He laughed. “I’m shaking in my boots.”
“You should be,” she said.
And he’s like, “No, you two are the ones who should be shaking.”
I didn’t like this exchange one bit—Rowan looked like he might be taking it a little too seriously.
They traded a few more semi-nasty quips, and then Brett and I were back on the road to the stadium to watch Nash finish practice. Which was a relief. I could’ve gone all day without a Rowan Adams run-in.
A handful of students and a smaller handful of parents had collected in the stands, and Brett and I sat about midway up on the fifty-yard line. The team was in the middle of passing drills, and Nash was amazing. The quarterback could throw the ball way too long or way too short, but every time, Nash snatched it out of the air. The guy was a prime athlete. It was almost enough to make me want to cut back on the burgers and get into halfway decent shape.
“So what’s the deal with you and Nash?” I asked Brett. “Are you guys just friends or what?”
She flipped her silky black hair back over her shoulder. “I guess you could say we’re friends—with benefits.”
Friends with benefits. I’d heard of such a thing, but it always sounded so far-fetched, like ghosts or vegan burgers that didn’t taste like cardboard.
Finally practice wrapped up, and we waited in the Mercedes while Nash showered. When he came out and hopped in the backseat, he looked as fresh as if he’d been lounging around all afternoon in his air-conditioned bedroom playing Madden NFL on PlayStation instead of digging out actual pass patterns over and over in the sun.
He shook my hand and said he was glad to see me, then leaned back in the seat and goes, “Wow, I’m so hungry I could eat a woolly mammoth without a fork. Let’s do this interview thing over a bite to eat. It’s on me, Dylan.”
Of course, I’m like, “Great, just let me call my parents and let them know.” And at the same time I was thinking it was too bad Audrey wasn’t here to see what a totally cool guy Nash really was.
We weren’t a half mile away from campus, though, when the weirdness set in.
Brett glanced in the rearview mirror and goes, “Uh-oh, looks like we have company.”
Nash turned and looked out the back window. “It’s on,” he said.
“Definitely,” Brett said, and punched the gas.
I’m like, “What’s on? Who’s back there?”
“Just hold tight,” Nash told me. “Everything’s fine.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. About a hundred yards behind us, a black car hit the gas just after Brett did. The street was a four-laner and not that heavy with traffic, but that didn’t lower my panic level much as Brett zipped from lane to lane, around cars and trucks, and through a yellow light. It didn’t matter that the light turned red either. The black car flew right through the intersection.
Brett cut off a car to hit the entrance ramp of the interstate, and a steady torrent of traffic bore down as we merged from the ramp all the way to the far lane. She passed semis and oil tankers, Corvettes and Mustangs, but the black car still wove from lane to lane behind us.
On a steep hill, with semis in front of us trying to cough their way to the summit, she finally had to slow down. In a matter of seconds the black car would swoop vulture-like right down on our tail. But why? I couldn’t figure it out. What were Nash and Brett mixed up in?
“Come on, do something!” Nash demanded, and Brett’s like, “I’m doing everything I can!”
Zeroing in, the black car jockeyed into the next lane over. It was close enough now I could see the driver—Rowan Adams.
I’m like, “Hey, it’s only Rowan! It’s only Rowan!”
And Brett goes, “We know! We know!”
This didn’t make sense. She’d just been talking to Rowan a little while ago, and now she was running from him? Then I saw the rear window of his car roll down, and the black barrel of a pistol jabbed out—pointing straight at me.
“They have a gun!” I screamed, and Nash goes, “Get us the hell out of here!”
“You got it,” Brett said, jamming down on the gas pedal.
I’m going, “Holy crap!” as we roared toward the rear of the semi in front of us, but at the last moment, Brett swerved and took to the shoulder of the road.
“Yes!” Nash hollered. “Yes!”
Blazing down the shoulder, we passed the semi and at least four other vehicles before Brett steered us back into a legal lane. Looking back, I couldn’t see Rowan anywhere, and at first I thought that was good. Then I realized it only meant he’d hit the shoulder of the road himself, and if he didn’t get killed on the way, he’d be right back on our tail.
Nash told Brett to take the next exit, which she did by veering in front of two lanes of traffic, drawing the blare of honking horns. But it was a relief to get off the interstate. By now we were well beyond the city limits, and the little two-lane country roads didn’t have near as much traffic to crash into.
“Do you think they saw where we got off?” Brett asked, and Nash’s like, “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I have an idea.”
She slowed down and pulled onto a narrow side road, one encrusted with trees on either side. Then she turned around so that we had a perfect view of the road we just left.
“Genius,” Nash told her. “Now all we have to do is wait for them to pass, and we’ll be the ones on their butts.”