I was in the car and reversing. Fast, but not too fast. Making a getaway wasn’t the goal. Here came the crimson and bronze Mercury Monterey screeching rubber around the side of the hotel. A blaze of chandeliers in the building’s bay windows illuminated Ichabod at the wheel. Golf Pro and Mr. Denim ran out the front doors and piled in. I whipped onto the road and accelerated away before I could see in the jittery rearview whether Nancy joined the posse. Oh, I dearly hoped so. I wanted them all together.

■■■

Fortune favors the bold. Fortune also favors the prepared. Lionel and I were both. We’d studied maps of a small area north of Horseheads and toured several roads earlier that day. Marking bridges, turnoffs, blind curves, and the like; scoping the possibilities. This encounter could’ve unfolded along any number of trajectories. So far, it was breaking our way.

I made it a shade over a mile before I realized my arm was leaking. Suit fabric had shredded. Muscle was gashed deep where dear sweet Nancy had latched on. The wound pulsed blood with every beat of my heart. I yanked off my tie and used my teeth to cinch it around my arm as a tourniquet. The Monte Carlo slewed all over the road as I made the emergency repairs.

Meanwhile, the Mercury zoomed up, high beams blaring. Ichabod drove like a maniac to catch me, and now he attempted to pass on the outside lane. The predictable offensive moves would be to either force me into the ditch or zip ahead and block my path. I swerved across the line and cut him off twice. Each time, he dropped back, regrouped, then gunned the engine for another run. On the third attempt, I hit the brakes and roared down an off-ramp into a maze of country roads.

Winding, narrow, generally deserted. Ichabod closed the gap, tailgated, eased off, faked passing, eased off, and repeated the cycle, headlights splashing my mirrors. The Monte Carlo was beefed up and it handled well, but Ichabod was a better driver, no contest. Barring divine intervention, he would’ve eventually prevailed and crashed me.

Thumping across a girder bridge, I clicked the two-way.

“Ten seconds.”

We climbed a long grade and then were hauling ass through broken terrain. My pursuer pressed more aggressively. I doubt Ichabod or his homies noticed Lionel ease out from a dirt road as we roared by. Same stealthy maneuver cops use to nail speeders. His van would be running dark, slightly beyond the range of the Mercury’s taillights.

Ichabod knew the landscape better than I did. For example, he was probably familiar with the T in the road a few hundred yards ahead. That fact didn’t save him. I waited until the last possible moment, braked, and turned left. It was ugly and I would’ve sworn to cornering on two wheels. I made it and that’s what goes into the record book.

Ichabod coasted to the intersection. No hurry; after the past few miles of sparring, he would be confident that he could catch me at will. I whipped over onto the edge of the road and turned my head precisely as Lionel, still running dark, rear-ended the Mercury. The collision produced a metallic crunch as the van’s reinforced bumper and battering ram of a winch mount burst the Mercury’s trunk. The car was shoved through the intersection, sparks pinwheeling from where its front end scraped asphalt. It plowed over the embankment, ricocheted off a tree, and vanished. Not quite a sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot drop into a ravine. Really damned steep, though. We’d paced it that afternoon and decided the killing descent would suffice. I’d estimate the Mercury performed two or three endos before pancaking in a shallow creek among some rocks.