Page 74 of Gone Before Goodbye

A voice yells out something in Russian.

Probably telling her not to move. She turns and sees the black-suited man aiming the gun at her. Her mind whirs, searching for a solution—but in the midst of the whirring, she notices something interesting.

The black-suited man doesn’t fire right away.

Why? CinderBlock fired. This guy fired too when she was in the glass walkway.

Why isn’t he firing now?

And then the answer comes to her. Oleg Ragoravich loves these cars. They are expensive, worth millions of dollars apiece. The black-suited men probably figure that they have her trapped now. No need to fire and risk harming something so valuable.

That gives Maggie the wiggle room she needs.

She keeps sprinting and ducking behind cars until she reaches the Ferrari. Two black-suited men follow. She fumbles with the door but manages to slide into the driver’s seat. One of the men is on her now. He grabs the handle of the door as she starts to close it. With her left hand, Maggie keeps pulling the door closed. With her right, she fires up the ignition. The man keeps his hold on the driver’s-side door. Maggie tries to hold on, so he can’t get in. It’s a draining game of tug-of-war.

The ignition is on, but the car isn’t an automatic. It’s an old manual with a stick shift. Maggie hasn’t driven one since she was eighteen. But her dad had taught her. The man is pulling hard on the door. He has the leverage now. Another man is coming to join him. No way Maggie can fight them both off. She holds on with her left hand and tries to shift the car into gear with the right.

It’s not working.

He’s winning the battle. The other guy arrives and grabs the door too. Maggie waits until they have full pressure on her. Then she simply lets go. The door flings open. The men stumble back, lose their balance. That’s what she’s been counting on. But one of them recovers fast. He reaches out and grabs her by the hair.

He starts dragging her out of the car.

Maggie takes her right hand off the shift. She curls her fingers and delivers a palm strike straight into his groin.

The man’s grip loosens.

Maggie pulls the door back closed. She shifts now, hits the accelerator, drags him a few feet before the man falls away.

The showroom doors haven’t opened enough for her to getthrough. Again: Doesn’t matter. She slams the Ferrari through whatever opening there is, pushing into the wooden doors and doing Lord-knows-what to the Ferrari’s paint job.

The doors hold for a second before splintering and releasing the car.

Maggie is out.

She feels something akin to euphoria—her plan worked!—when a bullet shatters the back window. Maggie ducks. The cold again rushes in. With one hand still on the gearshift, she pulls the steering wheel hard to the left. Another bullet whizzes above her head, shattering and knocking out the front windshield.

Now what?

Just keep your foot on the gas pedal.

She does. Up ahead she sees another black-suited man aiming his gun at her. She aims the car at him and stays low. He ducks away.

She hears bullets, but nothing hits.

Now what?

She checks her phone.

Are there enough bars?

She hits send again. No reason to look anymore. Just keep hitting the send button and hope for the best.

She can see now that the front gate is closed. Can she ram the car through? She doesn’t think so. The car is old and small. The gate looks foreboding, built for security. A man stands in front of it, gun drawn.

She veers to the right and takes a road up the side of a hill.

A black SUV is following her now.