Outside the hospital, it had started raining. I hated when it rained in the fall and winter. Nothing was more miserable, though I quickly realized, based on the hour, this was technically a November Rain. Great song. Still a miserable experience in reality.

  My car was right where I’d left it. A state trooper was checking out the Accord. I went over and exchanged pleasantries. He wasn’t thrilled to see me, but I was respectful and didn’t deny any of the accusations he made. I just nodded and apologized at the appropriate times, and he finally let me get back on the road.

  Pulling out onto Charles Street, I was relieved to see almost no traffic. I merged into Storrow Drive just in time to snake around the massive tangle of roads near the Longfellow Bridge, and headed north on I-93. I loved the view from here. The panorama of Boston was how I visualized home, one of the few spots where you could see into four cities at once.

  I checked my phone more thoroughly while I drove the familiar roads. Dispatch had congratulated me on the completion of my fare, but hadn’t said a word about the Fines. Perhaps Dispatch needed a break from me, just like I needed a break from her.

  It was still hours before sunup. There was more traffic on 93 than there had been in the city, and I found myself continuously checking my rear-view mirror for a particular set of headlights. I had been watching the same headlights since I’d left the hospital, but they drove behind me at an inconspicuous distance. I probably wouldn’t have noticed them at all, except they belonged to a certain hatchback Subaru.

  The rain was still falling, but gently, and the roads were no longer slick from the initial water covering. According to the EVOC instructor, roads were most slippery at the start of a rainstorm, when oil from tires and fluids that had accumulated over time floated to the surface. But after the saturation point, those oils were washed away. I didn’t know if it was true, but his logic made sense to me.

  It was past time to find out if this Subaru was really following me. I cut over suddenly and gunned it down the off-ramp at the Assembly Square exit, coming out onto the Fellsway, where I knew I had a good six or seven miles of wide-open road ahead of me. I was pretty confident I could outrun any local law enforcement I encountered, but I hoped it wouldn’t be an issue.

  The car exited with me, and as I accelerated north on the Fellsway, it too accelerated. I flew over the Mystic River and through a red light at Route 16. I kept pressing the gas to the floor and was underwhelmed by how hard the car struggled to reach 90 miles per hour. The Subaru kept pace with me, weaving in and out of the few cars we saw.

  Some of the turns were sharp, and I knew there would be even sharper turns as we neared the Fells Reservation. One right in particular would be problematic at this speed: the rotary at St. Francis Catholic Church, but I was already thinking of a plan.

  Whoever was driving the car behind me was a good driver. They hugged the insides of turns when needed and didn’t panic-brake at the wrong time. Whether they were following my lead, I didn’t know, but I was impressed nonetheless. At the church, I threw the Accord into a drift around the turn and managed to gain control again at the rotary. I ripped the wheel to the left, drifted across the Interstate, then immediately to the right. I didn’t want to lose any speed as I hit South Border Road.

  To my utter shock, the driver behind performed the same moves and stayed close to me, only slightly slowing down around the turns. Impressed as I was, I began to feel another emotion creeping to the forefront, as it often had while I was driving. Rage. Whoever this motherfucker was had almost run me over at my apartment, and now they thought they could intimidate me? No fucking way.

  I slammed the brakes and cut into the parking area just below Elizur Wright's Tower. I didn’t know much about the man the tower was named for, only that he had been an abolitionist and a strong supporter of protecting the land that now made up the reservation. Whoever he had been, Elizur Wright was about to go down in history a second time, this one for his parking lot being the location of an infamous Subaru smackdown.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The Subaru shot past the first entrance, but adjusted quickly by pulling the emergency brake. The hatchback whipped into an almost complete 180-degree turn to pull into the other entrance. Both cars sat idling, facing each other with their dark interiors. Nothing and no one moved.

  Reaching over, I tried to grab the Bowie knife out of the glove box, only to have a pile of shit fall out onto the passenger side floor. There were expired registrations, an owner's manual, a pair of underwear (I’d been looking for those), and half a bag of Five Guys fries that I’d forgotten about. Damn it! I wasn’t in the magic Chevelle or Pinto.

  The door opened on the Subaru, and a shadowy figure stepped out of the car. I was expecting a hulking man with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. Instead, I saw a petite woman in a leather jacket, sporting a sassy smirk.

  I caught glimpses of a lean body behind the jacket as she approached my car. Up close, the view was even better. Under the jacket, a snug white tank hugged her torso. She wore dark blue skinny jeans with mid-calf motorcycle boots in a brown so deep it was almost black. Her dark hair was cut into a choppy pixie cut, a style girls wore back when Nirvana was making music, a style I refused to call anything other than “Trinity in a Windstorm.”

  She was halfway to my car when I snapped myself out of my colorful metaphor-making. I stepped out of the car, still unsure how I was going to play this. Should I still be angry or try to play it cool?

  “That’s some tidy driving for a rookie, Endr,” she said, walking right up and pointing to my car. She had a British accent. “Brave, doing it in that heap, mind you.”

  “What?” I said, in a not-angry or cool way. “Wait…who are you?”

  “Not very bright though…”

  “Do you work for HIM too?” I said in a hushed tone.

  She mirrored my almost whisper. “Yes, love. I work for HIM, too.”

  “So why are you following me?”

  “Because I wanted to know more about the new Endr,” she said. “And we don’t sleep…so I have an extra ten hours a day on my hands.”

  “So you decided to take up stalking as a way to fill your time?” Was I…flirting? If so, I was doing it badly, because she didn’t miss a beat.

  “Oh my. Hadn’t you noticed already? We are already stalkers, my friend.” Her dark eyes sparkled with humor.

  I nodded. She was right. In fact, I was still wearing the sepia proof from my night out stalking Ashley Ryan. “I’m Max.”

  “Lanie. I go by songbird in the app.”

  A thought crossed my mind. I had been chatting with fourth_wall for several weeks now, but I had never seen a way to talk with another person using the Endr app.

  “How do I…” I began, but she cut me off.

  “Here,” she said, and grabbed my phone. She placed it next to mine, and I heard a chime. “Now you can message me there. Just don’t…”

  “What?” I asked when she trailed off. “Just don’t what?”

  “Remember what they told us in high school about sending nudes? Don’t send anything out into the world that you wouldn’t want your nan to see, know what I mean?”

  I was confused at first, but I thought I might be piecing together what she was saying. Dispatch must be “nan” in this case, and she had already told me that she could monitor everything I was doing. I might as well not make it too easy for her.

  “Speaking of incriminating photos…” she began, and I immediately sighed, my face starting to heat.

  “Did Axel send you the photo?”

  “You know it!” She said and turned her phone to me. On it, I could see the photo Axel had snapped of me with Johnson’s dead body lying on top of me. “You are a professional.”

  “Get fucked,” I said, finally laughing at the photo. “How many other people have seen that photo?”

  “Axel wouldn’t have sent it outside of the four of us.”

  “Four?” I asked.

  “You, me, Axel, and Dispatch.”

  “Speaking of Dispatch…It’s a woman, right?”

  She shrugged and started back to her car. “We don’t know, but I get that vibe too.”

  “Wait, you’re leaving?”

  “I just wanted to meet you…and now I have.” She was already back at her own vehicle.

  “But I have so many more questions,” I said, not wanting her to go.

  “Ping me. Maybe I’ll write you back. You won’t know if you don’t try, now will you?”

  “It’s about the Fines,” I blurted out. Her hand on the Subaru door stilled.

  She turned back to me, her face serious. “Now I see why you’re covered in blood. You have five more minutes.”

  - - -

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