Read Online Faces in the Fire by Hines - Free Book Online

rise at the top of the pass and began moving downhill; the big red Peterbilt—almost an exact double of his own, filled the rearview mirrors. His lead was now only a few hundred feet.
    Odd; his pursuer wasn’t pulling a load. Kurt could have sworn, when he’d watched the truck in the rearview mirrors before, that the truck was hauling a shipping container on a flatbed. But now, it was just the truck itself, like his own. If he hadn’t ditched his trailer at the top of the pass, he would have been doomed for sure.
    He felt gravity beginning to work with him rather than against him. He gained speed, moving around one turn and then another. Behind him, the other truck kept pace. He wasn’t sure how the driver was managing, but he had a couple miles of downgrade on the Montana side of the pass to increase his lead.
    Kurt peeled his eyes away from the rearviews and concentrated on the road ahead.
    Forward, always forward. Like a shark. Todd had said that. Yes, like a shark. Not a catfish.
    Kurt saw the next corner, felt the incline of the road becoming steeper, checked his speedometer. He was pushing fifty now, and he wasn’t going to make the corner. He spun the wheel into the turn, struggling against the big rig as the tires beneath him chattered.
    His truck rocked, and for a moment Kurt was sure he was going to tip; he tilted at the precipice for a moment, and then the wheels on the left side slammed to the ground again, bottoming out the suspension. A deep, mechanical burning smell began to waft through the cab; maybe he’d snapped something in the suspension.
    Immediately, another corner came, this one curving to the right, and Kurt turned into it.
    Somehow, his rig righted itself once more. Then, a few yards ahead, Kurt spotted a runaway truck ramp, a giant turnout filled with deep gravel for trucks that had burned out their brakes on giant passes like this one.
    Maybe he could hit that ramp at that last second, surprise the truck behind him. If he managed to catch the ramp, and if the other truck went by, it would most likely tumble off the steep cliffs beyond. Kurt was almost doing that right now.
    He looked into his rearview mirror and felt a giant shudder; his neck snapped backward, and he realized the other truck had bumped him. Impossibly, it had kept pace, even caught him.
    Now or never, he thought, and he wrenched the wheel to the right as hard as he could, guiding his Peterbilt onto the long surface of the runaway ramp. As he hit the gravel, his truck sank immediately, and Kurt felt his whole body being thrown forward.
    Even as this happened, another shudder pushed his whole truck forward, and Kurt knew the other Peterbilt had somehow, inexplicably, followed him onto the ramp and rammed him from behind.
    A long, slow metallic shriek froze the world around him, but Kurt felt his body lifted out of the seat and through the windshield—through the windshield as if it were nothing more than paper—across the giant hood into the gravel beyond. He tumbled forever, spinning until he came to a stop facedown in the thick, heavy gravel. He
smelled diesel, and that odd mechanical burning now stronger than ever, but beneath all that, the comforting smell he loved so much: pine trees. At least there was that. As he lay dying, he would be able to take with him the memories of fresh pine.
    But his body wouldn’t cooperate with his mind’s wish to die. He felt it trying to stand, against his will, even though his legs wouldn’t work. Nothing in his body would work. Maybe a broken femur or two. This thought struck him as funny, and he opened his mouth to laugh; instead, he felt liquid coming from his mouth. Blood, he realized. That meant a punctured lung or another internal injury.
    After a few moments, though, his breath came back, and Kurt felt his legs, almost as if working on their own, bunching beneath him and forcing him to stand.
    He turned and looked at the giant heap of