The only thing that kept me from having a heart attack was the fact that I was distracted on my phone. “I found his flight. Two o’clock, departing from Concourse C.”
“Buy a ticket!” Lizzy said.
My thumbs flew over the screen. “The flight’s full. Damnit!”
“Check the other departure flights!” Lizzy paused to swerve onto the shoulder, then exited onto the frontage road. “Book one of those. Just so you can get through security.”
I found a flight to Las Vegas departing from the same concourse. “Three hundred bucks for a one-way flight. Jesus.”
“You can cancel it later! Just book it!”
I bought it using my shiny newYours Forever Gemstonesbusiness credit card. By the time I was done, Lizzy was making an illegal U-turn to get back on the interstate on-ramp.
“Move, asshole!” She laid on the horn for two long seconds. “Go! Get off your cell phone andgo!”
“We’re not going to make it,” I said. Traffic was at a stand-still up ahead, and Hunter’s flight would begin boarding soon. We had maybe twenty minutes until they closed the gate.
“Call him again.”
“I tried,” I said. “I’ve been trying every two minutes. He’s not answering.”
The Mustang didn’t have power windows, so Lizzy had to turn the crank on the door to roll hers down. “Move out of the way!” she screamed out the window. “We’ve got a pregnant woman in the car!”
“Lizzy, they can see I’m not pregnant,” I hissed.
She leaned out her window again. “This woman’s about to pop! I think her water just broke!”
I had never seen this side of Lizzy as she weaved her way through traffic. She got on the left shoulder and sped ahead of all the stopped cars. Then when it was time to exit, she cut through four lanes of traffic to get back over to the off-ramp. She came to a red light, looked both ways, and then shot through as if it were green.
“LIZZY!”
“Do you want to get to the airport in time, or not?” she shot back at me.
“How did you learn to drive like this?”
She grinned. “You’re not the only one who’s been watching Hunter’s videos.”
I gave a start. “Hunter’s videos are educational. They don’t teach you to drive like a maniac!”
“Yeah, but they led me down a rabbit hole of other YouTube videos,” she replied. “Now, whenever I’m at my dad’s house, he lets me take his Porsche out for a spin.”
I tried to imagine Lizzy driving this way with her father in the car. I couldn’t picture it. But however she had learned, the half-hour drive to the airport ended up taking seventeen minutes.
Lizzy ran three stop signs before skidding to a stop in front of Concourse C. As I unbuckled my seatbelt, I saw police lights flashing behind us.
“Oh no…”
“Go!” she hissed at me. “I’ll handle the cops!”
I rushed inside the crowded airport, looked both ways, and then found the security line. Thankfully, it wasn’t very long. I emptied my pockets on the conveyor belt and showed the TSA agent the ticket on my phone.
But rather than let me through, one of the TSA managers blocked my path. “Excuse me, ma’am? You’ve been randomly selected for a private screening.” He gestured toward a narrow hallway.
I groaned. “Oh comeon. Not today!”
“Ma’am. Please.”
I knew that any resistance would just make them more suspicious, so I allowed myself to be escorted down the hallway and into a windowless room.