Avi smiled. “You get to not explode.”
Holly leaned across Tara, knife blade catching moonlight. “Why should we trust you?”
“I see her.” Tara cut the engine. The silence was louder than the roar. Road Queen 11 S3 Tara Lynn Foxx Holly West Avi
“She’s not moving,” Holly whispered.
Avi slid into the back, silent as a shadow. The Charger growled to life, veering off the main highway onto a forgotten trail of rock and moonlit dust. Behind them, three miles back, the second switchback erupted in a ball of orange fire—right where they would have been. Avi smiled
Tara said nothing. She just drove, faster now, the road queen and her uneasy court racing toward a sunrise none of them might live to see. Because on Road Queen , the final twist wasn’t the explosion—it was what came after the finish line.
And Avi hadn’t mentioned the second bomb. The one in the garage. The silence was louder than the roar
Holly laughed, a sharp, ugly sound. “And what do I get out of babysitting?”
“Let me ride shotgun. We take the old mining road. Dusty, slow, but alive. At the junction, we split the prize—the cash to Holly, the garage to you, the routes to me.”
Holly looked at Avi in the rearview. “Okay. Maybe we keep you.”
sat in the driver’s seat of her ’69 Charger, knuckles white. She was the veteran, the Queen Mother of the asphalt circuit—gravel-voiced, calm, and dangerous. Beside her, Holly West thumbed a switchblade open and shut, her sharp grin never reaching her eyes. Holly was the loose cannon, the one who’d rather burn a bridge than cross it.