Avi smiled. “You get to not explode.”
Their headlights caught a silhouette in the middle of the road.
Tara studied her. A liar’s face, a thief’s hands—but honest eyes. “What’s your play?”
“Let me ride shotgun. We take the old mining road. Dusty, slow, but alive. At the junction, we split the prize—the cash to Holly, the garage to you, the routes to me.”
Avi’s gaze didn’t flicker. “Because I want the title. Not the garage. The title . Tara Lynn Foxx, you win this, you go clean. I win, I control the routes from Vegas to the border. But if you die? Some desk jockey from the city takes over. No one wants that.”
sat in the driver’s seat of her ’69 Charger, knuckles white. She was the veteran, the Queen Mother of the asphalt circuit—gravel-voiced, calm, and dangerous. Beside her, Holly West thumbed a switchblade open and shut, her sharp grin never reaching her eyes. Holly was the loose cannon, the one who’d rather burn a bridge than cross it.
The desert highway unspooled like a cracked black ribbon under a bleached sky. Season 3 of Road Queen had been a bloodbath—territory wars, broken alliances, a sheriff who played both sides. Now, the final run for the season’s prize (a clean title to a garage in Santa Fe and enough cash to disappear) was down to four.
