by Renée Jaggér
They hit a stalemate, neither being exactly furious with the other, but both frustrated by their long search. They’d been all over the northern and eastern areas of Portland by now, with no results.
“I mean,” Roland went on, “there’s also Veterans Memorial Highway. That follows the river, but it would take them pretty far afield—toward southeast Washington. I dunno, somehow I think they just have some kind of business in the city, and when they’re done, they’re probably planning to head back to Greenhearth, or at least somewhere in your neck of the woods. In other words, we have to eliminate the city as a possibility. Then we can look at trailing them to the mountains.”
Bailey tried not to roll her eyes. “We already combed a lot of the city. They’re probably halfway down the Cascades by now.”
“Well, it only takes them being one block away for us not to see them. The whole reason we came to Portland was to lose ourselves, remember? That also applies to anyone we might be trying to track down.”
He was sort of right, but it wasn’t like she would admit that aloud.
“Whatever,” she grumbled. “We’ll go through this last suburb to the south. What’s it called?”
“Gresham,” he informed her.
She took a right turn, not expecting any more success than they’d already had. In other words, none.
The wizard ran a hand through his hair; she had noticed that was a habit of his. It was straight and lanky, so he could get away with washing it every day without it going to frizz the way Bailey’s would. Men had all the luck.
“This,” he muttered, “is really getting tiresome. And frankly, I shouldn’t be sticking my neck out. We’ve already tried our best.”
“Hey!” she protested. “I saved your ass, and now it’s my ass on the line since I can’t fail my pack.”
He put his feet up on her dashboard. “So my ass is forfeit too, is it? Well, if you want it, it’s all yours.”
Words failed her for a moment, and blood rushed to her face, inflaming her cheeks. She had not expected a comeback like that.
But before she could come up with some clever way to punish him for his boldness, he retracted his feet and again started playing what looked like a vigorous game of pocket pool.
Her spirits sank.
“Shit,” he almost snarled. “The coin. It’s going crazy again. We need to—”
Bailey jerked the wheel to the right, fish-tailing the truck onto a perpendicular street and narrowly avoiding a car stopped at the intersection.
“Fuckin’ hell,” she gasped. “That was them. Opposite direction.”
The silver Jaguar had appeared from seemingly out of nowhere, turning off the same road they’d been navigating and now heading away from them down the other side of the cross street.
And this time, unlike with Oberlin’s Suburban, she had seen the driver—a slender young woman with fuchsia hair.
Roland had tensed and shut up once the car swerved, but now he was looking over his shoulder.
“Christ, it was. Good reflexes. Two more seconds and they would have spotted us. Uh, let’s see—they’re still driving. Wait, fuck, they stopped. But, uh…nope, they’re not coming this way. And the coin is calming down.”
He blew air from his lungs and stared at her. “You saved my ass again. Nicely done. I take back everything bad I ever said about you, except the thing about my ass just now. That stands.”
A goofy smile spread over her face as she took another turn deeper into the suburbs. “Yeah, yeah, don’t mention it. You’re gonna pay for that last part, though.”
She was driving faster than she knew she should—about thirty-five miles per hour in what was obviously a residential twenty-five zone. But there didn’t seem to be any cops around, and she wanted to get the hell away from the witches with all due haste.
With that in mind, she made another turn, again taking them west.
“I wonder,” she mused, “what the hell they were doing, going east like that. Maybe they figured we were literally heading for the hills.”
“Probably,” Roland agreed. He seemed flustered—not just with the immediate situation, but today in general. There was still a kind of laid-back confidence about him that Bailey couldn’t stop herself from admiring, but with his complaining and general attitude recently, the whole ordeal seemed to be taking its toll on him.
Bailey felt the adrenaline surge. Their ordeal was about to get even more interesting.
About an intersection and a half ahead of them, standing out like the sorest thumb in the Pacific Northwest, was an abomination—a lifted white SUV with blue and purple flames along the sides and rear.
“Roland,” Bailey said as her foot pressed down on the gas, “I guess you were right last night after all, and so was everyone else. I really am a magnet for trouble.”
He glanced quickly from her face to the windshield, peering through it. “Oh, no. Nothing fails like success, I suppose. Hoo, boy!”
Bailey gunned it.
The Tundra’s engine roared as the cylinders fired, the speedometer’s needle rising to forty-five, then fifty. Bailey ran a red light. The SUV was still a ways ahead, but it was getting closer.
“What the hell?” Roland grated. “Slow down! Shit, we already spotted them, okay? We’re not going to lose them at this distance.”
“Oh, yes, we are,” Bailey insisted, “if we get stuck at a red light. No way to know which way they turned. And they haven’t spotted us yet. If we nail ‘em now, we can wrap this whole thing up in a few minutes.”
A few residents shouted and waved fists as Bailey’s truck rocketed past. Another light appeared in front of them, turned yellow, and then shifted to red just before it passed overhead.
“Bailey,” Roland countered, “getting pulled over will waste a lot more time than sitting at a light.”
“Fuck it,” she said.
The wizard threw up his hands. “You don’t get it, do you? This isn’t your little Podunk town. The cops here aren’t going to just slap your wrist and turn a blind eye. They don’t know you. In fact, you’re an outsider, which will only make them more suspicious and hostile. Jesus. Not to mention, you could run over someone’s kid. That’d be a great fucking thing to do while we’re trying to save a little girl, wouldn’t it? Think. You’re acting like a crazy—”
He stopped, biting off his final word.
It was, of course, “bitch,” but he thought better of it. Having her attempt to kick his ass while simultaneously engrossed in a psycho driving spree would get both of them killed.
Bailey was beyond the point of caring what he said right now, though. Her total focus was on running Dan Oberlin’s vehicle into the ground.
Fortunately, the SUV hit a red light half a block ahead of them and came to a stop.
“Okay, there, see?” Roland pointed out. “We’ll just be, like, two cars behind them. Now hold on a sec. I can whip up an enchantment that will let us track them. Then you won’t need to drive like you’re desperate for a tour of the local jail.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay, but it better work. I won’t lose them, not now.”
Roland produced a penny from his pocket and leaned over it, mumbling something inaudible and flexing his fingers in odd ways. Midway into the process, he poked her arm.
“The hell was that?” she asked.
He didn’t reply since he was hurrying to complete the spell. They’d rolled to a stop by now, with another SUV and a sedan separating them from the white Suburban.
“Okay,” the wizard told her. “Trust me on this.”
He rolled down his window, leaned out, and tossed the penny. He lobbed it gently enough that by rights, it should have plunked to the ground a few feet away, but somehow the little piece of copper followed a curving path all the way to the back of Oberlin’s vehicle, then planted itself right on his bumper and stayed there.
Bailey blinked. “Shit. Nice job, wiz kid.”
The light turned green.
�
��Thanks.” He shrugged. “Watch for the trail of light it leaves. Only you and I can see it; that was why I touched you there. It will stick around for about an hour, so we’ll have plenty of time to stay on their trail the legal, safe, sane way, even if they get out of our visual range.”
Bailey accelerated, staying a reasonable distance behind, and to her mild amazement, she noticed a faint beam of green light hovering above the road, emanating from the back of the Suburban like bizarre semi-frozen exhaust. It looked like a rainbow, minus the other six colors.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she remarked.
They drove for about a mile, until the other SUV turned into a driveway, leaving only the sedan between them and the hideous Suburban. Roland relaxed now that Bailey was driving the speed limit.
Her arms and hands trembled with tension. She still wanted to just run them down, but that would be stupid at this point. The faint green beam of light would guide them where they needed to go.
After another mile, Oberlin turned right, while the sedan behind him kept going straight. Bailey slowed down and put her right blinker down. Then she followed at a slightly greater distance.
“Ok,” Roland murmured, “good. Might be wise to let them get a little ahead of us, maybe pick up another tailgater or two to block us from their sight.”
“Yeah,” Bailey replied, failing to hide her impatience, “that’s the idea. I know what I’m doing.”
They fell farther behind after a four-way stop, and a blue convertible pulled out behind the Suburban. Its roof was up, but it was still low enough that some of the black Tundra would be visible if Oberlin or his cronies looked hard enough. Better than nothing, though.
For almost twenty minutes, they followed the lifted SUV’s rambling, arbitrary path through the eastern suburbs, then back into the northern part of the city.
Roland fidgeted in his seat. “Christ, they’re moving west, so they must not be ready to return home yet. Are they going all the way to the goddamn coast?”
“Wherever they’re going,” Bailey said darkly, “we’re tracking them down.” The weird green light-trail continued to guide her. “Even if they bear north and go all the way to Seattle or fucking Alaska, we’re finding those girls.”
“By now,” Roland stated, “I know when not to bother arguing with you.”
They approached a major intersection near the junction with the expressway. Suddenly the blue convertible turned into a gas station, and they found themselves right behind the Suburban, sitting at a red light.
“Shit,” Bailey muttered. “Try not to, I dunno, look at them too hard and draw their attention.”
Even as she said this, her eyes were wandering to the vehicle’s rear window. Through it, she could make out four dark, shaggy heads. The one behind the wheel was higher than the others and hatefully familiar. She had definitely not made a mistake in identifying either the truck or its driver.
As she pulled her gaze away, it got stuck on the rearview mirror—where Dan Oberlin’s face was looking right at her.
“Uh-oh,” she exhaled.
“What?” asked Roland. “Did they—”
Tires squealed and a puff of dirty smoke erupted in front of their windshield as Dan slammed his foot on the gas, his SUV rocketing through the red light, causing two cars to swerve and honk as he made straight for the expressway ramp just past the intersection.
Bailey’s eyes bulged. “Motherfucker!” Her foot descended.
Roland smacked himself in the face as the black pickup blasted into the intersection behind the Suburban and his phone went flying. The traffic light was still red as they went under it, the merging ramp growing in size to engulf them as they entered it.
“It’s curved,” he warned her. “It loops around, and then you need to speed up once you’re on the expressway. You—ohhh, shit!”
The vehicle tilted and skidded as Bailey navigated the ramp at fifty-five or sixty, well above the speed limit, though at least that meant she was already about up to speed for what lay ahead. Oberlin’s SUV was already barreling down the freeway.
Bailey merged easily, cutting off another motorist who braked and veered into the other lane, and then things were little more than chaos. The girl had never driven on this type of road before, but she grasped the general idea quickly enough, accelerating to eighty as she wove between cars, trying to catch up to the Suburban.
Roland pointed in front of them. “It’s still leaving a trail, see? You don’t have to do this. We can just track it.”
“It’s fainter,” Bailey said. “Must not work as well when they speed up. I can barely see the damn thing, and if they get too far ahead, they’ll have time to stash the goddamn truck somewhere, flee on foot, and maybe tell someone we’re after them, so we get ambushed by twenty assholes as soon as we stop.”
Groaning, the wizard conceded, “You do kinda have a point there.”
Chapter Twelve
As the werewolves’ SUV barreled forward in its mad dash to escape them, other cars started to realize crazy shit was happening and started to jerk their wheels to the right, haphazardly pulling over to the shoulder to avoid a rear-end collision with two consecutive trucks.
Bailey felt a giddy rush of excitement and terror. Her hands and shoulders trembled, yet her mind was focused and coherent. She’d never driven this fast before since Greenhearth didn’t have the roads for it. Trees and buildings and other cars whizzed past in a blur.
Roland closed his eyes. “We’re gonna get reported to the Highway Patrol. I’ll see if I can at least obscure our license plate. Shoulda done that a while ago.”
He raised his hands and slowly contorted them as if kneading dough.
“You do that,” Bailey agreed.
No police appeared for the next minute, though, as they veered around a curved part of the road, the wheels leaving the pavement for a second. It was all Roland could do to maintain concentration on his spell.
Then Oberlin braked, swerved right, and cut in front of another car to shoot down an exit ramp, disappearing from the freeway altogether.
“No!” Bailey barked. She tried to get over, but a semi-truck, honking furiously, appeared and blocked her path. There was no way she could make it to the exit in time without totaling her Tundra.
“Keep going,” Roland advised, emerging from the depths of whatever cloaking magic he’d just cast. “Take the next exit up there—only half a mile. Then head north, and we should intersect their path unless they try to double back on us.”
Bailey accelerated again, cut in front of the motorists in the right lane, and slowed down—some—as she took the exit.
“Uh,” she asked, “this damn thing is spinning me around again. Which way’s north? Wait!”
Ahead and to her left, she saw the Suburban rumbling past, the faint emerald glow still trailing behind it.
She grinned, showing her teeth. “Got ‘em. You ain’t getting away this time, Dan!”
As they hastened to catch up, Roland pointed out that they were now headed south, much to his surprise.
“They must be planning to cross the river,” he suggested.
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” said Bailey. “Maybe literally.”
Weaving amidst traffic, gunning it when she could to avoid tipping the truck over on sharp turns, Bailey soon came to within about a hundred feet of the SUV, only for Dan to catch sight of her again and floor his gas pedal.
She did likewise. “Shit! Some people don’t know when to quit.”
Roland gasped. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Oberlin had to brake to avoid crashing into a lumber truck as he cut through a red light at the intersection ahead. Bailey honked to ensure the people trying to cross the street stayed alert, then followed the Suburban just as the light flicked to green.
Suddenly, they were on a bridge over the Willamette River, just to the south of where they’d crossed it last night after the park.
“Careful!” Roland
warned. “We’ve got no room to fuck up here.”
“Stuff it,” Bailey quipped back. “I know how a bridge works. I’m not that much of a hick.”
Still, she felt her palms sweating on the wheel and her abdominal muscles clenching.
Ahead, Oberlin sideswiped an unlucky sedan, knocking off its side mirror and scattering glass and debris across the pavement. Bailey gritted her teeth as she piloted the truck toward and then through a narrow gap between two cars on either side, who’d stopped in panic.
“Whoa,” Roland exclaimed as they whizzed through, missing the vehicles by a couple of inches each.
Just as unexpectedly as the bridge had appeared, it was gone, and they were back in the city proper.
The white Suburban was gone, too.
“The hell?” Bailey raged. “Where’d he go? Goddammit!”
“The trail,” Roland reminded her, pointing. “Over there. Take a right. Slow down and follow it. There aren’t as many places he can go now. Track him the smart way.”
She wanted to shout and curse and kick the doorframe, but she refrained since that would do nothing to improve their situation. Instead, she turned right, bringing her speed back down to just over the limit.
Roland spoke again. “Listen to me. Think. He’s probably headed into the northwest Industrial district. It’s a narrow place between Forest Park and the river, not as maze-like as the eastern suburbs. We can track him easily if he goes there, and if he goes through the park, that reduces his number of paths and will slow him way down.”
Shaking her head but recognizing that the wizard was right, Bailey took a deep breath and focused on keeping the barely-visible green light in front of her.
Minutes passed with no sight of the ugly SUV, although as Roland had predicted, they ended up in the northwest corner of town, bearing toward a long row of abandoned-looking buildings arranged close to a wide place in the water.
She leaned forward and squinted. The green trail of light, as near as she could tell, was now gone.
“Shit, Roland,” she observed. “Your tracking device crapped out on us, I think.”
