Excerpt:

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Apparently, however, the police were a little more together than she had anticipated. Sirens blaring, lights flashing, it tore down the street after her. Tina had also practiced for this (swing wide, stay in your lane, break the rules that the police have to follow) and she gripped the wheel tighter. It'd been too long since she'd been able to do this.

Bracing herself, she swung the car in a one hundred and eighty degree circle, revving in the opposite direction, zipping down an alley before the police car could stop her. She knew this city like the back of her hand, and she grinned a bit with the adrenaline as the car fairly flew down the dark roads. She was in her element - no one but her, spinning gears and pistons, and speed.

She twisted and turned, executing a delicate gymnastics through the roads of Azul. The tires squealed, as excited as she herself was by the chase. She couldn't hear the sirens anymore, but she kept going - it was too much to stop.

Finally she was sure she was safe. Still, she stopped the car and got out, standing beside it to give them a clear line of sight, if they were there. Nothing. She hung around for a few more minutes, just making certain that there wasn't anyone following her, but no one appeared. A smile licked around the edges of her lips as she climbed back into the car.

The roads were a lot emptier now - work had started, and school had long been underway. The bell began to toll ten o'clock as she made her way to Raphael's place, where she'd drop off the incriminating goods. The radio thumped electronic pulses of sound through the car, pulsing with her as the adrenaline slowly wore off.

They were in the middle of the street. She didn't even see them until it was almost too late, eyes caught at her like a deer's. She slammed on the brakes, jerking the car to the side of the nearly deserted street, breath beginning to come in panicked gulps again. God, please say she hadn't killed them, she didn't want to be a killer, she'd never ever ever get out of prison if she killed someone - or two-

She didn't move. Her hands convulsed on the steering wheel, but every second she stayed in the car was one more second that there wasn't someone dead by her hands, by a car's hands. Her leg twinged.

"We're all right!" One of the idiots did her job for her. She looked over at him - dusting himself off, he helped the other scrawny kid up. "You didn't hit us."

Tina refused to let show how relieved she was - she didn't care, they were just a few idiots walking where they shouldn't be. It didn't affect her one little bit, not at all. "Wonderous," she muttered to herself, pulling the car into reverse so she could get on with her way.

The kids were coming over to her, opening the side door. "Are you okay?" He looked and sounded out of place, lost - tourist. "I mean, you look a little shaky-"

Curse her hands - they were shaking, despite her tight clenching of the steering wheel. She grit her teeth, angry at them for refusing to listen to her when she expressly said stop it, darn you, stop it. They still didn't respond properly, quivering when she released her death grip on the wheel. As good as she was going to get, I guess. "I'm fine."

The other kid had gotten up now, too, somehow folding his gangly limbs into something resembling a standing figure. This was ridiculous - absolutely ridiculous. He didn't say anything, standing slightly behind the older kid. He was thinner than a lot of Raphael's cats (the ones that climbed through impossibly small spaces to open doors and the like), and she wondered for a moment where they had come from.

But she didn't care, remember? It was completely irrelevant.

Sirens. Tina didn't have to look in her rearview mirror to realize that she hadn't thrown them off her trail as nicely as she would have liked to. She breathed a curse, throwing a look back at the random kids standing inside her open door. How badly would they be hurt if she started off right now?

Curse it all. She exhaled loudly - the sirens weren't in sight yet, but they would be in a moment. "Get in the car," she said quickly, tugging on the first kid's sleeve. Police won't shoot at a car with hostages. "Get in the car."

The shorter guy looked mildly confused - idiot. "What?"

She repeated herself - more loudly, and forcefully, and holding her wrench up high. "I'm not joking." She wasn't sure if they'd get it - the kid got it, she knew so by the way he looked away from her, by the way resignation flared in his eyes. God, this kid'd had it rough somewhere. Her left foot ached again. "Get in the car. Right now."

As she'd expected, the kid went first, looping around the car to climb in the opposite door. There was a scrape on his cheek, probably from trying not to get run over, but he didn't say anything. He just sat there, hands folded in his lap, staring unblinkingly at his worrying fingers.

The older boy - at least she assumed he was older; he seemed to be the leader of the two, and was certainly bigger if shorter than Kid. He seemed supremely disoriented. "You're kidnapping us?"

"I'm telling you to get in the freaking car or I'll batter your brains out, that's what." The sirens were getting louder - shoot, shoot, shoot. If she didn't get out of here she was dead meat. "Right now."

There must have been some speck of sense somewhere, because he relented and climbed in the backseat with Kid. Tina didn't waste time - as soon as they were in, she slid into her seat and squealed into reverse, almost certainly taking years off of the life of the parking brake she'd forgotten about, not bothering with a seat belt and only barely remembering to close her door before they were out in the roads again, driving as fast as she had to to get the hell of out Azul. And if the police came after her, they'd have to do negotiations - they had no way of knowing that her only weapons were her mind and wrench, and she had two hostages now. She'd buy herself some time, and maybe when they found out that she was only seventeen she'd get off easy. Stories like that were always in the newspapers, right? She could totally get off easy - she was a minor, and once she squeezed out a nauseating sob story, she'd be off okay.

Of course, they wouldn't know that if they just saw a woman driving a car who'd robbed something. But police couldn't fire on hostages - it was completely against the rules, and it would be on the front cover of every newspaper in Lyman if they did. So unless they ended up with some freaky good sniper and decided that they didn't want to negotiate with her, then she'd be better with the two in the back.

She snuck a rearview mirror glance at them. The older one was defiant, eyeing her wrench beneath her foot and probably wondering how hard it would be to get ahold of it. Good luck, sucker. The younger one - she had to stop calling him a kid, because he wasn't, he was probably about as old as she was (thirteen, fifteen, seventeen - when did a few years stop making a difference?) and was perfectly able to take care of himself. Kids couldn't. Anyway, the younger one was good at this whole hostage thing, it looked, because he didn't look around or out the window - just at his hands, fingers twisting (they don't break if they're braced - he shouldn't know that) into a tight nest, shoulders curled in protectively, hair falling over his face like a shield. He wouldn't run.

She swallowed, pressing down harder on the wrench. The resistance told her that it was still secure, and that Houdini back there would have a fun time trying to get it from her. "Even if you do get it, the kid won't run," she said, smirk licking at the corner of her mouth. She'd told herself she wouldn't call him that, but it sounded too good to pass up. Make sure the rebel knew who was boss here, who had the upper hand. She shouldn't have relished this as much as she did, but it felt good, being the powerful one. And she was right, and she knew he knew it.

"Why?" Oh, this was going to be fun. There was very little Tina loved more than a bit of stupid-hunting on a slow day. It was a bit of a pity, really, when the sirens welling up interrupted her snicker. She'd get back to this.

But now she had to drive. Ignoring the looks he was giving her in the rearview mirror - why couldn't it have just been the young one? He was simple, he was behaving. But she was finding it much more difficult to hate him and she couldn't think about this she needed to drive - being pursued by a police car hello. She floored it, tuning everything else out to focus primarily on the important goal of not getting oneself killed. And also not thinking about getting oneself killed, because that was immensely distracting.

It was like music, the hum of the vehicle under her foot, obeying her commands. The whizz of air around her - well, the windows were up, but she could feel it anyway - the lovely sound of the engine revving, as pumped as she was. Sing for me, baby.

And the car did exactly that, listening to her like the perfect child, sometimes deciding something before she'd realized that that was what she wanted to do, like magic. Turning slick, oily gasoline into a roaring lion - that was the magic.

Red and blue lights started fading off of her dashboard, slipping behind her. She was immortal, unstoppable, as long as the engine kept buzzing and protecting her. The kids (darn that word) in the backseat didn't exist, the roads and occasional car who would have honked at her if not for the cop cars didn't exist, the frustrating itch too deep in her left leg didn't exist. Nothing did except her and her car and those lights, disappearing.

She'd outrun them. Was that even possible? In real life (well, TV counted, right?) no one ever outran the police. Just to check, she did a few more vehicular piriottes in the underalleys of Azul, getting way more enjoyment than she should from the nauseated expression on Older Guy's face. And when she was done with that, she high-tailed it out of there, flying down the roads that were becoming less and less yellow by the minute and ignoring the angry protests from someone in the back (older guy, wimp wouldn't be saying anything if we were driving of off a cliff).

She was finally getting out of there. She was getting out with a backseat driver, a zombie, and three boxes worth of expensive something (she'd have to find a buyer, a different one - Raphael wasn't going to see a glimpse of this), but she was getting out.

And it felt good.

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