Chapter 6 - THE RIDGEWAY HIGHWAY PURSUITThe rain turned into a blinding sheets of water as Daniel pushed his old truck past eighty miles per hour down the winding, cliffside curves of Rideway Highway.
The headlights of Vance’s black SUV loomed menacingly close in the rearview mirror, flashing high beams that blinded Daniel through the wet glass.
"He's gaining on us!" Mia screamed over the roar of the engine, looking back through the rear window of the cab into the truck bed. "Daniel! Cooper is trying to stand up!"
Daniel glanced in the mirror. In the open truck bed, despite the freezing wind and violent swaying, Cooper had forced his battered body upright. His golden coat was plastered to his skin, his ears pinned back against the gale, and his eyes locked entirely on the SUV behind them.
"Cooper, get down! You'll fall out!" Mia cried, rolling down her passenger window a few inches to call out to him.
Instead of lying down, the old dog did something unimaginable. With a sudden, explosive leap, Cooper scrambled onto the metal edge of the truck bed, balancing perfectly against the centrifugal force of a sharp hairpin turn.
Clack.
In the truck bed, caught in the rushing wind, something fell from the old dog's collar—a small, weather-worn metal flash drive that had been wedged inside his leather nametag pouch the entire time. The wind whipped it into the air, but Cooper caught it mid-air with his jaws, refusing to let it go.
Behind them, Agent Vance leaned out of the passenger window of the speeding SUV, raising his weapon.
"Hold on!" Daniel roared, jerking the steering wheel hard to the left just as a deafening CRACK split the night air.
A bullet shattered the passenger-side mirror, sending glass spraying across Mia's lap.
"They're trying to kill us!" Mia sobbed, clutching the blue doll to her chest like a shield.
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Cooper didn't flinch. As the SUV pulled directly alongside the truck’s left flank, attempting to ram them off the edge of the cliff, the old dog executed a move born of pure, tactical survival instinct.
With a ferocious roar that sounded more like a timber wolf than a domestic shelter dog, Cooper leaped directly from the bed of Daniel’s truck across the open air, crashing full-force through the open passenger window of Vance’s speeding SUV.
