Unfortunately, the large white panel truck behind him didn’t.
The first tap was a nudge, a quick kiss against Quinn’s new bumper, and he swore, pissed at the grill staring back at him in his rearview mirror. A hasty swerve to the next lane did him no favors. The truck echoed his slide, tapping him again, a harder push strong enough to stroke Quinn’s tires on the slick blacktop. With his window down an inch, the truck’s engine screamed and protested its existence, a dangerous tok-tok sound of a broken rod coming from its front end.
He couldn’t see into the cab, not with the differences of heights between the Audi and the truck, but Quinn knew he had one advantage. There was no way the truck would be able to keep up with him.
The road stretched out before them, and he knew it well. There wouldn’t be much time for him to maneuver freely. A mess of construction and signals was coming up fast. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember even passing a panel truck on the way over the bridge, much less cutting one off, but road rage was the only reason he could think someone would lose their shit enough to bump him more than once.
He instinctively slowed down coming out of the last curve before the final straight shot into the city streets. Habits born of daily commutes guided his brain, and Quinn shook them off, focusing on putting enough room between him and the insane driver behind him so he could slip away into San Francisco’s tangle of streets. A few hundred yards ahead, a warning light flashed yellow to caution drivers of a road split leading either to Fremont or Folsom, and Quinn tapped at the brakes to slow down, needing the car at a slower speed to make the turn.
The truck’s driver had a different approach. Instead of putting on his brakes, he used the back of Quinn’s R8 to slow himself down, slamming hard into the Audi’s rear and jerking it forward.
“Shite and hell, what is his problem?” Quinn spat a bit of blood out of his window, licking at his torn cheek, where he’d sunk his teeth into the meat. “Fine. Let’s lose this bastard, then.”
The split screamed past him, and Quinn pushed the Audi over to the farthest lane. A construction crew had the break tied up with equipment and men in orange vests, and Quinn debated his options as the truck sped up once again, filling his rearview mirror. Fremont did a quick cut to the left, and Quinn took it hot, counting on the Audi’s low profile to tighten down on the road. He caught a flash of white as the truck lurched to follow, its unwieldy boxy shape unable to maneuver the tight turn. Its tires lifted, and it swayed, threatening to fall side down into the next lane, and Quinn’s heart stuttered, more worried for the tiny Camry next to the out-of-control truck than he was for himself.
At the last second, the truck righted itself, slamming back down on its tires, bouncing once before catching momentum, then gunning forward.
Straight for Quinn.
He hit the gas, pushing the Audi through half a block lined with concrete and glass. The Howard Street intersection turned green, and the road was clear in front of him. Flying past a tavern on the corner, the Audi hummed over the damp street. A quick look back told Quinn the truck wasn’t far behind. A delivery truck coming out of an alley cut in front of the Audi, and Quinn pulled the car over, narrowly missing a bicyclist straying out of the bike lane and into the street. Forced to slow down, Quinn cursed under his breath when the alley he’d planned on ducking down was blocked off by a cluster of women stopping to chat in the middle of the walk.
“Okay, shit. What the hell is going on?” It was bad enough he was talking to himself, but it was worse knowing the answers he needed could be handed to him by whomever was driving the truck. The same truck who’d caught up with him once again, clipping the right side of the Audi’s bumper. The scrape of paint and metal wasn’t a pleasant sound, but Quinn was more concerned about keeping the car going straight.