Ladies' Night by Andrews, Kay (popular books of all time .TXT) 📕

that she could escape the car without risking her life. She snaked her right hand over toward the passenger door, her fingers clasping the handle.

Click. Grace tugged at the handle, but it was too late.

Ashleigh laughed. “Childproof locks. Great invention, huh? Come on, Grace. Why do you wanna jump ship? I thought you were gonna be my wingman on this mission.”

“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Grace said. “You’re scaring me now, Ashleigh. Just pull over and let me out, okay? Or let me drive. You’re in no condition to be behind the wheel. You’re going to do something stupid and dangerous and end up in real trouble.”

“Trouble?” Ashleigh glanced over at her. “What? Stackpole is gonna put me in remedial divorce counseling? Sentence me to community service again? You don’t get it, Grace, do you? I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. I just want to give that bitch what she deserves. Once she’s out of the picture, Boyce will realize what he’s been missing.”

Grace clamped her lips together. Finally, the reality of the situation dawned on her. Nothing she could say would sway Ashleigh’s resolve. She glanced again in the rearview mirror. Was that a flash of red, a block back? Wyatt’s truck? She said another silent prayer.

Ashleigh drove one block, turned right, drove two more blocks, and turned left. The truck sped up and seemed to be closing the gap between it and the BMW, but then it was forced to come to a halt as an enormous SUV backed slowly down a driveway and into the street, totally blocking it.

Come on, come on, come on, Grace chanted silently.

“This is her street!” Ashleigh muttered. “I knew it was around here.” She made a sharp left and slowed the BMW to a crawl, craning her neck to see the numbers on the mailboxes.

If she hadn’t been so thoroughly terrified, Grace might have been craning her neck, too. The street was lined with moss-draped oak trees, lawns with thick green grass, and neatly tended beds of flowers. The homes were cozy stucco and wood-frame bungalows built in the twenties and thirties, with welcoming porches and gabled roofs.

It was a storybook street, but Grace had a feeling that this story would not have a happy ending.

“Oh, yeah,” Ashleigh said softly. “This is the right block.” She glanced over at Grace. “You see this neighborhood? I checked—the cheapest house on this street sold for 377,000 dollars. And I’m living in a dump condo that rents for eleven hundred a month. Ask yourself how a twenty-eight-year-old drug rep affords a house here. I’ll tell you how—she hooks up with a rich plastic surgeon and makes him her baby daddy.”

She pointed to a house at the end of the street. “That’s it. That’s her place.”

“What … what are you planning to do?” Grace checked the rearview mirror. No sign of the truck.

“I’m just going to talk to her, that’s all,” Ashleigh said, her voice singsongy. “Make her see that she needs to step away.”

But as they were talking, they saw a silver Audi back swiftly down the driveway. They were three houses away. As soon as the Audi was on the street, it accelerated so quickly that the tires screeched on the pavement.

“That’s her!” Ashleigh said. She sped up, but the Audi zipped through the next intersection without slowing down.

“She knows what my car looks like,” Ashleigh muttered. She accelerated, closing the gap between the two cars.

The Audi made two quick turns, and Ashleigh stayed close, flying through stop signs. The Audi managed to stay two car lengths ahead, and never slowed down before making a left.

They were back on Manatee again, heading west. The Audi sped through the thinning traffic, darting in and out of lanes, but Ashleigh gripped the steering wheel and kept on the car’s tail. They were doing sixty miles an hour now, somehow managing to make all the green lights. Grace kept looking in the rearview mirror, and when she glimpsed the red truck again, she began daring to hope. Wyatt was there, not far behind. He would think of some way to stop this crazy race.

The Audi sped up again, and Ashleigh did the same. They were only a car length behind now, and the BMW’s speedometer was inching over seventy miles per hour.

The GULF BEACHES sign flashed by. “She’s headed for Boyce’s beach house on Anna Maria,” Ashleigh said. “Like he can hide her. Dumb bitch.”

Grace saw the fringe of Australian pines, white sands, and the glint of sunlight on the sparkling water of Palma Sola Bay. The Audi was still a car length ahead, but Ashleigh stomped on the accelerator, and the speedometer needle jumped. They were doing eighty-five now. The Audi wove in and out of traffic, and the BMW stayed right with it. They flew over the first causeway, and Grace held her breath, terrified Ashleigh might somehow send them both flying over the concrete bridge embankment and into the waters below. Her fears eased momentarily when they were over the bridge and into another stretch of causeway, lined on both sides by sandy beaches and the shallow waters of the bay, but not for long.

A lumbering dump truck loomed ahead of them in the right-hand lane, forcing the Audi to slow considerably. Ashleigh veered into the left lane and passed the dump truck. She slowed, waiting for the truck to pass on the right, and laughed triumphantly when she came alongside the Audi.

Grace glimpsed the driver as they pulled alongside the Audi—a long curtain of dark hair, and when the woman looked over and saw who was beside her, her face mirrored the look of shock and horror in Grace’s own face.

“Gotcha!” Ashleigh screamed. She jerked the BMW’s steering wheel hard to the right, but just as she did so, Grace heard the squeal of the Audi’s brakes. The BMW veered off the road.

Grace had the sensation of time slowing. She heard screams—her own, Ashleigh’s? She’d never be