Motion to Kill

CHAPTER NINE

Straight, flat roads are hard to find in the Ozarks. Two-lane county roads and state highways bob and weave like a punch-drunk fighter across and around the hilly countryside. Mason plugged his iPhone into the car radio, letting Bettye LaVette sing him home as he maneuvered his Acura in and out of small packs of slow-moving cars.

He took Highway 52 west through Eldon and on to the junction with Highway 5, where he headed north, hoping to leave the plodding traffic behind. Soon a black Escalade pulled up behind him, rode his rear end long enough to get Mason’s attention, then bolted past him and another car, cutting back into the northbound lane just in time to avoid an oncoming RV.

The car in front of Mason turned off the highway a few minutes later. Mason caught a glimpse of the Escalade and closed the distance until a quarter of a mile separated them. Content to cruise at seventy, he let go the chase.

Ten minutes later, the Escalade slowed until Mason was within a couple of car lengths, the rolling grade preventing him from passing. They reached a level stretch of road when the driver of the Escalade stuck his hand out the window and waved Mason to go around.

He eased into the southbound lane and accelerated, pulling alongside the Escalade. He started to wave his thanks when he saw that the window was up and tinted so dark he couldn’t see the driver, who was matching Mason’s pace, freezing him in the southbound lane.

Mason pushed the Acura harder, unable to gain any ground and unwilling to drop back. He was hot enough, tired enough, and annoyed enough to keep pushing and not notice that the road had bottomed out like the trough of a wave. As they started back up the next hill, an air horn bellowed from a southbound flatbed tractor-trailer loaded with hay bales bearing down on Mason from the crest of the hill.

Mason answered with a squeal from his own horn, but neither driver changed course. At their combined speeds, he realized the truck would be in his lap before he could pass the Escalade. Mason hit his brakes, intending to swerve back into his lane behind the Escalade, only to see the Escalade slow down, hanging him out in the wrong lane, threatening to turn him into a hood ornament.

The truck was close enough that Mason could see the driver, mouth opened wide, screaming at him and waving his hand, telling Mason to get out of the way. Mason screamed back, unable to hear his own voice over the wind, the road, and their dueling horns. He felt as if he were flying and knew he would be when the truck hit him.

A thin strip of gravel separated the paved road from the tall grass alongside it. Barbed wire strung between steel fence posts marked the outer boundary of a farm. Cows on the captive side of the fence looked up as if they sensed that something was about to happen that even they couldn’t ignore.

Mason pounded on his horn, screamed again at the driver of the truck and the driver of the Escalade. His hands slid around the wheel, greased by the sweat pouring off of him faster than the wind could dry it.

The Escalade cut off any retreat. The truck slowed, causing the trailer to shimmy and its load to rock sideways. But Mason knew the driver couldn’t slow quickly enough, the certainty of the impending crash clear in the driver’s stricken eyes.

Out of options, Mason spun the steering wheel hard to his left and jammed the gas pedal to the floor. The Acura bolted off the road and shuddered in the wake left by the truck as it blew past, their front bumpers exchanging air kisses.

The ground dropped off from the road, and in the next instant, Mason flew toward the cows like an unguided missile. The Acura landed hard and fishtailed clockwise. Mason fought the wheel, found the brakes, and rode out the spin until the car bounced to a stop against the barbed wire.

His airbag exploded, burying him in a fierce embrace. The jolt was no worse than the countless hits he’d absorbed playing rugby, though those blows were thrown in sport. This was a cold, calculated attempt to put him on the shelf-permanently.

Mason climbed out of the Acura and scanned the road. The Escalade had disappeared. He walked around the car, checking for damage. The barbed wire had etched an abstract pattern in the paint on the passenger side, but it was otherwise unscathed.

He leaned against the hood, waited for his heart rate to slow to suborbital speed, and tried to put the day’s events into perspective. Richard Sullivan was dead, probably murdered and last seen with an attractive blonde, not his wife, at a condo he owned with Victor O’Malley.

Mason was defending O’Malley against criminal charges the feds were about to file. Sullivan had set up Mason as the fall guy in a scheme to get rid of evidence that had to incriminate both Sullivan and O’Malley. And someone had just tried to kill him and make his death look like the result of his own reckless driving.

It wasn’t hard to connect the dots. The picture just didn’t make any sense. He realized that he’d have to take a closer look at the O’Malley files in the morning. If he lived that long.