Chapter 10

The relief from reaching the Porsche was quickly dashed when Liv remembered why she had been hiking through the tundra in the first place. She frantically dug into the small pocket of her skirt, nearly flinging the key into the canyon as she yanked it out. "That would have been just about right," she thought.

Liv's heart pounded like a sledgehammer in her chest. The blood coursing through her veins was ice cold as she pushed the worn key into the ignition, hastily cranking the engine over. "Come on, Murph. You get me home in one piece and I promise to get you anything you want. I know you've been looking at those new tires and shiny chrome rims. They're yours, I promise." As Liv sweet-talked the car, she glanced at the digital temperature gauges mounted to the dashboard.

She had added the precision instruments after rebuilding the engine. Her dad's love of gadgets had rubbed off on her and she had wired several thermocouple temperature sensors to critical points of the car. With a quick glance, she could see the oil, cylinder head, and transmission fluid temperatures. The gauges allowed her to keep tabs on the car's health.

Today, Liv hoped these gauges would save her life. The factory installed temperature gauge wouldn't work without water in the cooling system. The digital gauges were her only chance of keeping the engine working long enough to make it back to Eagles Landing. If the engine got too hot it would seize as metal expanded against metal, locking together under extreme heat, killing the motor.

The situation wasn't completely hopeless. The road to town was mostly downhill. Liv could turn the car off periodically to try and save the engine from itself. It was a long shot, but the only one she had. Liv punched the gas and let out a scream.

Shamus O'Donnell, the current driver of the Jeep, smiled a wolfish grin as he crested the hill well ahead of the trailing Chevrolet 4 X 4. "Holy shit, that's one good lookin' bitch," he savored the sight of the visibly shaken Liv jumping into the little white sports car parked on the edge of the road next to the canyon. If O'Donnell could ram the car before she moved, he could knock it over the edge, sending her tumbling to a certain death below. O'Donnell stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The turbo infused V-8 pushed the Jeep forward, gobbling up the distance between the two vehicles. A two-ton arrow aimed straight at the heart of the white Porsche.

Only Liv's lightning fast reflexes and the extreme responsiveness of the Porsche caused the big Jeep to miss. "Holy shit that guy can drive," Liv watched the driver of the SRT-8 narrowly avoid going over the edge of the canyon. She popped a quick u-turn and scraped past the nearly out of control Jeep as she raced toward safety.

"It's okay Murph, he's bigger, faster, and more powerful. But we own him because I know this road," she tried to steady her nerves. "Wouldn't be fair to him if we didn't have a busted radiator."

As the Jeep shrunk in her rear view mirror, the cylinder head temperature quickly climbed into the danger zone. With dread in her heart, Liv turned the engine off and let gravity take over.

Without the motor running, the Porsche was eerily silent. The only sound was the wind rushing through the open windows of the speeding car. In her rear view mirror, the menacing black SUV grew larger as its driver worked to close the distance.

Liv tightened her grip on the steering wheel, adrenaline tingling through her body, and prepared to enter the first major bend in the road.

From experience, she knew the approaching turn was tricky. She zoomed past a yellow traffic sign urging drivers to take the curve at less than half the speed indicated on the speedometer.

Liv had only one shot at making it through this treacherous curve. On the right side of the bend, a solid rock wall towered over the road. On the left, only a flimsy guardrail stood between the road and a sheer drop into the canyon beyond.

"On the plus side Murph, the faster we go, the more your engine temperature drops. I bet if we fly through that guard rail, your motor will be ice cold by the time we hit the bottom. You'll run great then!"