Andy’s body lay just ahead of the Element.

He was just a boy.

Duct tape had been wound around the outside of my wrists, but not looped around the insides. Below the steering wheel, I started twisting my arms back and forth, trying to create some play in the tape. I’d have had a go at the edge of it with my teeth, but one of the three might notice.

I wasn’t quite sure what I hoped to accomplish even if I got my hands free. There were three of them, two with guns. I could try to make a run for it, but I didn’t like my chances. The showroom doors that led outside couldn’t be opened without a key. I’d have to stay ahead of them all the way through the service department to get to a door I could push open.

“I think we just need to get out of here,” Carter said. “Kill Blake and we go.”

“Yeah,” said Owen. “I don’t want to hang around here.”

Gary was nodding. “Okay, okay.”

I kept twisting at the tape. Even with my wrists bound, maybe, when one of the three approached the door, I could kick it open, knock him back, jump out, run like hell.

I wouldn’t stand a chance.

I could lean on the horn. But how much attention was that likely to attract, really? And how long did I think I’d be able to lean on it before they dealt with me? A quick bullet through the windshield would put an end to it.

Horn aside, how long did I have, anyway?

I looked down, checked what progress I was making with the tape. Another minute and I thought I’d have it. The tape pulled at the hairs on my arm, but the pain didn’t mean much in the overall scheme of things.

Something about the center console caught my eye.

It was open just a crack. Just wide enough to see something shiny inside.

I felt my heart start to pound. I swung my two hands over to the right and tipped the compartment door back another inch.

A set of keys.

I leaned over slightly, caught the keys between the thumb and index finger of my right hand, and carefully removed them from the compartment without jiggling them. Awkwardly, I maneuvered my wrists so that I could slide the proper key into the ignition.

I was going to need my hands separated to pull this off. Because the moment I turned the ignition with one hand, I was going to have to lock the doors and power up the windows with the other.

I hoped, first of all, that I’d be around so Laura Cantrell could give me shit for what I was about to try, and second, that there was some gas in this goddamn van.

FORTY

I’D LOOSENED THE TAPE ENOUGH that I was able to slide my right hand through the loop. I took my left hand, tape hanging loose about the wrist, and positioned it over the controls on the driver’s door. I could have hit the power lock button now-the key didn’t have to be turned to make it work-but Gary and Carter and Owen would have heard the thunk of all the locks engaging and wondered what I was up to. That would give them a one-second head start, maybe enough to get to one of the two open windows and make a grab for me through them. A lot of vans on the market didn’t have power rear windows. This one did, but I’d caught a break there. They were already in the up position.

Of course, bulletproof glass was not currently an option. Even with the windows up, I was hardly going to be immune.

I got my other hand on the key.

The three of them were milling around the front of the van, looking down at Andy’s body, then at me. Carter and Owen were looking at Gary. He gave them a subtle nod.

They turned and glared at me behind the windshield.

I twisted the key forward.

The engine turning over would have sounded loud anyway inside the showroom, where sounds bounce off the glass and the other cars. But under these circumstances, it was like a bomb going off.

The three men jumped as the engine roared only three feet away from them. It took them a good half second to realize what I’d actually done.

By that time, I had the two front windows halfway up.

Carter moved first. He ran for my door, reached for the handle with his left hand, couldn’t open it, tried to hit me with his right, which was still holding the gun. He slipped his hand through as the window was about three quarters of the way up.

The window kept moving.

Owen had run after Carter, but there was nothing for him to do but watch what was happening. He slapped both hands on the front fender, as though he had superhuman strength and could hold the van there should it start to move.

Carter fired.

The gun went off about six inches from my left ear and sounded like a cannon blast, but with the way the window was traveling and forcing Carter’s hand higher and higher, his shot went north and into the ceiling of the van.

Gary, still standing near the front of the van, screamed, “What the fuck!”

The driver’s window went as high as it could, trapping Carter at the narrowest part of his wrist. He screamed.

I grabbed the shift lever mounted on the center on the dash, put the van into reverse, and floored it. I might normally have been inclined to watch where I was driving, but as the van began to move backward, I kept staring straight ahead at Gary, who had tossed his lit cigarette and was raising his gun, getting ready to fire.

The van took off with a squeal, the front tires spinning on the tile floor. To my left, Carter’s face slammed against the window as he was dragged along. Owen leapt backward.

It was a short trip.

Ten feet into the journey, the van smashed broadside into the Civic. The crash momentarily drowned out Carter’s screams. My head slammed back into the headrest.

Carter squeezed off another shot. I wasn’t sure where it went, exactly, but I didn’t feel a bullet tear through my brain, so I grabbed the shifter again and threw the automatic transmission down into first.

I tromped onto the accelerator, interrupting Carter as he banged on the driver’s door window with his free hand, trying to shatter it so he could free himself. Maybe if he’d been hitting it with something harder than his fist, he could have broken it. Owen, unarmed, was shunting back and forth, like the target in a game of dodgeball, clueless about what to do.

I realized we now had a soundtrack. There was a cacophony of car alarms going off.

As the car jumped toward Gary, he got off a shot just before diving off to my left. The windshield instantly spiderwebbed, the bullet hitting in the windshield’s upper right corner. Gary’s foot slipped in the blood leaking from Andy Hertz’s brain. He went sprawling onto the floor just beyond the van’s path.

Still dragging a screaming Carter, I slammed broadside into the Pilot. I must have knocked the back end of it a good two feet across the floor. I knew the airbag in the steering wheel in front of me was bound to deploy at this point, but it was like when you know the flash is going to go off when your picture is being taken. You think you can keep from blinking, but you can’t.

So it was still a shock when the white pillow exploded in front of me, a cloud moving at jet speed. It enveloped my face. Unable to see for the few seconds it took the bag to deflate, I blindly put the car into reverse, turned the wheel a bit to the right, and floored it again.

My head slammed into the headrest a second time. I’d hit the Civic once again, this time more to the front. The gun Carter had been holding slipped from his grasp, bumped my shoulder, and dropped down between the door and the seat.

I didn’t really have a moment to look for it.

I patted down the airbag so I could see what was happening. Carter I didn’t have to worry about, especially since he’d lost his gun. He was just coming along for the ride, wherever I decided to go, at least until his hand came off.

Owen had run to the far corner of the showroom, on the other side of the Pilot, just beyond my desk. Gary, still down on the floor next to Andy’s body, his shirt and pants smeared with blood, took another shot. He didn’t have time to aim and it went wild. A bullet pinged someplace into the sheet metal.