It happened too fast for me to put up any kind of fight. He unsnapped his seat belt and pulled me toward the driver’s seat just as he stood from it. The car rolled forward on its own accord and I panicked, slamming my foot down on what I thought was the brake pedal. Black Betty leaped forward, and this time I was the one that screamed.

“Brake is on the left!” Liam flew against the dashboard as the SUV recovered. I heard its tires scream as Rob turned the truck around and kicked up the speed. “Hit the gas!”

“Why can’t he drive?” I asked in a strangled voice.

Chubs pushed the passenger’s seat back far enough for him to climb over it into the back, and Liam took Chubs’s seat.

“Because,” he said, rolling down the window, “he can barely see five feet in front of him. Trust me, you don’t want him to drive, darlin’. Now—hit the gas!”

I did as I was told. The car sprung forward again, sending my heart up into my throat. The wheels spun against the wet asphalt.

Liam was half hanging out of the window, half sitting on it. “Faster!” he said.

The rain fell thick and heavy, but the SUV’s headlights pierced the mist as I drove the van straight toward them. We were going so fast that the steering wheel shook in my hands, jerking around like it had a life of its own. I bit back a frustrated scream and tried to let up on the gas, but Liam wasn’t having it.

“No, keep going!”

“Lee,” Chubs was hunched over in his seat. “This is insane—what are you doing?”

He had been so quiet that I’d almost forgotten he was in the van. With the speedometer creeping past eighty, ninety, ninety-five, I wasn’t remembering much at all.

And that’s when it went to hell.

There was a horrible bang—a thousand times worse than the sound of a balloon exploding—and the van was spinning, the wheel dancing right out of my hands.

“Straight!” Liam was shouting, “Straighten out!”

“Sh—!” The wind was knocked out of my chest by my seat belt, but I fought against the natural turn of the wheel long enough to get us heading straight again. The car tilted back, leaving a trail of sparks on the road behind us. We were staring the SUV down again, making a second head-on pass at them.

“Keep going toward them—don’t stop!” Liam yelled.

But the tire, I thought, my hands strangling the steering wheel, the tire…

Chubs had reached for Liam’s legs, steadying him before he could go flying out the window. “Let go!” he snapped. “I’m fine, I’ve got it now!”

I didn’t know what Liam had meant by “it,” not until I looked up into the rearview mirror and saw the dark body of a tree come hurtling out of the woods, guided in front of the SUV, by nothing other than a flick of Liam’s hand.