Chapter 5 - HIGHWAY TO JUDGMENT
"Hold on!" Tasha screamed, bracing herself as Ryan’s SUV slammed directly into the rear bumper of her sedan.
The impact threw Eleanor forward against the front seat. Metal shrieked. The steering wheel violently jerked in Tasha’s hands, but she fought it with incredible grit, keeping the sedan straight as we blasted onto the entrance ramp of Interstate 270.
"He's trying to pit us!" Tasha yelled, tears streaming down her face. "He's trying to spin us into the ditch!"
"Keep your foot down!" I shouted, bracing Eleanor with my uninjured right arm. My left arm hung uselessly at my side, throbbing in agony, but I couldn't afford to feel it.
Ryan pulled up alongside us in the passing lane. The driver’s side window of his SUV rolled down an inch. The black muzzle of his pistol poked through the slit, aiming directly at Tasha’s front tire.
"Down! Get down!" I roared, grabbing Eleanor and pulling her down to the floorboards.
CRACK! CRACK!
Two gunshots shattered the afternoon air. The passenger side mirror of our car disintegrated into plastic shards, and a bullet ripped through the metal skin of the rear door, burying itself in the cushion inches above my head.
Other drivers on the interstate slammed on their brakes, horns blaring in a deafening chorus of panic as cars swerved across three lanes of highway to escape the madman firing out his window.
Ryan didn't care about witnesses anymore. He had crossed the Rubicon. He was a cornered beast who knew his life, his freedom, and his empire of lies were burning to the ground. If he eliminated Eleanor and me, he could spin a chaotic home invasion, an accidental shooting, a tragedy—anything to keep his stolen millions.
He swerved hard to the right, slamming the heavy frame of his two-and-a-half-ton SUV into the side of our sedan.
The sound was like a bomb going off. The windows on the left side of our car shattered, spraying safety glass across the interior. The steering pulled hard toward the concrete median divider.
"I can't hold it!" Tasha cried, her knuckles white.
"Don't fight him toward the wall! Hit the brakes!" I screamed. "Brake, Tasha! Now!"
She slammed both feet on the brake pedal.
The sedan's anti-lock brakes kicked in with a violent shudder. The sudden deceleration caused Ryan’s SUV to overshoot us by half a car length. His rear quarter-panel scraped along our front bumper with a shower of sparks, but his momentum carried him forward.
Right into the path of a massive gravel truck entering from the commercial interchange.
The truck driver blasted an air horn that sounded like the trumpet of doom, desperately locking his air brakes. The massive eighteen-wheeler jackknifed, its trailer swinging out like an iron gate.
Ryan saw it at the last fraction of a second. He jerked his steering wheel violently to the left. The SUV’s tires lost traction on the asphalt, spinning three hundred and sixty degrees before flipping onto its side and barreling into the concrete sound barrier with an earth-shattering crash.
The SUV rolled twice, roof crushing inward, before coming to a dead stop in a cloud of radiator steam, shattered glass, and flying debris.
Tasha brought our battered car to a halt fifty yards down the shoulder.
For ten seconds, nobody moved. The highway behind us had ground to a complete, stunned halt. Traffic was stopped in every lane.
"Is everyone alive?" Tasha gasped, her head resting against the steering wheel, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Eleanor?" I asked, looking down at the frail woman curled beside my boots.
She slowly lifted her head. Her face was gray with dust, but her eyes were clear. "I'm alive, Daniel. I'm alive."
I opened the dented rear door with my shoulder, stepping out onto the gravel shoulder of Interstate 270. In the distance, the wailing sirens of state troopers and county sheriff cruisers were already converging on the highway from two different directions.
I walked toward the smoking wreckage of the black SUV.
Gasoline pooled around the shattered frame. Inside the crushed cabin, upside down, hung Ryan. His face was covered in blood, his collarbone visibly broken, but he was breathing. His eyes flickered open, catching mine through the spider-webbed windshield.
He coughed, blood spitting from his lips, his voice a pitiful rattle. "Dad... Dad, help me... please... it hurts..."
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I stood on the highway asphalt, looking down at the boy I had raised, the boy I had coached in Little League, the man who had locked a grandmother in an attic to die in the winter cold.
"The police are coming, Ryan," I said, my voice dead and steady. "And for the first time in your life, nobody is going to clean up your mess."
