Gunfire.
Santo moved. I didn’t see it—I felt it. His body over mine, his weight landing on me like a wall falling, his hands finding my head and pushing me down, down, off the seat and onto the floor of the backseat. My knees hit the carpet. Glass was everywhere—in my hair, on my shoulders, the small bright fragments catching the light as they scattered across the leather seats.
“Stay down.” His voice in my ear. Not the Daddy voice. Not the gentle register, not the bedtime reading, not the you‘re brave from the kitchen. The other voice. The flat one. The one that came from the place where he kept the violence, the place that had always been there under the tenderness, waiting.
He was off me. The weight lifting. I heard the click of the safety—a small sound, somehow audible through the wind and the shattered window and the roar of the expressway.
He fired.
The gun was loud in the enclosed space—louder than the incoming shots, or maybe that was just proximity, the sound source inches from my head instead of yards behind us. The recoil traveled through the car. I felt it in the floor, in the frame, in the bones of the vehicle. Two shots. Three. The shell casings hit the seat with small metallic pings, one rolling off the leather and landing near my hand. Warm. I could feel the heat of it through my skin.
Midge.
The thought cut through everything else. She was still inside the jacket, pressed against my ribs, her body rigid and trembling and completely silent. Not a bark, not a whine. The silence of an animal beyond fear, past the threshold where the vocal cords stopped working and the body just held on.
I pulled her out. Tucked her under me. My body over hers the way Santo’s had been over mine—the same instinct, the same geometry of protection. Her small heartbeat hammered against my stomach. I pressed my hand over her and held.
A sound from the front. Sal. A grunt—short, clipped, the noise a man makes when he doesn’t want to make noise. The car swerved. My shoulder slid across the floor, glass biting through my dress.
“Sal—“ Santo’s voice.
“I’m good.” Sal wasn’t good. The words came through clenched teeth, the voice of a man running on the last reserves of professional discipline. The car straightened. Kept moving.
More gunfire from behind. The Altima—I could hear it now, the engine note closer, higher, the sound of a vehicle that was accelerating to close distance. Rounds hit the trunk—the metallic percussion of bullets finding metal, three impacts in quick succession.
Santo fired again. I pressed my face against the floor and held Midge and counted the shots because counting was something I could control and everything else was beyond me.
The SUV.
It came back. From the floor I could see through the blown-out side window—the black shape pulling alongside again, massive, the chrome grille filling the frame. Close enough to touch. Close enough that when I lifted my head a fraction—an inch, just enough—I could see the driver’s face through his open window.
Young. Dark hair. A scar on his chin. Eyes that looked straight ahead with the flat, focused expression of a man performing a task. Not angry. Not excited. Working.
I’d remember that face.
The SUV began to drift toward us. Closing the gap. Preparing for another hit that would send us into the concrete barrier on the right side, the barrier that was a foot from Sal’s door and would crush the sedan like a can.
This time, when it hit us, we spun.
Not a full spin — a half-rotation, the rear end swinging out, the tires screaming as Sal overcorrected. The SUV though, flew offthe road, hitting the center barrier at an angle. The sound was enormous—concrete and metal and the particular shriek of a vehicle being stopped by something that would not move. Sparks sprayed across the lane like thrown coins.
The Altima braked.
I saw it in the shard of rearview mirror that was still attached — the dark blue car falling back, the tinted windows receding, the distance opening between us. The driver making the calculation that every pursuit driver makes when the lead vehicle has just demonstrated it will use itself as a weapon: is this still worth it?
It wasn’t.
The Altima peeled off. An exit ramp. Gone.
The expressway opened ahead of us. Empty. The traffic that had been thin before was nonexistent now — the other cars had scattered, the universal instinct of civilian drivers in the presence of gunfire, which was to be elsewhere immediately.
Wind poured through the missing rear window. Glass was in my hair.
Santo‘s hand found my shoulder.
“Cora.” My name. His voice wrecked— oarse, raw, the voice of a man who had just fired a weapon while shielding a woman he loved and was now performing the most important assessment of his life. “Are you hit?”
I looked at myself. Black dress. Glass. A line of red on my forearm where something had grazed or cut. Midge was alive under me—trembling, silent, her heart a machine-gun flutter against my stomach.