Nick stopped. His entire focus had been on reaching the truck and getting Alena out of there before Riddick knew she was missing; he hadn’t thought at all about where they would go next. “We could look for a town,” he suggested. “Pull off someplace where there are lots of people around—maybe a mall or a restaurant.”

“There are no malls around here—why do you think they’re building the Patriot Center? There’s practically nothing between here and Endor, and nothing’s open this time of night anyway. There’s a thousand acres of forest at my place and I know every inch of it. If we can just get there a few seconds before he does we can duck into the woods and hide—I know places that he could never find.”

Nick considered her idea. “Okay—we’ll go to your place. We’ll hide out there until he gives up and quits looking for us—then we can contact the authorities.”

“I think that car is getting closer. Are you sure it’s him? Can you tell?”

Nick looked out the window again and saw the headlights turn off onto the same smaller road that they had—and they were definitely closer now.

“It has to be him—he’ll be on us in another couple of minutes. Step on it—maybe we’ll get lucky and pass a cop along the way.”

They raced past a green sign pointing to I-66 West.

“You just missed the freeway entrance!”

“I saw it,” she said. “We don’t want the freeway.”

“Why not? It’s the fastest way.”

“Maybe for him. We’d never outrun him on the freeway—not in this old wreck. What’s he driving?”

“Looks like a silver BMW 550i sedan. Probably belongs to the Bradens—it’s too pricey for his pay grade.”

Just then a car shot past them from the opposite direction. The headlights illuminated the truck cabin for an instant and Nick saw Alena’s face clearly for the first time; there were purplish-black bruises under both of her eyes and across the bridge of her nose. “Did he do that to you?”

She looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror. “I bumped into something.”

“Were you driving at the time?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Did you get a look at that car? Was it a cop?”

Nick turned and saw red taillights fading in the distance. “I don’t think so. He’s not stopping, and a cop would pull us over for sure at this speed. Why is it you can never find a cop when you need one?” He looked and saw that the car behind them was steadily gaining even though Alena had the gas pedal pushed to the floor.

“An old woman killed my father?” she said under her breath. “But why in the world would she—”

“Watch the curve!”