Getaway

When the alarm went off inside the store, I knew we were out of time.

But lost time was something I was used to making up for, when it came to being behind the wheel.

I had the rear door open on the passenger side when Jesús and John came barreling ass out of the front doors of the dispensary, two backpacks full of cash between them as they shoved across the backseat of the Camry. My foot was already off the brake and on the gas before John could pull the door shut, momentum doing the work of slamming it closed behind his backside.

Just in time for the guy who ran the dispensary to come out the door with his pocket pistol and start shooting.

And as good as I was, I couldn’t beat a thousand feet per second.

I heard glass shatter and metal whine as I looped the car around the back of the building and pointed it towards the lot exit. Seconds later, we were the racing down McKnight, and I didn’t have time to think about anything other than lunchtime drivers going out for a treat on their breaks from work. There’s nothing like folks who didn’t want to go back to the office clogging up the roads when you’re in a hurry, but at least the ones headed home for a quickie cheated the speed limit a little.

I felt something warm running down the side of my neck, but I was busy wiggling the Camry around an F150 that was built for a war zone but looked like it barely left a garage. The guy driving the mobile micro-dick display blared his horn at my antics, which only served to drown out John’s moaning and Jesús saying, “Oh shit… oh shit…” over and over again.

I hammered the gas to the floor and launched us onto the exit to the highway.

The Camry didn’t look like much of a flaming chariot, but that was the point. The most popular sedan in America for most of twenty damn years, there were millions of them on the road, so whether it was in traffic or in a parking lot, it blended in. A highway ghost.

Or, better yet, a fucking Uber. You could count on those guys to drive like assholes, too.

What really mattered, though, was beneath that plain Jane exterior. Under the hood, the stock V6 had been upgraded with a supercharger, while the undercarriage had been beefed up with sway bars, a strut brace, and a few other odds and ends that made the car go faster and handle better.

Which is all you can ask for from a wheelman’s ride when your slow and steady plan hits the fan and you need to get out of dodge. That, and a steady hand on the wheel.

Mine were the steadiest in the city, fine-tuned by growing up on country bootlegger’s backroads from the time I was old enough to reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel. You’d think city driving would be a lot different than rural shenanigans, but if you figure the other cars are just extra bends in the road to bevel around, there isn’t much left to surprise you.

And it was rare to get that steady of a hand behind the wheel of a cop car. Sure, those Interceptors had all the muscle in the world under the hood, but that didn’t mean a thing if you couldn’t keep it under control. Being parked on traffic duty or doing slow neighborhood patrols six days a week didn’t build up a whole lot of practice for the kind of thing I do, especially when the adrenaline starts pumping and things get hot.

Most police chases end in crashes for that very reason — someone always loses their shit when the needle cracks ninety.

But if you can keep it together, if you can be the steady hand, odds are pretty good the other guy will flinch first.

It was just my luck to find the one cop in the city who probably raced funny cars on the weekend.

I was having trouble figuring out where he came from. One second we were blitzing towards the city, the Camry surging unimpeded down the hammer lane, and the next minute he was there, lights and sirens blazing, bringing a renewed round of concern from my passengers in the backseat. One of them, anyway. John had gone very quiet, or maybe I just couldn’t hear him over the cop demanding we pull over.

Right, I thought, feeling that warmth run down across my shoulder, making my shirt stick. Sure, buddy. I’ll get right on that.

I took the last inch of gas pedal to the floor and the Camry surged against its own stock.

The cop behind the wheel of that Charger was good, I’ll give him that. He caught up to the Camry close enough to ride my slipstream, his brush bar inches from my back bumper. And if it had been a flat-out drag race, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. As fast as the modded-up Camry could go, it just wasn’t in the same horsepower class as a muscle car running a police package.

My only saving grace was the other cars on the road hadn’t quite yet realized what was happening and had yet to give way to the lights and sirens, which kept the cop from giving my bumper a knock and sending us into the concrete barriers.

Small favors, but circumstances being what they were, I was left relying on the Camry’s maneuverability more than its power, and thanking god I’d asked for upgraded tires, too, as I stripped from the hammer lane to the far right exit ramp in one swift and sure stroke of the steering wheel. Horns blared, brakes squealed, but I made the ramp with feet to spare.

The cop hung on, though I saw sparks in the rearview mirror as he caught the side of the Charger on the lane divider. The big car wobbled, giving me a little bit of a lead to start working the Camry up through the gears again, even though my arm felt sluggish on the shifter.

I’d been planning to ride the long curve around the north end of the city and shoot off towards the airport for the drop off, but all that highway would have just been a gift to the cop. Cutting through the city itself was risky as hell — traffic could grind any and every lane to a halt at any given time — but we were thin and nimble and I’d been splitting breakdown lanes for a long time.

I couldn’t spare a glance to see what was going on, but behind me, I could hear Jesús keening, and God help me, I wished he would just pass out, rather than having to hear him mutter and moan through his panic.

“Hey!” I spat, loud enough to cut through the noise he was making. “The haul. Was it what The Greek said it would be?”

I couldn’t give a damn about the loot at that moment, but I needed to get Jesús thinking about something else, especially since John wasn’t responding. So maybe I was trying not to think about what that meant, too.

“Good, man… real good,” Jesús said almost automatically, no real conviction in his voice, but at least he was responding. “Just like he said.”

Marijuana dispensaries exist in a weird vacuum between state and federal legality. Since marijuana, both medicinal and recreational, is still considered a narcotic by the feds, even places that can sell it legally at the state level can’t use banks the way a normal business would, and can’t just cut a check to pay taxes, either. That means there’s a lot of cash on hand, if you’re crazy enough to try to grab it.

At least, that’s how The Greek sold it to John and Jesús. Me, I just drive.

Luck was with me as we hit Seventh Avenue, no traffic at the stop sign I ignored, but there was no plan in place at this point — I was just swinging the Camry against whatever turn looked the least congested. That meant a hard right onto Tenth Street, then around the wide curve to the intersections at Liberty and Penn.

Perfect, I thought. Tenth would take me under the convention center, then a quick left by the river would point me at highway options again. Then it was either north, back in the general direction we’d just fled, or south and then back to the interchange west that had been part of my original plan.

I missed a bus coming at me on Liberty, and one of those driverless vehicles piloted by a guy in the Philippines barely missed me at Penn, the Camry swaying back and forth just enough under a light touch of the steering wheel to clear the threats.

Only for us to run headlong into a crowd of pedestrians fifty deep clogging the crosswalks and the ramp down under the convention center, all of them draped in fur — white fur, black fur, brown fur, blue fur, pink fur — and with comically large helmets shaped like animal faces atop their heads.

The Camry’s brakes howled as I brought the car to a screeching halt. Pain flared up through my neck and chest as the shoulder belt snapped me back against the seat, but on the wrong side of where the belt should have bitten me. The fingertips of my right hand felt cold.

“What the fuck…” I managed, though whether I was talking about the menagerie in front of me or the ache in my arm, I didn’t know. Maybe both.

“Furries,” Jesús said, almost in reverence, answering at least one of my two concerns, even if it didn’t make a goddamn bit of sense.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snapped, trying to figure out my options as a hundred glass eyes turned towards the Camry. I tried to flex my fingers, and it felt like I was trying to squeeze a brick.

“Furry convention,” Jesús explained. “It’s a big deal. Every year. Folks dress up like animals, parade all over downtown.”

Before I could ask for more details, I heard the approach of a police siren. In the rearview, I could see red and blue strobes flashing against the buildings two blocks behind us.

I laid on the horn to clear a path, which earned me plenty of furry middle fingers but enough of the costumed crowd felt the call of self-preservation and moved out of the way.

“Dump John’s bag!” I demanded, one foot on the brake and the other on the gas, the Camry whining in protest as the RPMs climbed as the last of the furries move to one side or the other.

To his credit, Jesús didn’t argue, just started throwing bundled stacks of cash out the window in the car’s wake as I released the brake and shot down the ramp under the convention center.

The money took flight, scattering in the air, and the convention goers crowded back into the road behind us, chasing the individual bills. Beyond them, the cop car stalled out, its reds-and-blues doing nothing to dissuade the furries from free money.

I palmed the wheel, spinning it to the left as my right arm died again, the miscue from my muscles causing the car to stutter through the turn onto the bypass. I almost lost it entirely, but another punch of the gas pedal pushed the car to straighten true and we were moving again.

“Oh, shit…” Jesús said, the now familiar refrain starting up once more.

The interchange around the Point was coming up fast, and I had to make a call. Left or right, south or north. Stick to the plan or keep improvising.

I adjusted the car to the right, making the call to head north. Once we were across the river, I could loop back the way we had come or kick off in a different direction, try to lose any remaining heat. The odds of running into tunnel traffic as we tried to go south and then west were just too high.

And I didn’t know how much gas I had left in the tank, literally or figuratively. There was no pain, the adrenaline staving off any announcements from my nervous system, but it was apparent I’d been hit back at the dispensary. I was going to need patched up, and another twenty minutes out to the original rendezvous wasn’t going to be easy.

The bridge loomed ahead of us. Hand slick with sweat, I palmed the wheel to get us up on the highway again. The speedometer clicked up past seventy, then eighty.

Ahead, four lanes would pave the way to free and clear.

I blinked away sweat, vision blurry as the first twinges of pain started to spike through me. The speedometer touched ninety as I rounded the curve.

A dark shape loomed. The Camry shuddered to the right with a violent shriek of metal on metal.

Through the sweat, I caught a glimpse of an unmarked cop car, no lights running, jamming up against us before the Camry smashed into the concrete barrier at the edge of the bridge. I lost all feel for the wheel as a second collision bounced us against the barrier, and the howl of a huge engine preceded the scrape that pushed us up and then over the barrier.

Behind me, Jesús muttered one last, “Oh shit!”

We hung precariously for a moment, and then the Camry tumbled to the right, free falling towards the wide river below.

Bio: Justin Eger (on Bluesky @fugitivecourier.bsky.social) is a writer, which means he has been a bookseller, community journalist, newspaper editor, and a federal consultant, among other things. He is the author of the Ethan Shaw thrillers and the John Ransom adventures, and is the creator of The Underground action/crime series. He lives just outside of Pittsburgh with his wife, Jess, as he looks for new opportunities and continues to invest time in his writing.

Follow on Social

Literary Garage: Storytelling with grit, heart, and no off-ramp.

© 2025. All rights reserved.

Connect

Follow us on Substack for updates and news

Special Features Editor and Warrior God: Michael Downing