Shiver by Karen Robards Page A

rattled as it got under way again. Behind them, the Beemer lurched and swayed into motion like a dragging, too-heavy kite’s tail.
    “Not too fast,” he said as, with his warning about more killers being on the way lighting up her brain, she stepped hard on the gas and the truck obediently gathered speed. “Nice and easy, like you’ve actually got a brain in your head.”
    “Screw you.” She flung him a killing glare. But she eased off on the accelerator, although her every instinct urged her to stomp it. “By the way, it’d be a lot easier to drive ‘nice and easy’ if you let go of my wrist.”
    To her surprise he did, and eased back onto his side of the seat. The gun moved with him, withdrawing from her ribs. She could see it once more. He gripped it firmly; it remained pointed right at her, a deterrent to impulsive actions. Thinking furiously, Sam curled her fingers around the wheel and stared almost sightlessly out through the windshield. Trying once more to leap from the truck and run occurred to her, but the last attempt hadn’t gone so well and she doubted that exiting any faster was going to be possible: getting the balky door open just couldn’t reliably be done in an instant. Maybe a half mile up ahead was the junction with Story Avenue. If she followed Storyalong to St. Clair, the route would take her past bars and strip clubs where there would be people, i.e., witnesses, which should make him even less likely to shoot her if she jumped. It was also where, she calculated, she had a fairly good chance of encountering a cop. If she had to drive right into the side of a fuzzmobile to get out of this, that’s just what she was going to do.
    Only there was the small matter of the two men she had just shot. It had absolutely been self-defense, but what would it take to convince the cops of that? In East St. Louis, the residents universally mistrusted police. The police, in nice reciprocation, equally universally mistrusted the residents. In the “us” versus “them” world in which she had grown up, the cops were “them.”
    They probably weren’t going to believe her. And even if somebody ultimately did, how long would it take to convince the powers that be to release her from jail, where she was sure to be taken as soon as the first cop got the first whiff about there being two dead bodies involved?
    If she was taken into custody, even for a short while, what would happen to Tyler? Kendra would take care of him, as would Mrs. Menifee, but . . .
    Sam felt the tiny muscle beneath her left eye start to twitch. An annoying barometer of her emotional state, it was something that happened when she was under extreme stress. Automatically pressing a cool forefinger against the jumping spot, she cast her captor a look of supreme loathing.
    “I don’t want any part of this,” she said. “Whatever’s going on, it’s got nothing to do with me.”
    “It does now.”
    That was so horrible to contemplate that, staring at him, Sam drove off the road again.
    “Watch out!” His one good eye widened with almost comical alarm even as the vibration of the tires rolling onto the shoulder jerked her attention forward. It was just in time to allow her to avoid driving straight into a drainage ditch. She yanked the wheel, and with a couple of bounces they were on the pavement once more. “The last thing we need is for you to wreck us. The goal is for us to get away from here, remember?” He sounded like he was speaking through his teeth. “Although probably the gunshots and squealing tires back there screwed the whole ‘let’s try to sneak away quietly’ thing. To say nothing of the fucking air horn.”
    “You can have the truck, okay?” Sliding him a sideways glance, Sam wet her dry lips. They were nearing the intersection with Story, which was a little far from her duplex, although the distance didn’t constitute anything resembling a problem under the circumstances. She could hitchhike. She could