Greetings on this cold, snowy winter day. I hope you’re staying warm. It’s Wednesday, which means time to share an excerpt from my work-in-progress. I’m excited about how the story is coming together. Hope you’ll agree. In this scene, Harry is riding with his best friend Otis and praying he survives intact. Here you go:

I walked along Otis’ new, or at least new to him, ride from bumper to bumper. It only took about five minutes. This baby was two tons of solid American steel. The department had been keeping up with the times on the cruisers, but the detectives’ vehicles were holdovers from the Crown Vic Interceptor days. They were the perfect car if you needed to drive through a brick wall. Or arrest an entire clown troupe. Otis was in with the ignition on before I had a chance to take in the full majesty of this tank on wheels.

He rolled down the passenger window. “You gonna get in or are you planning to ride on the hood? Let’s roll!”

I was barely inside before he slammed it into drive and laid a thirty-foot patch of rubber before putting us into a power slide to make a u-turn at the end of the block. I was relieved to find I had indeed gotten the door closed as I was plastered against it by centrifugal force. Blazing down the boulevard, my house a blur outside the driver’s side windows, I finally managed to get my seatbelt fastened.

“You promised not to let me get hurt.” I had my hand against the dash and my foot was mashed against the brake pedal I wished were on my side of the car. “That includes not killing me yourself.”

He somehow took the next turn while looking directly at me. “You want to be there in time or not?”

I had to admit, the pickup was impressive, as I was literally being forced back into my seat. “Well, yeah—car—but in one piece—car!”

“I see it. Calm down, will you?” He apparently had the power to alter the laws of physics, as he got his car into a space between two vehicles it never should have fit through. On a double yellow line.  

I don’t remember how we got onto the Belpre Bridge. I think I may have blacked out for a few seconds. But at some point, Otis hit the siren, which must have brought me around. I remember whizzing past the doughnut joint on the right and thinking how I should have appreciated doughnuts more. We bobbed and weaved through traffic, scattering cars like they were billiard balls struck by a cue, hitting Route 7 just in time to join a fleet of county and state police cars. To my unending relief, Otis fell in with the units, dropping to a mere 85 miles per hour. I swore an oath in that moment to drop to my knees and kiss Dee’s feet the moment I was in her presence again.

“What’s wrong with you? You look like you saw a ghost.” Otis was steering with one finger and fiddling with the radio, adding presets to the tuner.

“Are you nuts?” I gave him a punch to the arm that was a lot more powerful than I intended. Must have been the adrenaline. I probably could have lifted a dump truck at the moment. “You could have made us both ghosts!”

“But I didn’t.” He stopped playing with the radio long enough to rub his arm. “Man, that’s gonna bruise.”

Otis, being a guest cop of sorts, went to the back of the queue as the now silent, though still strobing, parade rolled through the countryside on a winding country two-lane road. As we slowed to pull onto a gravel drive that, I assumed, led to the Sparks’ farm, Otis turned to me.

“You know I can’t let you out, right?” He punctuated the sentence by frogging my left thigh. A frog is a punch with the middle knuckle raised so the blow is concentrated in a tiny area. It felt like he’d hit me with a miniature hammer, and I hadn’t had a chance to tense against it. I’m proud to say I did not rub the spot.

“That the best you got?” My voice cracked a little. “And she didn’t mean that literally.”

He tilted his head and squished up his lips. “How can that be taken metaphorically?”

“I don’t know, but you can’t lock me in here.”

He pointed his badge, hanging out of his breast pocket, at me. “Pretty sure I can.”

“This is Ohio. You have no jurisdiction.”

“Okay, then. I’ll have one the OHP guys arrest you. You can be in my car free to play with the radio or in the pee-soaked back seat of a cruiser with bracelets on.”

I heaved a sigh and crossed my arms. “Fine.”