A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(111)

“Jimmy,” said Jane. “Are you absolutely positive that the headlights back there are the SUV with the men who raided our apartment?”

“Yes. When it passed under the streetlights in Canaan I could see it pretty well.”

“So there’s zero chance it’s just some kid driving too fast?”

“Zero chance.”

“Then trade places with your mother so you can fire with your right hand.”

After a few seconds, Jimmy said, “I’m set.”

“Charge your pistol.”

Jane heard the distinctive slide-snap sound.

“Okay. We’ve got a straight stretch ahead of us. They’ll use it to try to catch up. If they get close, remember what I said. Aim for the windshield, just above the headlights. What we want to do is make them drop back and lose sight of us before we take the turnoff for the mine. I know you can do this.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good. Roll your window down, and fire one round when I tell you.”

Jimmy pushed the button to roll down the window, but the others only heard the first part of it, because the wind rushed into the car, blowing past their ears.

Jane focused her attention on maintaining her speed, watching the headlights in the rearview mirror, and keeping the car’s trajectory straight and level. But soon the car behind them began to gain on them, its bigger, more powerful engine roaring to propel it along the straight stretch.

Jane saw the sign that said RUGGLES MINE 1, and sped up, but the SUV was still coming. She shouted, “All right, Jimmy. Aim and fire.”

Three or four seconds passed, the pistol flashed, and the report hammered their ears.

The headlights behind them dropped back, Jane reached a hill, and they all felt the car rise into the air an inch or two, and then slam down and bounce. Jane feathered the brakes, and moments later wrenched the steering wheel to the right, accelerating into the turn. The rear wheels of the car squealed, the car trying to spin out of control while centrifugal force threw the passengers toward the doors, their seat belts tightening on their waists to jerk their bodies to a stop and across their chests to choke their breathing. The sign for the mine road seemed to float by them as Jane completed the turn. The car shot forward up the road and then veered into the bushes on the right. Jane turned off the headlights and they were bathed in darkness.





29



Jane turned in her seat to watch Route 4. She and the others said nothing, simply waited and stared at the place where they had left the main road. After about a minute, the roadway slowly acquired definition and even faint coloration, and then brightened in the glare of the SUV’s high beam headlights. The SUV flashed past, and the light vanished, leaving the road in darkness again.

Jane pulled forward out of the shelter of the bushes, bouncing a bit to get back onto the narrow pavement. She drove up over a low hill and then down the other side before she turned on her lights again.

“Can’t we just turn around and go back the way we came?” asked Chelsea.

“I’m guessing we can’t,” said Jane. “Any minute they’ll realize we’re not ahead of them anymore. They’ll turn around and come back this way. I just hope they’ll miss this turn.”

“But where are we going—to the mine?” asked Mattie.

“It sounded like a good place to get out of sight and wait until daylight, when those men will have to give up and get out of sight themselves.”

As she drove, the road narrowed to a single paved lane through thick woods. The boughs of mature trees hung over the road to form a canopy between them and the sky, and bushes and saplings encroached on the margins to make the ribbon of pavement even narrower. Jane drove up the middle as quickly as she could, and reached a spot where there were a couple of buildings and a fork in the road. She stopped, backed up, and found a much smaller sign with an arrow pointing to the right onto an even smaller road with the words ruggles mine. Jane got out, pulled up the stake with the sign on it, and put it into the car between her and Chelsea, then drove on.

After a few hundred feet the driving surface thinned and the hard asphalt gave way to the underlying gravel. As Jane drove on she could see in the glow of her taillights that she was kicking up dust that hung in the still night air. The only sound was the ticking of small stones kicked up against the undercarriage of the car. After another few hundred yards there was asphalt again, and she could go more quickly without worrying about spinning out on gravel. They went up hills and dipped downward at times, but she knew they were climbing gradually.

Jimmy’s voice from the backseat said, “I think I saw light.”

“What do you mean?” asked Chelsea.

“Back there on top of that rise, it looked like the treetops way back lit up for a second, then got dim again.”

“Keep watching,” said Jane. She accelerated, keeping the car in the center of the road and bumping up over rises and dipping down into depressions, letting the car bounce and rock as it would.

“I think they found the turn. We need a plan,” Jimmy said.

“Here’s what it is,” Jane said. “I’ll drive as close to the mine as I can. It sounded like a big, deep open-pit mine. You’ll jump out, take the guns, and run. Go into the mine, whatever it consists of, and take cover. If they come after you on foot, wait until one of them is too close to miss, and shoot him. They’re not here to capture you.”