Getaway Car [HS]

Chapter Two

"You might wanna start driving before they get here," he says.

It's only now that she notices her surroundings and sees the faint red and blue flashing lights reflecting off the building on the main road.

For a second, all she can do is blink at him in surprise. There are no words coming out of her mouth, nor is there any reaction other than a petrified look in her eyes and the sound of her sputtering for something to say. What else can she do? She may have a switchblade, but this guy has a gun pointed at her head. There's no room for argument.

After another few seconds of silence, his eyes narrow, and she can picture his brows scrunching up under the mask in confusion.

The metal is cold against her skin as he pushes the tip of the pistol into her temple. His free hand reaches from where it sat idle beside him to rack the slide and load a bullet into the chamber, and the sound of it seems to wake her from her shell shock.

"Drive," he says through gritted teeth.

Her foot slams down on the pedal, and the sudden acceleration sends her chest jolting forward against the tight restraint of her seatbelt. The car shoots out from between the two buildings right as the two approaching police vehicles round the corner onto the street in front of the apartment building. Due to the time of day, the street is practically abandoned, and any cars that are driving nearby are passed with ease when she swerves into the other lane.

The gun pressed into the side of her skull makes her hands tremble to an extent that could send them off the road if she weren't as focused on keeping the car straight. She could probably do better without the pistol digging into her temple and an idea of where he wants her to go, but part of her fears speaking again. His presence alone makes her want to zip her mouth shut and keep her head down to avoid angering him in any way, but she needs to know.

"Where are we even going? I can't—" she stammers for the rest of her sentence—"I don't even know where to go, how the fuck do you expect me to outrun the police if I don't know where to go?"

The little hand on the speedometer creeps up on eighty miles per hour. She knows this car can handle a faster speed because she did her research, and partly because she's driven it faster than this before, but she's hoping that this is slow enough for the cops to catch up and save her from him.

In response to her questions, he digs the gun in harder.

"You need to lose them first, and if I haven't put a bullet in you by then, I'll tell you where to go. Go faster."

It'd be a little less unnerving if he weren't calm. The hand holding the gun doesn't shake the way hers do, it's wholly still.

He's done this before, a voice in the back of her mind whispers to her. He's clearly done this many, many times, and he won't have any problem shooting you!

There's a moment of careful contemplation, of her weighing the opposing options.

On one hand, she can go against his instructions and let him take her out right here, right now, and shove her body onto the side of the road for him to escape on his own. It'd be a quick death. The bullet to her brain would kill her instantaneously, painlessly, and it'd be over before she registered the sound of his leather-wrapped finger squeezing down on the trigger.

On the other hand, she can listen to him and submit to the instinctive urge to press down harder on the gas...

It brings her back to memories from years ago; sitting in her mom's lap on the side of the race track while watching her dad, learning to drive with him encouraging her from the passenger's seat, and losing herself in the exhilaration of traveling at high speed whenever she needed to escape the outside world. She can already sense the adrenaline rush that'd find her if she relaxed her tightened shoulders and put the pedal to the metal.