"I didn't know rain was in the forecast," Al said as the first drops hit the windshield.

"It was supposed to come overnight," Lauren said as she drove steadily on Eighth Street, slowing a little to make up for the increased slipperiness on the road. "Good thing it didn't rain earlier when we were waiting outside."

"Mom, what happened?"  Tosh asked. "Why did we have to leave before we found out if we won?"

She'd told him they had to leave because of an emergency, but hadn't specified what it was. She didn't think she could explain the whole story to him, but he deserved to know something. "You know how my work is kind of secret?" she said.

"Yeah."

"Well, something happened tonight that's related to my work, and I thought it was a good idea, for everyone's safety, to leave before some bad people showed up and made trouble."

"What kind of bad people?"

"Did you hear those drones when we were outside?" Al asked. Lauren didn't think bringing up the drones was a good idea, but she didn't have a chance to come up with a story with Al beforehand.

"I heard something. Was it drones?"

"Yeah. Some bad people were using them to spy on everyone there."

"Why would they do that?" Tosh asked, suddenly scared.

"They were looking for someone," Lauren said. "Not us, but we thought it was a good idea if we didn't stick around and get on their cameras."

"Is that why Uncle Sunny, Aunt Tej, Ajit and Harpreet left too?"

"Yes."

"Don't worry, buddy," Al said, "if our bids win, they'll let us know. When we signed up for our numbered paddles, we registered with a name and phone number in case we had to leave before the end of the night. We can always go back another day and pick them up."

 Lauren caught her son's eye in the rearview mirror. He seemed unconcerned about the art now. "I'm worried about them," he said. "Can I text Ajit?"

"That sounds like a great idea," Al said, pulling out his own phone. "I'll call Uncle Sunny and make sure they're okay."

While Al made his call, Lauren focused on the road, because Eighth Street had become Canada Way, and soon she would take the turnoff for Highway One. She checked her rear view and side view mirrors to ensure no one was coming up on her blind spot while she changed lanes for the turnoff. The Highlander was more vehicle than she wanted, and she was extra careful about her spatial awareness. She wished she was in the Versa right now, but it would have been tight with the six of them going to the ravine earlier.

Damn it, the car behind her was following a little too close for her liking. Didn't people know that they should keep an extra car length apart when it was raining, especially when it was dark, just in case a sudden brake made them hydroplane? She sped up a little just to put some distance between them, and to reach a good speed for when she merged onto the highway.

"Yeah, okay," Al said to whoever was on the other line. "I'm glad you have Tori following you back to your place. Safety in numbers, and all that. Do you have an extra bedroom? Oh, yeah. Great. Well, call if there's any new development." He hung up and said, "They're almost home already."

They would be too, soon, as the highway was pretty light on a rainy Saturday night. The cars in front and in the lane next to her were keeping a good distance, and she kept a steady pace, under the speed limit but still keeping up with the rest of the traffic.

Except for that damned car behind her.

"Jesus Christ," she hissed, as it flashed its high beams twice in her rearview mirror. "Pass me if you want, I'm in the right lane, for fuck's sake."

Al turned around to look at what she meant. "Why's he riding your ass?"

"I don't know, but it's pissing me off."

She drifted as far to the right as possible without hitting the shoulder, to signal to the asshole behind her, as if he hadn't thought about it until now, that he should pass. She had a kid in the car, and the last thing she wanted to do was speed up.

The car did not pass her. It stayed on her tail, even drifting to the right with her. That was when she noticed a few details she'd missed before, now that she was paying attention. It was dark green in colour. It had two tall antennae, one in the front and one rearing up from the back. It had a ram bar on the front.

Fuck.

She floored it.

"Mom!" Tosh yelped, holding on to the dryclean hanger bars, or what Joe called the holy-shit bars. Even Al held on, giving her a look of concern.

She wasn't losing the car. It reminded her of a police interceptor, but it didn't have any markings. That scared her more than the aggressive tailing. She didn't want to speculate on who might be driving the car; criminals were frightening enough, but if they were actually police, and weren't using their lights and sirens, that opened up a whole lot of other dark and dystopian scenarios. Suddenly she could imagine how her father felt as a child, cowering in fear as the police rounded up his family to take them somewhere he didn't know, somewhere he didn't want to go, and not knowing why.

She made sure the centre lane was clear before she threw the Highlander across, and then grabbed the left lane in a split second action. She was lucky the traffic was so light. The car following her sped up, still in the right lane, and did something she didn't expect at all, veering left, and then left again, as if intending to side swipe her. Probably it did.

Instinctively, she braked, harder than she probably should have because it was raining, and the car skidded, but now she was behind the car that was following her. It was a miracle they hadn't hit anybody yet.

"Let's see how you like being followed, fucker," she growled.

Apparently, that wasn't in their plan, because whoever was driving remedied the situation immediately.

By braking.

"Fuck!" she squawked, jerking the car to the right at the last second, causing the car coming up behind them in the centre lane to jerk around them, blaring their horn.

Suddenly Al was talking. "Police, please! We're on Highway One between Sprott Street and Willingdon Avenue heading west, being pursued by a car, I think it's a Dodge Charger, it has a ramming bar on its front, it's chasing us all over the road, putting us and all the other traffic in danger!" She realized he was on his cell phone and calling 911, but his voice was so calm, if stiff from tension, that it didn't click at first, because all of her focus was on losing this fucker, using every skill she'd learned in defensive driving courses to keep them all alive. 

Tosh was whimpering in the back seat, and that made her feel worse than being chased by whoever these guys were; where before she was scared, now she felt exhilarated, as if the chase had awakened some inner warrior in her, where the fight was all that mattered, winning was all that mattered, not the possibility that one wrong move might kill them all. Dad had taught her that when the fight was on, you shouldn't think about getting hurt, because if you did you would never prevail, because you would hold back while your opponent was giving their all. A one on one fight was one thing, though; a car chase with two passengers relying on you was another, and that was what made her feel ashamed, that she wasn't thinking about Al's safety, much less Tosh's, when it should have been her priority.

"Don't worry, buddy!" she said far too brightly than was decent. "We're almost at the turnoff for home, okay? We'll be safer when we get off the highway."

"Why does that car want to hit us, Mom?" he whined. "Is that the bad guys?"

"I don't know, honey," she said truthfully. "It could even be a drunk driver thinking they're being funny by scaring decent people."

Suddenly the car sped up in the left lane, it must have been going at a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, not safe in this rainy weather, but maybe the car was equipped with good tires that could handle the decreased friction of the wet highway. She kept her eye on the turnoff for Willingdon, just 600 metres away. She had a feeling the car was going to get into the centre lane and brake again. She wasn't planning on being in the centre lane when it happened. This was going to take finesse, timing, and a bit of luck. She checked the right sideview mirror again, and didn't see any cars approaching fast.

"We're almost at the turnoff for Willingdon," Al said, still on the phone with the emergency dispatcher."

"Hold on, you two," Lauren said.

The car swung into the centre lane in front of her. She held steady, not wanting to show her hand until just the last minute. If these people knew who she was, they would know where she lived, but somehow, she felt, if she just made it home, she would feel safer; she could lock her doors before they caught up with her and wait until the police arrived, the real police. Out here, if they were caught, all she had to defend all three of them was what she had in her purse: her pepper spray and her little illegal zapper; the rape alarm she didn't see doing much good. She could give Al the pepper spray and use the zapper herself, but first she'd have to show him how to use it so he didn't accidentally spray himself, and she didn't think they'd have enough time.

No. Home was the safest place. To get there ahead of them, she had to make sure she reached the turnoff and they didn't.

The windshield wipers were going furiously now, the rain a dangerous factor in all this. In a thousandth of a second, she weighed the consequences of sliding or getting into an accident against the consequences of being caught by whoever was driving this car. Maybe they had a weapon. Maybe they wouldn't hesitate to do to them what they did to Jordan; the fact that they didn't know what really happened to Jordan didn't make her any less certain about their intentions, because her imagination was all too willing to fill in the gaps. They were trying to run her off the road, so it didn't take a leap of logic to assume they wished her ill.

"Mom, the turnoff!" Tosh exclaimed, afraid she was going to miss it, because she hadn't slowed down and gone in the lane yet.

She had no time to respond. The car slammed on its brakes just as she predicted it would, and as soon as its red lights blared, she wrenched her steering wheel to the right.

Later, when she went over the event in her mind, she would invariably return to the what ifs.

If she'd driven the Versa that night, she might have made it. She knew her car better. She could have driven it in her sleep. She might have pulled the little, low to the ground, reliable car into the turnoff at the last minute, just before it hit the divider separating the shoulder of the highway from the turnoff. Then again, it might have hit the small lake that had already formed at the bottom of the turnoff and flooded, making the car stall and causing an accident with another car taking the turnoff. Or it might have skidded, flipped, and fell on its top, crushing them all, killing them instantly. That possibility was tiny, though, because it wasn't top heavy; the angular momentum wouldn't have made it roll.

If it hadn't rained, the Highlander probably wouldn't have flipped, because even though it was top heavy, it had a heavier body than the Versa, and gravity would have kept the wheels on the tarmac.

The rain provided just the decrease in friction needed to trip the Highlander's feet out from under it, though, and Lauren felt the left wheels leave the ground just as it slammed its right side into a concrete barrier, and after that her world cartwheeled in front of her, once, twice, three times, before stopping upright again, although on a slight lean because they'd landed on a gentle grassy slope. At some point in the roll, all of the airbags had deployed, steering wheel, passenger side, side curtains, all of them, and suddenly the interior of the Highlander was a great marshmallow mess, and everything hurt.

"Muh," she heard herself say, and waited for her head to stop spinning. Distantly she heard sirens, or was that just a ringing in her ears?

"Ma'am, are you okay?" a man's voice on her left said.

She turned her head, felt something crick, and noticed that her driver's side window was gone, and the pebbles of glass were on her lap. Rain poured in through the window frame, dampening her denimmed left leg. "Muh?" she croaked again.

"Mom!" Tosh's voice snapped her out of her daze. He was okay. If he was talking, he was okay, and that was all that mattered.

"I saw the whole thing," the man said. Later she wouldn't have been able to describe him, because it was dark, her vision was still pinballing and she couldn't concentrate on one spot, but she did notice he wore no hat on his head, and his hair was dripping with rainwater. "I called nine-one-one, and I think they're coming now."

"Tosh?" It took some effort to say his name, but at least her mouth was working. 

"Mom, I think I'm bleeding," Tosh whined.

"'Sokay," she mumbled. "Yer okay."

"The airbags must have stopped you from getting more seriously injured," the man said. "Stay put, the paramedics will look you over. What about your friend?"

Lauren blinked at him for a second before saying, "Huh?"

"I can't see his face from here, but he hasn't stirred since I talked to you."

She suddenly remembered Al was in the passenger seat, and she wanted to turn her head to see him, but her neck was so stiff, it was like moving through molasses. "Al?" she asked.

"Uncle Al?" Tosh said, louder. He seemed to have fared the best of all of them.

"Al!" the man shouted, in an effort to rouse him.

Nothing. She finally had her head in a position to see him, and saw that he was slumped to the right, and his window was also gone. His head rested against the frame of the passenger side door.

"Al!" she shouted now, and raised her hand to him.

"Don't touch him!" the man warned. "If his neck is broken, he shouldn't be moved."

"What?!" she squawked, alarmed at the horror of the man's practical statement.

"Wait for the paramedics," he said.

Now the sirens were right on them, and suddenly they cut off in mid-wail. The paramedics were coming, and all Lauren could do was sit there, in pain, hardly able to move, and hope against all hope that they'd be able to help him, because his silence was the most terrible thing she'd ever heard.

Thanks for reading this far! Things are starting to look dark for the LSDC. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about the physics of the accident, leave a comment and let me know; I strive for authenticity.

To see how Sunny reacts to the news of the accident, click on "Continue reading."