SoulSeeker

Once that was done then his involvement in the incident would be more thoroughly examined and the length of time he spent within their custody more accurately determined. It was just his luck. He was extremely too far from home in a town that he was a stranger in, separated from his friends, and, as if being mixed up in the unpredictable dangers of the life of someone that he hardly knew wasn’t enough, he now found himself in the hands of the law under less than reputable circumstances. Perfect. What else could possibly go wrong?

The sound of forced grunts and groans coming from the uniformed men who were standing around outside of the car distracted Tripp from his own grievances and alerted him to those being vocalized on the other side of the window he was sitting next to. The groans had morphed into threats of retribution and reprisal but none of it seemed to have any effect on Katelyn.

Tripp watched two police officers fall back past the window next to him and then turned his head to the front and stared through the gate as Katelyn opened the car door and climbed into the front seat behind the steering wheel.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked her, shifting in his seat and taking another look outside of his window at the policemen who were getting back up to their feet.

“Getting us out of here,” she answered him. Katelyn put the key in the ignition and turned the engine over. She pulled the gearshift down from Park to Drive and pushed her foot down on the gas hard enough to make the tires squeal as she pulled off. One of the officers that was still in the path of the speeding cruiser wound up having to roll over the side of the hood to get out of her way.

“Will you watch out!” Tripp yelled from the back seat. With his hands still cuffed behind his back he struggled to remain sitting upright as Katelyn tore through the street, weaving around every obstacle, both man and machine, that got in her way. “Geeze, where did you people learn to drive?”

The earsplitting sound of sirens and a cadre of police cars trailed after the one Katelyn drove as she made her way out of the downtown area via the expressway that she had turned on to. She had managed to keep the car on the road at speeds that reached up to over ninety miles an hour for quite a number of miles before running smack dab into the roadblock that the police were able to get up on the highway in front of her. Katelyn hit the brakes and slid the car to a stop.

“Now what?” Tripp said.

Katelyn got out of the car and walked around to the backseat. She opened up the door and pulled Tripp out of the car and up to his feet. Turning his back around to her, Katelyn took hold of the metal around his wrist and snapped the brace loose from its locking mechanism, first one and then the other.

The handcuffs dropped to the ground and Tripp brought his wrists up in front of his chest, taking turns rubbing each one in his palms. He glanced at the peace officers training their weapons at them from the cover behind their cars that were blocking their exit in both directions. “Now how exactly am I about to regret this?”

Katelyn led him around the car and toward the guardrail that overlooked the highway lanes running perpendicular to the platform bridge they were standing on. The officers were giving them orders to step back away from the rail and surrender themselves and though Tripp was tempted to obey, Katelyn didn’t appear to be the least bit moved by the voices calling out to them.

Katelyn threw her left leg over the rail and Tripp took a step back. “Wait a minute! What’s going on here?” Katelyn refused to let him put anymore distance between the two of them than he already had. She reached her hand out and took hold of the front of his shirt. Tripp tried but he was unable to resist the force of her pull. “Katelyn! No!”