Rachel Caine: Total Eclipse

David offered me his arm. “She’s right,” he said. “So are you. Fight first; introspection later.”

“We’re going to make it,” I said. “You believe that, right?”

He looked around—at the seemingly normal sea-front, at the Wardens disembarking from the ship, at the world all around us. And he said, softly, “Not all of us.”

I shivered.

Four in a cab was a stretch, but we voted Kevin to sit up front, much to the displeasure of the driver, who groused about rules and such until I tossed money at him. The money had been issued to all of us out of the ship’s treasury—another thing that was going on the Wardens’ already staggering tab for saving the world again. It wasn’t going to be enough, but it was enough to get us moving, and that was all that mattered.

I had the driver drop us at a car rental place—not Avis and Budget, which were already swarming with Weather Wardens attempting to secure their own preferred methods of transpo, not liking what I’d booked for them—but a luxury place, where I plunked down the gold American Express Warden card to the clerk behind the counter. She was a professionally lovely girl, the way a lot of South Beach ladies are, and she had a practiced, customer-service-approved smile. “What kind of vehicle are you—”

“What’s the fastest car you have?” I asked.

“Um . . .” She glanced down, and I’m pretty sure she would have frowned except that the Botox no longer allowed that particular expression. Not that I wasn’t in favor of Botox; I was starting to develop some disturbing furrows in my own brow. “We have a Porsche Carrera. . . .”

“Something that seats four,” I said.

“Comfortably,” added Cherise.

“Okay, well, we have a classic Mustang that I understand is really fast. . . .”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What kind of classic Mustang?” Because with my luck it would be a 1974, which was the start of the Mustang Dark Ages.

“It’s a Boss 429,” she said, reading from a card with the air of someone who really didn’t speak the language and was sounding it out phonetically. “From 1970.”

She hadn’t even thought about being born when Ford had rolled that racing car off the assembly line, but my heart was starting to pound. “Seriously? You’re sure it’s a Boss 429?”

“We just got it in,” she said. “It has about sixty thousand miles on it.”

I swallowed hard and tried not to get my hopes up. “Can I see it?”

She gave me another professional smile—not quite as polished as the last one—and then brightened the wattage considerably at David. “Sure,” she said, and nodded to another woman, identically lovely (only with dark hair), who came from the back to take her place at the counter. Out we went—although Cherise left the mountain of suitcases sitting in the lobby, thankfully—into the parking lot behind the reception building.

It was like a candy store for car addicts. Seriously. There were a lot of very rich people in Florida, and a lot who visited, and this was their toy box. Classic red Lamborghini? Choose from dozens of identical clones. Want a high-end Porsche? A Jag XJ220? No problem. Even I slowed down and stared as we passed the sleek, rounded chassis of what surely couldn’t be . . . “Hey,” I said, and pointed. “Bugatti Veyron?”

“Reserved,” our guide said. “And you’d need more than a gold Amex, I can tell you that.”

No doubt, because the last time I’d seen a price tag attached to one of those monsters, it was soaring up into the $1.5 million range. I felt I should genuflect or something, because that was definitely one of the Gods of Cars.

Then we cleared a giant, gleaming, black row of tricked-out Hummers, and found . . . my car.

There was just no doubt about it, really. This was mine. The thick, hot pleasure that spread through me at the sight of it couldn’t have felt better if accompanied by a shot of heroin, administered by a male stripper.

Yes, cars are my drug of choice.

She wasn’t wrong. It was a Boss 429, absolutely cherry, painted in Intimidator Black. No stripes, no frills. It looked dangerous. Oh, and it was.

Rental Car Girl was holding a set of keys. She handed them to me and opened the driver’s- side door. It smelled faintly of cigar smoke inside, but the interior was beautifully maintained. The seat was comfortably broken in, and even the leg length was almost right. One minor adjustment, and I fired it up.

A low, deep-throated throb of an engine, hot with power and hungry for speed. Yes.

I realized I was obsessively running my hands over the steering wheel, with a lust that was making David look at me funny. I cleared my throat, shut the engine off, and got out of the car. “Fine,” I said, trying to sound normal. “I’ll take it.”

“Day rate?”

“For the month,” I said.

She didn’t even blink; I supposed the rich did rent things on that scale on a regular basis. Probably for longer. “You’ll have to pay the deposit plus two weeks,” she said. “The car has LoJack, of course. We maintain our own insurance, which we will require you to carry if you can’t provide valid coverage that would include—”

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Charge it. We’re in a hurry.”

Surprisingly, that phrase did not inspire confidence. We waited through ID checks, credit checks, whispered conversations, and finally a massive set of paperwork, including a clause that I was fairly sure included forced organ harvesting in the event of nonpayment.

I just signed it, scribbling as fast as I could anywhere her well-manicured finger pointed. She wished us a pleasant stay in Miami. I didn’t correct her, just stood tapping my foot impatiently until the uniformed valet had brought the Boss around to the front.

Cherise opened the trunk and looked inside. “You’re kidding, right? My luggage will never—”

“Downsize,” I said. “You’re not packing for a photo shoot, you know.”

“How do you know? There’s always time to book a good gig before the end of the world. . . . Okay, fine.” She crammed two of the suitcases in, and rolled two more back inside. She came out empty-handed, and I raised my eyes. She scooted her big round sunglasses down to roll hers. “They’re shipping them to Warden HQ,” she said. “What, you really thought I’d just leave them? Girlfriend. There is Elie Saab in there. Ready-to-wear, but still. Respect.”

“Hey, you’ve got your drug. I’ve got mine.” I made sure the trunk was closed, and opened up the door for her as I flipped the driver’s seat forward. She got in with care. I was glad, because I really didn’t want to see any tabloid flashing. Kevin piled in next to her, and I smirked a little as I slammed the passenger seat back into place. With those long legs, he was not going to be overly comfortable . . . but then again, he wouldn’t have been comfortable in much except a stretch limo.

David and I slid into the front seats, and I turned the key. The vibration of the engine came straight up my spine, doing interesting things in all kinds of key pleasure points, and I hit the clutch and shifted into first gear.

The Boss scratched right out of the box, leaving a thin mist of smoke behind us as it roared off. Zero to thirty, way too fast, and I had to back off dramatically on the fuel mix. He was temperamental, this beast. I liked that. It took a few experimental shifts to find the sweet spot in the clutch and get the feel of the pedals, but not more than a minute. The rental company had added a plug-in GPS, which showed me the route to the nearest freeway, and by the time I hit the on-ramp me and the Boss were good friends.