Chapter 28 · Blood Oath on the Rust Barge

The brake pedal went to the floor.

Not spongy. Not soft. Dead metal dropping through air.

"Brakes." It came out of me wrong, high and thin. "Garrett. Brakes—"

He didn't ask. His forearm cracked across my chest and pinned me to the seat, and he hauled the wheel right one-handed.

The truck went sideways. Gravel hit the windshield like buckshot. The nose swung out over forty feet of black water and hung there, front tires spinning on nothing, and my coffee cup came off the dash and emptied into my lap, and I didn't feel a thing.

Then he yanked the emergency brake.

Tires caught raw rock. We came down on all four wheels hard enough to slam my molars together.

His door was open before I found the seatbelt release. His hand closed around my wrist.

"Move."

We made ten steps. Then the truck slid off the lip of the jetty, quiet as a coin off a table, and slapped the tide. Water came up over my boots.

Then nothing. Rain, and two orange taillights going brown under the foam.

My knees went out.