Her mouth is moving, flinging angry words. I keep the car on the road and fumble for the volume button.
“…because that is not okay. I get that your daughter’s sick, but in what universe does that make any of this okay? You are trading the lives of three strangers for hers, and that’s not right.” Jade’s seething voice shatters the silence in the cab.
“Shut up.” The voice comes from somewhere off camera, low and male and gruff. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is none of your business.”
“It is my business. The second you came into my garage and held me and my children at gunpoint, you made it my business. And you’ve already admitted Cam somehow owes you this money. It doesn’t get any more my business than that. This is my family. You’re holding our lives ransom for your daughter’s.”
The same male voice answers, and it pings something deep in my brain. “You have no idea what I’m going through. None.”
“Tell me, then. Tell me what I’m missing. Because whatever Cam took from you, it can’t be worth a human life.”
On the passenger’s seat, Nick gives an impressed grunt. “Your wife’s a little pistol.”
A deep voice booms from the tiny speaker. “I said, shut up. Shut up before I shove a gun in your mouth and make you.”
Jesus, Jade. Stand down for Christ’s sake.
I swipe to the third camera and there he is. Black mask. Black shirt and pants. Black gloves.
Black gun, and he’s aiming it at Jade.
“Beretta,” Nick says with a derisive snort. “Figures.”
I don’t know what he means, but I also don’t care. My wife is standing up to a masked man with a gun, staring him down. Like the pistol he’s waving around has somehow lost its menace, like it’s a plastic prop. He thrusts it at her, and Jade doesn’t even flinch.
I, however, am losing my shit. The sight of the gun explodes in my chest. I settle the phone on a thigh and slam the gas pedal to the floor, lurching us forward as far as we can go. On the other side of the windshield, traffic reaches into the semidarkness.
“How ’bout I hold the phone while you drive?” Nick says, stretching a hand. “Might be safer that way.”
The asshole’s voice fills the cab. “All you gotta do is sit there and shut up. Why can’t you just do that? Less than thirty minutes until Cam gets here, and then I’ll be out of your hair. This will all be over. I’ll leave and you’ll never hear from me again.”
“This won’t be over, are you kidding me?” Jade says, and she’s shouting. “My children are going to have nightmares for years. You get that, right? They are going to need therapy. I’m going to need therapy. You terrorized and threatened us for hours. You broke my cheek!”
“I’m going to kill him,” I mutter, white-knuckling the wheel. Up ahead, where the road ends in a T intersection, the light flips to yellow. “When we get there, I’m going to freaking murder this guy.”
Nick shifts nervously on the passenger’s seat, jutting his chin to the light. “You’re, uh, not gonna make that.”
I floor the gas, watching the masked man step forward on the screen. “Have you seen my back? You’re lucky this wasn’t any worse.”
A hundred feet, maybe less, and only one car in front of me. So far neither of us has hit the brakes. “Come on, come on.”
Nick grabs on to the handle above his window. “Seriously, man. You’re cutting it too close. The light’s about to—”
“Shut up.”
On my iPhone screen, the man is still talking, his voice loud in the car: “…didn’t mean to hit you that hard, but may I remind you that you started it by coming at me with a screwdriver. I was just defending myself. You don’t know me, Jade, but I don’t put up with that kind of aggression. I fight back.”
“Yeah, well, ditto,” Jade says, and I feel equal parts fear and pride.
The light changes to red, and the driver in front of me hits his brakes. I jerk the wheel to the left and swerve around the slowing car into the oncoming lane, right as another car, a red Mini, turns right into my lane.
Our eyes meet. His are big and round, a terrified teenager going up against a jacked-up truck in a doomed game of chicken. He lays on the horn, then ducks out first. He yanks the wheel and barrels into a ditch.
The lane clears. Nick curses. I blow through the light and take a hard left, a ninety-degree turn that lifts two tires from the pavement.