Nick drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his car, staring out across the flat expanse of land that made the old landing strip. He still wore the helmet he and Catherine had rigged for their experiment.
That night, they had solved the case, in which a body had been found at this landing strip, shot in the head.
A life for a life for a life, Nick thought. Jace Felder killed Mrs. del Nagro, so Tony del Nagro killed Jace Felder. And then Nick and Cath put Tony in prison. Three lives, all wasted.
And really, Tony and Jace were nothing more than kids. Still living with their parents, just old enough to drive…
Nick turned the key in the ignition, smiling as the engine turned over and began to purr softly.
The exotic world of road racing was the ultimate cause of death, the way he saw it. And what an exotic world it was. One where rules didn't apply, where all that mattered was going faster, faster, faster until your car was going so fast you couldn't move at all, until minutes turned into mere seconds.
He wished he could say the lack of time, the fast pace, was the reason Tony del Nagro had made a bad choice. But Tony had admitted to premeditation.
Nick revved the engine a little, relishing the feeling of powerful engine rearing to go. He smiled a little, in spite of himself. He should be more upset about this case, he knew.
"Jace killed my mom. Everybody knew it. Everybody knew it, and no one came forward." They were cowards. They weren't speeding to win a race, they were running away.
Nick pressed down on the accelerator and the car shot forward eagerly, the speedometer needle leaping wildly up, up, up past fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty…
He let the cold air wash over him through the open windows, pressing in on him so hard he can barely breathe. How ironic. Suffocating from too much air.
The whole world was like that. Tony del Nagro committed the crime that was the cause of his hate. And in some sick, twisted way, that made sense.
Glancing at the dashboard, Nick saw his speed was well over one hundred miles per hour. He vaguely wondered if there was a speed limit out there.
The bad things that happened, the murders, the assaults, the threats that occurred daily, the ones that he spent his life chasing…they never really ended. No matter how fast you ran, they always caught up.
Guilt, that was the big one. Jace Felder didn't escape it. Maybe he didn't deserve to. He had never shown any remorse for what he had done.
Nick wondered if he could outrun his own fears. Those dark whispers that dogged him, kept him up at night, called to him at every turn. If he could only go a little bit faster…
He felt his heart pounding, his pulse roaring in his ears, blocking out everything, all the whispers, the guilt, the fear. Everything but the sounds of his own life, which nearly overwhelmed him.
He laughed a little, tightening his shaking hand to hold the wheel steady. So this was what it felt like to escape your past.
"I never stopped. I just kept going. Never looked back." How great would that be? To never have to think about it again?
"He took my mother's life, so I took his." Nick took his foot off the accelerator and allowed the car to slow, then applied the brakes.
That was what it came out to, when you ran away from your past.
"It's what makes a person, I guess." If you forgot what made you, how could you ever know who you were?
Nick refused to believe that Tony del Nagro was a cold-blooded killer. He was a kid, lost, confused, missing part of himself, who had made the wrong choice because he didn't know what else to do.
The car rolled to a stop, gravel crunching under the tires. Nick put it in park and climbed out, turning to look back at where he'd come from. Then he looked in the direction the car was pointed.
It was only when you knew where you'd come from and what you had done that you could decide where to go next.