street, its tires slowly crunching over the path just left by the
Caddie. The people who had dogged her parents from Virginia. With
everything else happening, she had forgotten about them. Sidney slammed
the Land Rover’s accelerator to the floor. Slipping in the snow for a
moment, the four-wheel drive system kicked in and the massive V-8 took
hold, propelling the little tank forward like a cannonball. As she bore
down on the sedan, Sidney saw the driver react. His hand went inside his
coat. But he was a millisecond too late. She flew past her parents’
house, veered across the road and, with a crush of metal, slammed into
the smaller vehicle, pushing it across the slippery road and depositing
it in a steep ditch. The air bag in the truck inflated. With a furious
effort, Sidney ripped it off the steering column and slammed the truck
into reverse. The sound of metal wrenching free was clearly heard as
the two vehicles uncoupled.
Sidney turned the truck around and then stared in disbelief. Her swift
attack had taken care of whoever was following her parents. It also had
another result. She watched in dismay as the Cadillac turned off Beach
Street and roared off back to Route 1. Sidney rammed the accelerator
down and headed after them.
The man struggled out of the car and stared in shock at the rapidly
disappearing truck.
Sidney saw the taillights of the Cadillac just ahead. At this point,
Route 1 was a two-lane road. She pulled up behind her parents and blew
her horn repeatedly. The Cadillac immediately accelerated. Her parents
were by now probably so scared they wouldn’t even stop for a state
trooper in a marked car, much less a lunatic blowing her horn in a
smashed-up truck. Sidney momentarily held her breath and then careened
onto the wrong side of the road, mashed the gas pedal to the floor and
pulled alongside her parents’ car. She saw her father react to the Land
Rover appearing on his left. The Caddie shimmied from side to side as
it sped up, and Sidney had to keep the accelerator close to the floor to
keep up, as the damaged Land Rover was son planted the bulky Caddie
squarely in the middle of the two-lane road, daring their pursuer to
overtake them. Sidney rolled down her window and steered her vehicle
halfway onto the dirt-and-gravel shoulder. Thank God the roads hadn’t
been plowed yet or she would have had no shoulder to travel on. As she
inched up to the passenger side of the Cadillac, her father swung back
onto the right side, forcing Sidney to go off the road entirely. As the
Land Rover bounced and swayed over the rough terrain, Sidney looked at
her speedometer; it hovered near eighty. Fear rattled through every
nerve in her body. She looked up ahead· They were coming to a steep
curve. She was about to run out of road. She smashed the accelerator
flat to the floor. She only had seconds left. “Mom!” She screamed
over the fury of the wind and the wall of pouring snow. “Mom!” Sidney
leaned as far out the driver’s window as she could while maintaining
some control over the truck. She took one deep breath and screamed as
loud as she ever had in her life. “MMMOOOMM!”
She saw her mother peering through the whipping snow, her eyes wide with
terror, and then Sidney finally saw recognition and then relief in them.
Her mother quickly turned to her father. The Cadillac slowed down
immediately and allowed Sidney to move back onto the road ahead of them.
Her face and hair covered with snow, Sidney motioned with one hand for
them to follow her. In the near-blinding swirl of white, the two cars
raced down the road.
About an hour later, they veered off at an exit. Within ten minutes the
Land Rover and the Cadillac pulled into the parking lot of a motel. The
first thing Sidney Archer did was jump out of the truck, race to her
parents’ car, throw open the rear door and grab up her daughter in her
arms. Tears were pouring down Sidney’s face as fiercely as the snow.