As the window shattered, the broken pieces assaulted the Corvette driver.
The glass dust stung his eyes.
Amidst the screams, Averie discarded the lug wrench by throwing it with great precision at his opponent. It spun in the air before hitting the man squarely in the head.
The poor bloke couldn’t hold in the profanities as his eyes watered.
Averie clicked his tongue. "We could’ve had a great time together if I didn’t have a race to win."
He disengaged from the Corvette and smoothly sped off.
Now left alone, the black sports car slowed down and eventually came to a halt.
The driver inside did not move.
"Will he be okay?" asked the cameraman, wondering if he hadn’t seen a murder just now.
"He will be fine," Averie said in a lackadaisical tone. "He is in shock, that’s all."
"Are you certain? That clang from the hit to his skull sounded anything but fine."
Averie opened his jaw to spit typical assurances, but even he began to have doubts.
"Well," he whispered, "he should be fine."
That was not very assuring to any of them.
"Say," began the sound guy, "we don’t become accomplices if we don’t report it, right?"
The second cameraman shook his head. "I think we could be held accountable as accessories, but I don’t know."
"Stop it, you two," interjected the front passenger. "We are just acting as employees. We are not at fault for his actions. We will be fine."
Averie groaned. "Should you be saying all that on camera?"
"It will be edited out. Anyway, we—"
With his index finger over his lips, he shushed the man.
"Do you hear it?" he whispered, turning off the music.
"I don’t—wait, I think—yes, I do. It’s..."
Every last one of their faces wilted with dread.
"The motorway isn’t far away now."
Averie, without another word, stepped on the accelerator.
The other drivers had similar ideas.
"We need to finish the race while the others escape."
The cameraman filmed the speeding cars. "Do you think they will escape?"
"I bet half of them are coked up. If they don’t want to go to jail, they will."
One by one, the cars detached themselves from the caravan and escaped onto the quieter roads.
And Averie could see the newcomers chasing after the rest.
His eyes narrowed, and his jaw opened in awe.
"Are we terrorists or what?"
It wasn’t one, two, or seven cars chasing after them.
"What kind of initial response is this?"
Painted in blue and greenish yellow, there were approximately eleven cars, each a different model.
There was a Vauxhall Vivaro, a Peugeot 208, a Vauxhall Corsa, a Nissan Leaf, a Ford S-MAX, a Toyota Corolla, a Mercedes-Benz Vito, a Ford Transit, and many more that Averie could not recognize.
Surrounding the racers, they managed to chase off a few of them.
"Are they just letting them go?"
"There must be roadblocks ahead or something. They are leading them into a trap."
"You people have no regard for life. Do you think they won’t risk it? In the end, the chase will continue around the city all night."
"How do you know that?"
"Ever heard of a race getting busted with all the drivers in jail?" Averie scoffed, grinning ear to ear. "It never happens, and it never will. It’s simply not worth it to assign so many resources to catching a few teenagers."
"What else would they be doing with their time?"
"Drug and arms raids are more profitable, more—let’s say—meritorious. You make the news, get promotions, and get praised. On the other hand, who cares about racing maniacs putting innocent lives at risk?"
"How profound, indeed." The cameraman nodded his head before turning to Averie. "Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?"
"Oh, hell yeah!" He stuck out his tongue. "It’s freaking sweet!"
The chase continued until everyone but Averie was gone.
"Even the Bugatti left. Do you think they picked up that wank—I mean, the Corvette guy?"
"Oh, he definitely got caught." Averie flashed a smile. "See, it’s hard to go anywhere when there’s glass stuck in your face."
"So, we are the only ones left?"
"Yes," Averie proclaimed proudly.
"That means they are chasing only us?"
The reality was starting to set in.
The Supra was the only one still following the course of the race. Everyone else had dropped off.
"Your plan backfired. We have a fleet of police cars on our tail. We are going to jail."
"Calm down. It’s not that bad. We can escape."
"What do you mean? We have nowhere to go."
"Look there." Averie pointed towards a ramp leading onto what appeared to be a highway. "That’s the entrance ramp leading to the M40. We can still make it out if we escape their jurisdiction."
"Oh, yeah, just need to escape the West Midlands."
"Are you being serious? That’s your genius plan?"
"Hey, that’s how it works, okay? Trust me."
But no one had any trust in that maniac who had called the police on himself.
As Averie climbed the ramp and successfully entered the M40 motorway, his phone rang.
It was an unknown number.
Sitting in the silence, emphasized by the sound of frantic wheels, Averie and the rest had a pretty good idea who was responsible for the ringing of the phone.
"It’s the police, isn’t it?"
They turned to Averie.
"They have your number. That means they know who you are. Do you still think we can escape?"
The good actor squeezed the steering wheel. The vein on his forehead bulged and throbbed the tighter his grip got.
"Optimism, my friends," he spat. "Take the pill of optimism. It’s sweeter than delusion."
The sound of cars cutting against the wind was getting closer by the minute.
The high-speed police vehicles seemed like the hounds from Hell. They were relentless.
The episode, initially about street racing, had become a documentary about a celebrity and a high-speed chase.