Page 138 of The Last Kingdom

He’d apparently been played.

They’d surely left him to Rife and Knight, thinking they would eliminate the CIA’s involvement.

No such luck.

He was still on the board.

In play.

The curator was nowhere in sight below. The lack of response to the gunfire from anyone within or without the castle seemed to indicate a certain level of complacency. The man had certainly been cooperative with Fenn earlier. Derrick headed down the corridor toward the spiral staircase.

His side hurt. That much he’d not feigned.

But he’d live.

There was a job to be done.

Chapter 77

LUKE SLAMMED THE TRANSMISSION INTO GEAR AND FLOORED THEaccelerator. The rear wheels skidded and the car spun, the back end swerving until the rubber caught the frozen pavement and they shot ahead. The other car was already coming straight at them. He adjusted his path and placed them on a collision course.

Playin’ chicken was a rite of passage in east Tennessee. Everybody did it at least once after getting their driver’s license. He actually did it a lot more than once. The idea? Drive your cars directly at each other. At some point you had to make a strategic decision. Either swerve out of the way, or keep straight. If one driver swerved while the other continued straight, the straight guy won. The prize? Simple respect. If both drivers swerved and avoided collision, both kept their honor. But if neither swerved, they both probably died. Respected. But still dead. He grew up in the day of no airbags, so head-on collisions were one hundred percent fatal. He’d been damn good at playin’ chicken. Keeping focus. Where the only world that mattered was the one caught in the headlights.

He accelerated.

Ninety kilometers an hour.

A hundred.

The distance between the two cars was closing fast. Trinity Dorner sat impassionate. Not a sound. Nor a movement. Nothing from the backseat either.

He kept going.

The headlights ahead grew larger through the windshield.

No other cars were on this dark stretch of highway.

The steering wheel vibrated in his hands, signaling the tires were a bit out of balance. He still owned a vintage Mustang, his pride and joy, and he always made sure those four radials, with the shiniest chrome hubs you’d ever seen, were perfectly balanced.

He kept the car on a straight path.

When you played chicken in Tennessee there was an unwritten rule. Always veer right. That way nobody got in anyone else’s way. But that presupposed the game was being played from the middle of the road. Which was not the case here. They were in the other car’s lane. That meant he had room to go right, but the other car had nowhere to go except left. So if they flinched, they’d both be headed the same way.

That meant—

He pressed the accelerator harder.

One hundred twenty kilometers an hour.

The other car suddenly veered left, into the opposite lane.

He kept the steering wheel steady, the car traveling straight ahead.

The swerve by the other car at such a high speed came with consequences, which he’d witnessed before. The combination of deviation and momentum angled the car upward onto the driver’s side’s two wheels, like a stunt in some movie, only it did not stay there. In the rearview mirror he saw the car keep going, flipping over, slamming into the pavement, sliding across the asphalt, upside down, sparks spewing out in its wake.

* * *

DERRICK DESCENDED TO THE GROUND FLOOR. HIS BODY HURT FROMthe unaccustomed abuse, especially his ribs. Each step down came with pain.