Stephanie Doyle - Calculated Risk

“Hold on,” she told Quinlan. “It’s time to take this baby off road.”

Taking her foot off the gas she let the car slow naturally until the station wagon that she’d been adjacent to passed her. Sabrina steered right, then right again until she was on the shoulder of the highway. A guardrail separated the lane from the trees for most of the length of the shoulder, but she could see where the exit sign was that there was a break.

Judging the distance to the sign, and determining the width of the car against the width of the gap in the guardrail, she concluded it was going to be a tight fit. Which meant she was going to need more speed to propel the car through the opening. Once again she pushed her foot down hard and watched the red needle on the speedometer jump. Her hands steady on the wheel, she turned it the exact amount to hit the gap at only the slightest angle.

Mimicking the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, metal scraped against metal as the car was attacked by the guardrail on one side and the exit sign on the other. Then suddenly, the noise stopped and they were on the other side of the rail. The car dipped and heaved on the uneven ground as the first obstacle, a tree, approached.

The still vivid image of the Cadillac from this morning wrapped around a trunk flashed behind her eyes. She turned hard left and ended up clipping a poplar tree, but still the car advanced. Another tree loomed only this time there was a small gap to her left. Then to her right. Then to her right again. It was like trying to drive through a snowstorm and missing the flakes of snow.

“Where are they?” she called out, not for one second taking her eyes off the impediments in front of her. She turned again to miss a tree and felt the back end of the car take a hit. There was a patch of cleared ground to her right so she aimed for that.

Quinlan looked over his shoulder. He could see the green sedan pulling through the guardrail and watched as sparks danced along each side of the car. The agent driving had slowed down too much in an attempt to drive cleanly through the gap, and as a result the drag against the car had slowed it down almost to a complete stop.

“We’re losing them. Get us the hell out of these woods.”

That was easier said than done, Sabrina realized. Her plan had been to drive through the woods to get to whatever road the exit emptied on to. But she’d had to make so many right turns that, instead of running parallel with 95, she was now driving west. She spotted another clearing up ahead and steered toward that, consistently trying to work her way south.

The sturdy vehicle protested the bumpy terrain with squeaks and knocks, but it still moved forward until a fallen log loomed ahead blocking her path. It wasn’t huge, but currently she didn’t have enough speed to get the car over it. She slammed on the brake and watched as Quinlan pitched forward.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Interesting idea picking the woods. We’ve lost them, but unfortunately we’re stuck.”

Sabrina heard the sarcasm and scowled. Under her breath, she muttered a complaint against all back-seat drivers. Then she switched the gear into reverse. A tree grew larger in the rearview mirror and she stopped at the last second before impact. In front of her she determined the distance between the car and the log, the height of the log, what a set of standard-size car tires might do when they hit it and calculated how fast she could get the sedan moving in the distance left to her. Best-case scenario she only had a fifty-fifty shot of the car getting over the fallen trunk.

Given the situation, fifty-fifty wasn’t all that bad.

She put the car in drive and the sedan lurched forward. The tires hit the log hard and for a second Sabrina closed her eyes. But then she felt the car lifting, climbing over the dead tree. The crunch of the chassis scraping against wood was actually a comforting sound.

The vehicle dropped suddenly as the tires cleared the log and Sabrina could see that the path ahead was mostly free of obstructions except for a few thin trees that she would have no problem navigating.

She looked behind her and saw the green sedan stopped about fifty yards back as the driver struggled to negotiate the bushes and trees in front of it without a whole lot of success. Certainly without any speed.

“Poor Patterson. Beat by a girl,” she sang.

“Stop gloating and move it.”

“Again with the orders. Have I mentioned that I don’t really have to take them from you anymore?”

Still, Sabrina did as asked. The car kicked up twigs and dead leaves in its wake and started to decline down a hill. At the bottom of the hill she saw the expected gas station.

Using the brake generously, she maneuvered the sedan steadily down to the station not bothering to avoid the small bushes, instead plowing over them. By the time she got down to the bottom of the hill and over the curb onto pavement, she could see that she’d attracted the attention of the three patrons and the gas-station’s attendant.

Sabrina hit the power-window button as she cruised past the four men who were currently staring at her with both fascination and horror.

“Traffic was a real bitch,” she said and shrugged her shoulders as if to suggest she’d been given no other choice but to take to the woods.

With that, she accelerated out of the station where she made a right onto the single-lane road. Twenty minutes later, not a single car in sight, she smugly proclaimed that she had lost them.

Quinlan allowed a slight nod of agreement.

“Okay, how were you planning to contact him?”

Sabrina reached for her back jean pocket and cursed. “Shit. My phone. It must have fallen out of my pocket at some point. Damn it, do you how much those things cost? And this one had a camera and everything.”

“You have a phone number for Kahsan?”

“No, a wireless link to the Internet. I could have posted a message that way. What about your phone?”

“It’s a two-way. I have a Palm to connect to e-mail, but I’m not carrying it. We need to get to a computer, fast.”

“I know just the place,” Sabrina said. “You said Havre de Grace, right? I’ve been there a bunch of times looking for antiques and stuff for the house. If I remember correctly, and we know I do, there is a library in that town that should have what we’re looking for. How much time do you think we have?”

“They’re going to be stuck in the woods for a while, but they’ll call Krueger.”

“What will he do?”

“He’ll call me. Let’s get to the library. Once we get the message off, his hand is going to be forced. He might have to consider letting us do this our way.”

She stuck to the back roads until she again found herself driving south. They pulled up into the quaint historic town and after a few turns found the library. Sabrina parked the car and got out. For the first time she saw the damage that had been done to the body.

She whistled softly and over the hood of the car she met Quinlan’s gaze with a worried expression. The paint was ruined and the driver’s side of the car was dented beyond repair.

“Hey, you don’t think they’re going to make me pay for this, do you?”

He didn’t bother to answer, but merely pointed to the doors of the library. She studied his face for a moment and saw a look that she hadn’t seen in some time. There was determination and there was steel.

Quinlan was on the hunt.

She remembered telling Krueger to send her the best. This close to the end, she was damn glad he’d listened to her.

“How are you going to do this?” Quinlan asked. He’d already given her the information she needed to pass on to Kahsan, but he was curious how she was going to deliver it. “I don’t imagine Kahsan has an AOL account.”