Page 83

CHAPTER 83

TIME PASSED; I COULD only guess how much. I was upside down, looking at the airbag. My seat belt cut across my sternum and ribs, crushing my breaths to thin, raspy puffs. I spit out my sock. My teeth felt loose in my skull, but they were all still there and intact, thanks to my makeshift mouth guard. The unconscious detective beside me was also hanging from a seat belt, but his airbag hadn’t deployed; blood poured from his chin.

I unclipped my seat belt and fell onto the ceiling of the car amid the detritus of crushed cigarette packs, takeout containers, articles of clothing. I had to fight my airbag to get upright. There was no telling where either of our weapons were now. I grabbed the belt I’d spied earlier on the back seat, now coiled against my window, and went searching for my phone. Brogan groaned and unclipped himself too. He shoved open his door and tried to get out. I didn’t know where he thought he was going — maybe toward a weapon or into some dream landscape induced by his face-plant on the steering wheel. But it wasn’t going to happen. Not on my watch. I looped the belt through itself and threw it like a lasso over his head.

“Don’t even think about it,” I snarled in his ear as I yanked it tight around his neck.

I shoved him out of the driver’s side, followed him, and pinned him against the dirt beside the vehicle, the belt pulled taut, my knee in his spine. Fuel and coolant spilled from the car onto the scrubby earth. My thoughts were ticking slowly as I pieced together a plan. I told myself the first step was to neutralize the current threat. Bind Brogan’s hands. Find a phone inside the car or around the crash site. Call 911. Assistance would likely come quickly — we hadn’t driven far from the shoot-out on the freeway.

I adjusted my grip. As I reached for a T-shirt inside the car to wrap around Brogan’s wrists, I heard a scraping sound. I looked down and saw that one of his hands was by his jeans pocket. He was flicking the drum on a cigarette lighter. I had time to gasp, but that was all — the spilled fuel lit and the ignition pressure wave whump ed and blew me away from the car.