Lena Diaz - Tennessee Takedown

Dillon crouched on the porch and fired off two quick shots at the truck’s tires, hoping to disable it before it gained much speed.

The truck jerked to the side but kept going. Damn this rain and wind. He wouldn’t normally miss a shot like that. Taking the stairs two at a time, he hopped into his car, wheeled it around and floored the accelerator.

The Jeep fishtailed on the wet gravel. Dillon cursed and let up on the gas, then took off at a slower speed. The headlights from the truck bounced crazily as it turned at the end of the drive. West, it was heading west.

He grabbed his phone and pressed the button for dispatch as he barreled down the driveway. Nothing. He held the phone up. The light was on and he’d pressed the right button, but the call hadn’t gone through. Must be the bad cell tower, as he’d thought earlier.

After making the turn at the end of the drive onto the paved road, he floored the gas again. The truck’s taillights were barely visible up ahead in the pouring rain. There weren’t any streetlights out on this old rural two-lane. But he didn’t need more than his headlights to tell him what he already knew. The road up ahead was full of dangerous, sharp S-curves. If the driver of that truck kept his current speed, on this slick, wet road, he’d likely end up in a ditch or plow headfirst into a tree.

* * *

ASHLEYCLUNGTOthe armrest and braced her other hand against the dashboard. The rain was falling so hard the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. The truck’s tires kept slipping on the wet road, making the bottom drop out of her stomach.

“Please slow down,” she pleaded. “It’s too dangerous to drive this fast in these conditions.”

The driver raised his gun and pointed it at her without taking his gaze from the road.

She swallowed and held her hands up in a placating gesture.

He shoved the gun between his legs and put both hands back on the wheel, the veins in his forearms bulging from the effort it took to keep the truck on the road.

Ashley glanced in the side mirror. The lights from Dillon Gray’s Jeep were barely visible in the distance, but he was steadily gaining on them. She didn’t have a clue why he’d gone to her house, but he was the answer to her prayers. If he could catch up and somehow manage to get this eerily calm stranger to stop the truck...

She let out a yelp as the truck slid toward the ditch on their right.

Her captor let up on the gas. The wheels caught and spit the truck back toward the middle of the road.

* * *

DILLON’SHEARTPLUMMETEDas the black pickup carrying Ashley Parrish slid dangerously close to the edge of the road for the second time since he’d started pursuit. At the last second, the truck straightened out and shot back toward the centerline.

He let out a pent-up breath and pushed his Jeep even harder, the engine whining as it struggled to catch up. His four-wheel drive was built for power, not speed, which was why he didn’t normally use it when on the job. And it wasn’t aerodynamic enough to make the curves without greatly reducing his speed. Neither was the truck up ahead. The ditches along this road might as well be cliffs, as steep as they were. And with all this rain, they were full of water, a death trap if the truck slid into one of them.

He tried his phone again, but it was no use. He no longer believed a failed cell tower was to blame. He’d gone too far from Ashley’s house for that to be the case. The driver of the truck had to have a powerful cell phone jammer. That would explain why Ashley’s call dropped when she was talking to her friend, and why Dillon couldn’t get a call through as he followed behind. His mouth tightened. Jammers weren’t cheap, and they were hard to come by. The man who’d taken Ashley had gone to a lot of trouble, and expense, to do it. This wasn’t a random abduction.

He debated pulling off the road to call dispatch for backup. But if he let enough distance pass between him and the truck to unblock his phone, he might lose their trail. He couldn’t risk it.

The road curved ahead, but no matter how hard Dillon pressed his Jeep on the straightaway, he couldn’t catch up before the pickup disappeared around the curve. When he rounded the bend, he slammed his fist against the steering wheel. The fool. The truck’s lights were visible up ahead, but not on the two-lane it had been on. Instead, the driver had turned down the side road that led to Cooper’s Bluff. And he was heading toward the low wooden bridge over Little River—the bridge the mayor had closed because the river was expected to top it.

Ignoring every sense of self-preservation he had, he pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor. The tires slipped. He cursed and let up on the gas, even though it nearly killed him to slow down.

The bridge was around the next curve, so he slowed the Jeep even more.

Taillights gleamed up ahead at a crazy angle.

Dillon’s eyes widened and he slammed the brakes, bringing his car to a skidding halt at the edge of the roadway. The last twenty feet of asphalt had washed away. The bridge was completely underwater, its support beams sticking up out of the angry, roiling waves like the skeleton of some prehistoric water beast. The truck had slid off the collapsed roadway, narrowly missing the bridge’s first support beam and sliding half into the river.

Dillon grabbed his flashlight and hopped out. He sprinted to what was now little more than a cliff, a fifteen-foot drop down to the strip of mud at the water’s edge. The front of the truck was submerged beneath the water, all the way up to the doors. The bed of the truck stuck up in the air, and even as Dillon watched, the truck slipped a few more inches into the water.

He took off, racing parallel to the shore until he found a break where he could climb down. His boots slipped and slid in the muddy, rain-soaked ground.

In the beam of his flashlight he saw Ashley frantically tugging at her seat belt, her frightened eyes pleading with him for help as the water sucked and pulled at the truck. Dillon waded waist deep into the churning water to get to her door. The window was still rolled up, probably electric and stuck. He looked past her. The driver appeared to be passed out over the wheel. A rivulet of blood ran down the side of his face.

Ashley managed to get her seat belt off and yanked the door handle, but it wouldn’t open against the current. She pounded the flats of her hands against the window.

“Turn away from the glass,” Dillon yelled.

When Ashley moved back, Dillon used the hard case of his flashlight like a hammer against the window. It bounced and thudded against the glass. He tried again and again but the glass still held.

The truck slid deeper into the water.

Ashley screamed.

The driver stirred beside her.

Dillon shoved the flashlight under his arm and pulled out his gun.

“I have to shoot the window out,” he yelled.

She nodded, letting him know she understood. She pulled her legs up onto the seat, squeezing back from the window.

Dillon aimed toward the corner, so his bullet would go into the dashboard, and squeezed the trigger.

The safety glass shattered but held. He slammed the butt of his gun against the window. This time it collapsed in a shower of tiny glass pieces. He started to shove his gun into his holster but Ashley dove at him in the window opening, knocking both the flashlight and the pistol into the boiling, raging water.

He grabbed her beneath her arms and pulled.

She screamed.

He froze, horrified that he might have cut her on the glass.

“Let me go. Let me go,” she screamed again. But she wasn’t talking to him.

Dillon looked past her into the steady, dark eyes of the driver. He had a hold of Ashley’s waist and was playing a deadly game of tug-of-war.