Immediately, instinctually, I slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel to the right, trying to avoid it. A high howl of evaporating tire rubber filled the car as the Z28’s rear end fishtailed to the left like it was on ice. I tried to straighten it, but I must have overcompensated because the car suddenly reversed momentum and went into a rubber-barking, skidding, counterclockwise spin.

Shit!

I’d lost complete control of the car. My head flew back onto the headrest heavily, helplessly, like I was on a carnival teacup ride. I held my breath as I felt the right side of the car swell, threatening to flip. Instead, it did a 180 and kept right on rotating. It was when the car completed a full 360 that I saw what was looming ahead.

And I screamed.

Lit in my pinwheeling headlights, as if he’d been conjured there by a magician, was the dog’s owner, the biker from the bar with the gray braided hair.

The last thing I remember was pumping the brake again and again, savagely, as the ridges of the spinning steering wheel flickered painfully over the insides of my fingers.

I closed my eyes as the Camaro’s swinging front end clipped the man in the waist with a sickening, heart-skewering thump.

There was a brief crumpling sound of rolling weight onto the metal hood followed by a squeegee-like squeak as the man slid up the ramp of the windshield.

And then there was silence. Nothing but horrible, deafening silence.

Chapter 5

I FORCED MYSELF to open my eyes.

The Camaro had come to a shuddering stop another fifty feet to the north.

I stared at the empty road in front of me, my foot pinned down on the brake, my hands as tight on the steering wheel as a pair of vise grips. The only sound was my panicked breathing as sweat seemed to pour from everywhere at once, the inside of my elbows, the backs of my knees, even my ears.