Calvin drove his Mercedes on autopilot, his mind a chaotic mess of rehearsed apologies. He didn't notice the cherry-red Aston Martin DB11 that had been tailing him discreetly for the last ten blocks.
Amberly kept her distance. She knew. She knew that a man as proud as Preston Townsend wouldn't just take the loss. He would lash out. And the easiest target, the one who had just publicly humiliated his daughter, was Calvin.
As Calvin's car entered a wide intersection, it happened.
A heavy-haul truck blared its horn, running a red light, barreling toward the driver's side of the Mercedes like a charging rhino.
Time slowed. Calvin's eyes widened in horror. His hands jerked the wheel, a useless, panicked reflex. There was nowhere to go.
Then, a roar. Not from the truck, but from behind him.
The Aston Martin shot forward like a missile. Amberly didn't try to get in front of the Mercedes. She didn't try to stop the truck. She knew physics.
She made a different calculation. A crazier one.
She wrenched the wheel, aiming her own car not at the Mercedes, but at the truck's front axle. She was going to use her two-ton sports car as a precision tool to cripple the beast.
The Aston Martin slammed into the front quarter panel of the truck, right over the wheel well.
The sound was a deafening explosion of tearing metal and shattering glass.
The front of the beautiful car disintegrated on impact, but the force was immense, and it was perfectly angled. The impact was designed to break the steering linkage. The truck's front wheels were knocked sideways, its trajectory instantly altered.
Instead of T-boning Calvin's car, the now-uncontrolled truck scraped violently along its rear bumper, sending the Mercedes into a spin before plowing into a fire hydrant and the corner of a building, finally screeching to a halt.
Calvin was alive, violently shaken but miraculously unharmed.
He looked back at the source of his salvation. The Aston Martin was a mangled wreck, smoke pouring from its crushed hood. The driver's side was crumpled, the airbags deployed.
A wave of cold, sickening realization washed over him. He knew who that car belonged to.
He fumbled with his seatbelt, his hands shaking, and scrambled out of his car. He ran toward the wreckage, his heart hammering against his ribs.
He tore at the warped door, pulling it open.
Amberly was slumped against the airbag. A cut on her forehead was bleeding freely, the crimson stream stark against her pale skin. Her eyes were closed.
"Amberly!" he screamed, his voice raw with a pain he didn't know he was capable of feeling. "Amberly, wake up!"
The woman he had scorned, the woman he had publicly humiliated less than twenty-four hours ago, had just used her own body, her own life, to shield his.
Not far away, in a black Bentley parked with a perfect view of the intersection, Hollis Walker lowered a pair of binoculars. He had seen everything.
"Sir," K. Stone said, his voice tight. "Is she insane? That was a suicide mission."
Hollis's eyes were sharp, filled not with shock, but with a hunter's appreciation.
"No," he said quietly. "That wasn't insanity. That was calculation. That was absolute, terrifying resolve."
He opened his car door. "Have our team secure the scene. I don't want the police finding anything they shouldn't."
He stepped out onto the pavement and began walking toward the crash.
It was time he met Miss Carson in person.
