Full Force. Elle James

I can,” Emily promised.

      She thought she’d been doing well and had lost her tail when she’d finally pulled off the main parkway onto a smaller road. But as soon as the traffic thinned, she looked behind her.

      The dark-tinted vehicle was there and speeding up, closing in on her. The road she traveled now was lined with gated driveways. Besides the gates and the driveways, there was nothing else around. No cars. No people. Just her and the sedan that was quickly catching up.

      “Are you still with me, Emily?” Grace asked.

      “I’m here,” she said. This time when she glanced in her rearview mirror the vehicle behind her was racing toward her back bumper. Emily pressed her foot to the accelerator, shooting her little car forward. Her speed increased from fifty to sixty to seventy miles per hour. A caution sign on the side of the road indicated an upcoming curve, with a recommended speed of twenty-five miles per hour.

      Afraid the vehicle behind her would rear-end her and send her flying off the road, Emily didn’t dare slow down. She gripped the steering wheel and raced into the curve at breakneck speed. As she navigated the radius, the rear end of her vehicle fishtailed and swung around. She almost went into a 360-degree spin, was able to correct her direction, but not soon enough to avoid the vehicle following her.

      The car behind her slammed into her left rear fender, sending her back into the spin.

      Out of her control, her car slid toward the edge of the road.

      Emily squealed and held tight to the steering wheel as her vehicle bumped onto the shoulder, down into a ditch and up an embankment, slamming into a fence post. Upon impact, the airbags deployed, forcing her back against her seat, stunning her for a few precious seconds. Emily rubbed the dust out of her eyes and looked around. The fine powder of the airbag coated her skin and clothes and the dash of the vehicle.

      In her rearview mirror, she could see the road behind her and the dark sedan parked at the edge. A man dressed in black, with a black ski mask pulled over his head, got out of the driver’s side and stood on the shoulder, staring down at her vehicle.

      Emily didn’t move, praying her attacker would think she was unconscious and leave.

      When he moved toward her, she couldn’t sit still, she had to get away.

      Emily shifted her vehicle into Reverse and hit the accelerator. The rear tires spun, gaining no traction. She couldn’t go forward because of the fence post. She tried turning the steering wheel sharply to the left and hit the accelerator again. The back tire spun, shooting mud up behind her, but the vehicle didn’t budge.

      “What’s happening, Emily?” Grace’s voice said over the phone. “What was that noise? Are you okay?”

      “No, no, I’m not. I’ve crashed,” Emily managed to croak out as she struggled with what to do. “I have to... I’m getting out...” She couldn’t waste time talking. Escape was her only option.

      The man on the side of the road scrambled down into the ditch, moving purposefully toward her. Emily tried to open her door to get out, but the door was jammed. She fumbled with the catch on her seat belt and finally got it loose.

      Her pulse pounding loudly against her eardrums, Emily crawled across the console to the other side of the vehicle and pulled the door handle. When the door swung open, she fell out onto the ground, rolled onto her side, bunched her feet and knees up beneath her and rose.

      When she raised her head above the car, she could see the man in black standing there, his hand rising, a gun held in his grip.

      Emily’s heart leaped to her throat. She ducked back down behind the car as a shot rang out. Glass shattered, raining down from the window above her as Emily lay flat against the earth. The scent of gasoline, tire rubber and the mud beneath her nose filled her senses. But she couldn’t lie there for long. If her pursuer came any closer, he could easily pick her off with his handgun.

      Unwilling to die that day, Emily rose onto her hands and knees. Keeping low to the ground, she crawled for the fence, slipped beneath the bottom rail and continued on toward the trees, praying she could find a place to hide until the crazy man following her gave up and went away. Or until Grace’s friends arrived to rescue her.

       Chapter Two

      Frank “Mustang” Ford’s cell phone rang through to the Bluetooth in his truck. Declan O’Neill’s name appeared on the dash screen.

      Mustang thumbed the button on his steering wheel to answer. “What’s up, Declan?”

      “Are you on your way to the Halverson Estate?”

      “Roger,” he confirmed. “Five miles away. Why? Need me to stop and pick up some milk or bread?” He chuckled.

      “No. I have a mission for you.”

      “Really?” Mustang sat straighter. “Must be a short deadline if you can’t wait until I get to Charlie’s place.”

      “It is,” Declan said, his tone clipped. “Be on the lookout for a red Toyota Camry. Grace’s friend is en route to Charlie’s and has a tail following her. She reported three vehicular attacks since leaving the DC area. She might be in trouble.”

      “I’ll keep an eye out for her. The road out this way appears pretty deserted.”

      “Then it shouldn’t be hard to find her. Let us know when you catch up to her.”

      “Roger.” As he increased his speed, Mustang gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

      A mile or more later a yellow caution sign indicated a sharp curve ahead. Mustang applied his brakes, his gaze scanning the sides of the road and the ditches. If someone was trying to harm Grace’s friend, running her off the road in the middle of a curve was the perfect place to do it. Dusk was settling in, causing shadows to merge, making it more difficult for Mustang to distinguish between shadows and objects on the sides of the road.

      As soon as he entered the sweeping curve, he spied a dark vehicle parked barely off the shoulder. The driver’s-side door hung open and, as far as Mustang could tell, no one was inside or around the vehicle. He slowed, pulled over to the side of the road and off onto the shoulder, giving the vehicle in front of him plenty of space. He shifted into Park, grabbed his flashlight from the center console and pulled his handgun from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

      Mustang slipped down out of his truck and closed the door quietly. As he rounded the hood and edged toward the dark sedan he spied another vehicle on the other side of the ditch crashed against a fence pole. It, too, seemed abandoned and, from what he could tell, it was red. The front bumper was smashed into the fence post and the driver’s-side window was shattered with what looked like a bullet hole at the exact position that would have hit the driver, had the driver been sitting in the seat.

      Adrenaline shot through Mustang’s veins. Crouching low, he eased toward the abandoned vehicles, dropped down into the ditch and climbed up the embankment to the disabled vehicle where he discovered the passenger door was open. He prayed that whoever had been in the car had escaped. All he could assume at the moment was that whoever had arrived in the dark sedan had been the one to run the other vehicle off the road and to fire the shot that had put the hole in the driver’s-side window. That led Mustang to believe the driver of the disabled vehicle was on the run, being chased now by whoever had attacked her.

      With his gun held at the ready, he pointed his flashlight with his other hand into the front seat of the disabled vehicle. He was glad to discover there was no blood on the seats or the dash. The airbags had deployed and the vehicle was empty, meaning the driver had escaped. But how long would she last on the run from somebody trying to kill her with a gun? She could be injured. The question was, what direction had she gone in?

      He tried to think like a person running from somebody determined to kill her. She would have made for