current situation. “No choice but to hang on, really.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she coughed again.

  A click from the driver’s side was quickly followed by a heavy thud, and Cara forced her eyes open. The light was strange in the remains of the car, too bright in places and completely dark in others. She focused on Kavenski, who was untangling himself out of the heap he’d landed in after letting himself out of his seatbelt.

  Seeing him freed made her feelings of claustrophobia worse, and she fumbled with her own seat-belt latch, forgetting his request to hang on. The car shifted slightly, tortured metal groaning, and she gripped her seat belt with both hands and froze, her fear of being trapped overwhelmed by a more immediate fear of imminent death. A strangled whimper escaped her throat as she turned to look through what remained of her window.

  There was only empty space.

  A single tree trunk kept them from falling into the chasm. It wasn’t like the fairly steep but survivable slope that they’d just traversed. This drop would be straight down to the river below. There was no way they could live through that.

  The car creaked again, and Cara very carefull
y turned her head toward Kavenski to see him inching toward her across the car ceiling that had been turned into an unsteady floor. Her terror must’ve been obvious, because he started talking in a tone more soothing than she’d thought him capable of.

  “It’s going to be okay, Cara.” In a crouch, he shifted another inch closer, and the car rocked ever so slightly, as if they were in a sailboat on a still lake…right at the top of a waterfall. She gripped her seat belt tighter and concentrated on not losing her mind with fear. “Just stay calm. I’m almost there. We’ll get you free and then both get out of here.”

  She wanted to tell him to knock it off, that his gentle tone was too weird to handle, and that it was freaking her out, but she didn’t know if she was capable of saying anything at the moment. Instead, she concentrated on his face, on the eternally calm expression that was marred by dirt and a few streaks of blood.

  “Good job,” he said, as if she’d done anything except hang there frozen and stare at his face. “I’m just about there.” He was close enough to touch her shoulder, and he pressed her up slightly, taking a little pressure off the areas where the seat belt kept her secured. Shifting over again, he reached for the latch, the maneuver forcing them to press so tightly together that her cheek was flat against his thigh.

  The car creaked as something snapped, making the passenger side dip. Cara’s stomach swooped at the movement, and she released her grip on the seat belt to clutch at the man in front of her. He’d gone still, which scared her almost more than the rocking car.

  “Okay.” His voice was rougher than it had been a few seconds earlier. She actually preferred that to his unnaturally gentle tone. “Going slowly isn’t working. We’re going to get out. Get ready to move fast in three…two…one.”

  As soon as he got to one, she heard the click of the seat belt and then the pressure across her chest and waist released. Before she could drop onto her head, however, he was yanking her back into the space above the driver’s seat, both of them tangled in a mess of limbs. There was a thump and then the sound of breaking glass, and the car rocked more violently than it had since they’d stopped sliding.