The Fiat limped on down the highway, but the rattling was getting louder, the car shaking more with every mile. The rubber flew off the front tire and sparks jumped up off the exposed wheel.

Tia asked, “How far will we get in this thing?”

Marcus shook his head. “Not far. We’re going to have to pull over, find another way into town.”

“Good. Pull over—we’ll call the police, get an escort.”

He nodded and pulled into the far lane. Off Tia’s confused glance, Marcus said, “We can’t leave it on the side of the highway; we have to wait for the next offramp.” But the sparks were flying higher, faster, thicker, a curtain of orange and yellow, metal screeching against concrete, the Fiat shaking to the point of collapse.

Smoke started pouring up from the engine at the front of the car, obscuring the view in front of the Fiat. Marcus and Tia both squinted, glancing out the window to get a better view, but the increasingly blinding curtain of smoke made it next to impossible.

She poked her head far out of the opened passenger window, clear of the smoke. An offramp was coming up ahead—their only chance to get safely off that highway. She looked back into the car. “Pull over slow, it’s about a quarter mile.”

Marcus nodded, wincing and coughing as the smoke poured from the engine directly into the driver’s seat, noxious fumes choking him out slowly as the car barreled forward.

“It’s coming up on the right,” Tia called, glancing behind her to see the traffic clear of their pursuing white car. “Veer right, Marcus, right!”

He did as she instructed, the crippled Fiat still kicking up sparks and smoke, growling and groaning and churning out its death cries, pushed beyond endurance. The car rode the offramp down off the highway and to a small, winding street leading up to the foothills just above the coastline. A trail of white smoke marked their path up the road as far as the car would go.

Marcus finally turned the key and had to stumble out of the car, coughing and wheezing, barely able to remain on his feet. Tia ran out from her side of the car, hands reaching out to him. “Marcus, are you okay?” She finally reached him, rubbing his back. “Breathe, baby, just breathe, take it easy.”

“I’m fine, Tia,” he managed to say between hacks, “nothing to be concerned about.”

“Of course it is, Marcus, I love you! I went years without you and I’m not going to lose you again.”

Marcus smiled even as he recovered from his cough. “You won’t have to, not if I have anything to say about it.” He glanced at the car. “We have to hide this thing somewhere.”

Tia understood why; their pursuers were still nearby and that car would draw them in like flies.

There was an oak tree nearby, blossoming in the spring weather, and a drop-off behind it. “Over there,” she said, the two of them taking their place behind the car to push it forward.

“You need to steer,” Marcus said, and Tia knew he was right. She wanted to remain with him, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the effort. She knew he needed it after that choking hazard. But neither had a choice, and both of them knew it. She climbed in behind the wheel, smoke still pouring up and into her lungs, her throat burning, eyes squinting and caked with toxic smoke residue.

Tia stuck her foot out of the opened driver’s door to help push the car forward toward the oak tree and into the gully behind it.

“Climb out,” Marcus shouted from behind the car, and Tia pointed the car directly into the gully before pushing herself out of the car. She stumbled and rolled onto the dirt road as Marcus shoved the car into the gully. It came to a thick, crunching rest in the gully, tipped forward and nearly on its side. Marcus looked around, then up at the tree. “We need to pull some of those branches down, cover the car.”

He climbed up the oak tree, Tia glancing around nervously for that dreaded white car and the assassins who drove it. They must have driven on by now, she reasoned, hoping against hope that it would be so easy.

Marcus climbed out to an extended branch and jumped out a bit farther, the branch creaking and bending above him. He swung a bit, gathering some stored energy. Then with a sharp tug of his legs, he yanked the branch down, finally breaking it with a sharp crack.

He landed on the side of the road near the trunk of the tree, the fractured branch in his hands. He twisted it to pull the branch clear of the tree, a fan of leaves spread out at the limb’s end. He tossed it over the car and it did little to obscure it.

They looked back up at the tree, then at each other. Tia said, “Let’s get to work.”