Chapter 335: Bullet

Lucas already had the sedan pushed harder than it deserved.

In his head there was only one clean thought left: get Rechelle out of this city. Away from the ramps, away from the guns, away from whatever Durnik had decided was worth turning a public night into a battlefield. The bastard was going further than expected. Further than sense. Further than the kind of pressure Lucas had prepared for.

The stolen engine was already screaming under him, rough and strained, every upward climb of the needle sounding like a complaint. Rechelle held the door handle in silence, body tight in the seat, still not fully clear but clear enough now to feel danger without needing the details.

Then Lucas checked the side mirror.

Familiar lights.

The jeep.

"You fucking bastards."

The words came out low and raw. He put his foot down harder anyway, as if stubbornness alone could invent more power in a car that had never been built for this. The sedan surged, shook, and still lost the argument. Behind him the heavier vehicle closed the distance in ugly, confident jumps. Every time he thought he had bought a second, the lights grew larger.

Inside the jeep, doubt had already died.

No normal driver moved like that inside a parking structure. Not at that speed. Not with that kind of desperation on the ramps. It had to be them. Rechelle. The man protecting her. The same problem that had been costing them the whole night.

"That’s them."

"End it."

The jeep came on faster.

---

The hit arrived before the next full breath.

GBEMMM.

The rear of the sedan took the full weight of the slam. Metal folded with a deep, violent crunch. The whole car jumped forward under the impact, nose dipping, back end kicking hard toward the outside of the curve.

They were mid-descent on the ramp.

That made it worse.

The sedan pitched sideways toward the concrete wall, tires screaming, frame shuddering through every bolt. For a split second the world became only motion and noise: the grind of the jeep still on his tail, the broken window howling, Rechelle’s sharp cry beside him, the wall coming up too fast on the right.

Lucas locked both hands on the wheel.

No elegance. No clean technique. Just force and refusal.

He dragged the car left, overcorrected, felt the rear step out again, and hauled it back the other way before the side mirror could kiss the barrier. The sedan drifted one lane-width from disaster, scraped a line of sparks off the lower wall, and somehow stayed on the ramp.

His shoulders were tight. His jaw ached from clenching. The wheel kicked against his palms like the car wanted to finish what the jeep had started.

"Not here," he muttered through his teeth. "Not like this."

Behind him the jeep was still close enough to fill the mirror, ready for another hit.

Lucas got the sedan balanced again and pushed it for everything it still had.

There was no clean margin left. The jeep was right there, hungry for another hit, and every second of hesitation was an invitation. He kept the throttle buried, forcing the wounded car through the tight lower turns of the ramp, left then right, right then left, the wheel constantly working in his hands as the concrete walls brushed too close to the mirrors.

Then the ramp spat them out into the open road.

Lucas threw the car into the exit drift hard. The rear broke loose, tires screaming across the final stretch of concrete and onto asphalt. For a moment the sedan felt light enough to flip, the whole body yawing wider than he wanted, headlights cutting wild across the street. He caught it late, dragged the nose back in line, and kept going with the engine roaring in protest.

Behind him, the jeep made the same transition with more weight and less care.

---

One of the men in the passenger side shoved his upper body out the window, assault rifle up, trying to line the rear tires while both vehicles were still unstable from the turn.

"Take the wheels!"

He never got the chance to settle the shot.

The driver, locked on Lucas, followed the sedan’s drift with too much force and yanked the jeep left hard. The sudden change threw the whole cabin sideways. The man hanging out the window had nothing to brace with properly. His balance went first, then his footing, then the rest of him.

He left the vehicle like he had been flung from a moving animal.

Arms out. Rifle still in one hand. A short, shocked sound that never became a full shout.

In the middle of the fall his finger clenched on pure reflex.

The assault rifle ripped a burst into the open air ~

BRAK-BRAK-BRAK-BRAK~

muzzle flash stitching uselessly at the night sky as he hit the road.

He landed hard.

The impact took him in a messy roll, head striking asphalt with a sound too solid to mistake. The rifle clattered away from his hands. When he finally stopped moving, blood was already spreading under his hairline and his legs were making small, broken attempts to find the ground again.

Inside the jeep, panic cut straight through the chase.

"Bullet!"

"Bullet!"

"Bullet, get the fuck up!"

The driver slammed the brakes hard enough to nose-dive the vehicle. For a second they almost stopped completely, caught between the mission and the man on the road. Bullet tried to push himself up and failed, arms slipping in his own blood.

Then the police sirens poured into the street from somewhere close, rising fast.

That settled it.

"Leave him!"

"We can’t~"

"He’s done. Move!"

The jeep lurched forward again, abandoning the bleeding man in the middle of the road under the growing scream of sirens, and locked back onto Lucas’s fading taillights.

In the sedan, Lucas only caught the chaos in broken pieces through the mirror: a body on the asphalt, the jeep hesitating, the night suddenly full of red-and-blue promise.

He did not slow down.

He took the next turn harder and kept the stolen car running like the city itself was trying to close its fist around them.ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮