Chapter 48

I feel like I probably should have felt more disturbed at what had just happened between the Tigers but I was far too distracted by just how badly my chest hurt. My lungs felt tight and breathing was painfully hard. It felt like no matter how deeply I breathed it, it just felt like I couldn’t get a full breath in.

The car roared out into the night. Sungmin was driving a little fast, and the occasional indignant honk followed us as he swerved around slower moving cars. It wasn’t anywhere near racing speeds, but I wondered if it was still reckless enough to get him noticed. I suddenly realized just how stupidly conspicious his car was. With his custom wrap, identifying his car would be a damn breeze. And here we were driving around in it with a couple dozen kilos of product in the trunk.

“He’s not actually going to do it, is he?” I asked in a wheeze. Sungmin might have laid out Ryusuke right before we left, but it was unlikely that Ryusuke would be out long. And I had no idea what kind of mood he’d be waking up in.

Sungmin didn’t say anything, and that was concerning.

I was already lightheaded, and it hurt my head to think about what would happen if Ryu woke up and decided to act on his vindictive rage. Even if he was turning in Sungmin, I’d be caught with him. It would be nearly impossible to prove that I wasn’t an accomplice. Even Taejun might not have the ability to get me out of this. And my brother would be in a rage that I was outside at all, let alone with Han Jungho’s son and his inventory of street drugs.

Despite Sungmin driving over the speed limit in his flashy WRX, fortunately we didn’t encounter any trouble on our drive through Seoul. No sirens sounded behind us. We even passed by a police car who had just blatantly ignored Sungmin’s car and speeding. After some time, I felt relieved that it seemed that Ryu had decided to stay his hand after all.

“Shit,” Sungmin swore.

“What?” I asked, so suddenly that I induced a fit of coughing. I wasn’t usually one to sleep in a car, but I had been drowsing off again. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The events of the night should have had me in an anxious frenzy.

“There’s a police checkpoint ahead,” Sungmin replied.

My heart dropped into my stomach. The police often set up stop and searches at night to stop people from driving drunk or recklessly late at night. We were almost out of Seoul, and the checkpoint that the police had chosen to set up was right before a major highway leading south out of Seoul. We needed to go onto that highway to get to Daegu.

But there was no way we could get past that checkpoint with our cargo.

“What are you going to do?” I asked Sungmin nervously.

Sungmin chewed his lip then reached for his gear stick. “Still time to get out of this queue,” he said, as we U-turned sharply out in the road. “I’ll try another entrance.”

There was a roadblock at the other entrance too.

Sungmin smacked his steering wheel in frustration. “That shitty little ibon-nom,” he hissed.

“You think Ryu did this?” I asked in alarm. We hadn’t been chased down, but two different checkpoints on the southbound highways was a little unusual. After all, how could Ryu know where we were heading? “It could just be a coincid–”

“It’s no fucking coincidence,” Sungmin snapped at me.

I didn’t respond.

Had Ryu known where we were going? Maybe he knew more about Sungmin and his family gang than he had let on to me.

A policeman looked up at our car. Despite us still hesitating some distance away, the policeman startled as though he recognized the car. He must have said something because his partner at the checkpoint looked up too.

There was no doubt now. It was Sungmin’s car they were looking for.

Sungmin swore. He whipped the car around. I looked back in horror as we sped away. A moment later police sirens sounded out behind us. Sungmin only pressed his car on harder.

Luckily we’d gotten a good head start on the police at the roadblock. Sungmin was an experienced street racer, and with this much distance already in between us and our pursuers, we’d get away easily. Or so I thought.

Only a few blocks down we were accosted by another police car. As soon as we’d spotted each other, the police car swerved hard to cut us off and its sirens came to life with a howl. Through the loudspeaker, the driver within (or his/her partner) demanded for us to stop.

“Stop the vehicle and step out!”

Sungmin eyed his rearview mirror testily. The car in front hadn’t left him enough room to get by, and the one behind was closing in fast.

I grabbed a handle as Sungmin snapped his car back around in a wild 180 degree turn that sent me slamming into the side of his car. He mercilessly pressed down hard on the throttle and the WRX snarled defiantly as we accelerated hard to try to cut back to the last intersection before the police car behind could cut us off.

The tires screamed as we made a panicked barely controlled turn into the intersecting road. Unfortunately it was a one way street. And we were going the wrong way.

As Sungmin steered the car violently around protesting cars, I could barely keep upright despite clutching the interior handle. As we jerked side to side inside the car, horrible pains wracked my chest and I couldn’t stop wheezing and choking.

Sungmin was cursing endlessly, but he sounded more frightened than angry. Hearing Sungmin so panicked accelerated the growing alarm in me. Moments ago I thought we had a good chance for escape, but with the police hot on the trail we were pushing through the incoming traffic, now that chance seemed slimmer and slimmer.

“Shouldn’t have taken this fucking car!” Sungmin shouted. He slammed the wheel with one hand in frustration.

“Sungmin,” I wheezed painfully. “Come on, man. You got this.”

My empty words seemed to somehow give him some sort of determination. Instead of cursing, Sungmin gritted his teeth and his focus returned wholly to the road and to the speed of his car. He was able to (relatively) safely escape the one way street into another less dangerously congested intersection.

Street racer Sungmin had returned in full force, and wordlessly he expertly darted his car in and out of traffic, making nimble and sharp maneuvers that the pursuing vehicles could barely keep up with.

But the police drivers were of a pretty high caliber themselves, or else were driving boosted pursuit cars. Though Sungmin gained distance on every clever turn and tricky maneuver, during any period of long straight shots, the police cars gained it right back.

At some point he realized he wouldn’t be able to outrun them outright. Sungmin took them onto a highway. On the highway the police cars came dangerously close, with one even tapping into the back of Sungmin’s car aggressively.

Sungmin turned hard towards an exit and the two police cars followed. But at the last minute, Sungmin braked as he turned back. The two police cars shot past us onto the exit ramp and I threw my hands up as we hurtled towards the orange impact attenuator on the border of the highway and the ramp. Sungmin managed to bring the car slow enough that the resulting crash only knocked the wind out of us. The front of his car was only slightly dented.

We exchanged panicked glances at each other as we panted. Sungmin let out a low laugh of relief. Luckily the impact hadn’t been severe and the car was more than able to continue going. A couple of exits later, he pulled off the highway and into a quiet alley.

“We’re going to have to ditch the car,” he grumbled unhappily as he put his WRX into park.

I looked at him. With such a noticeable car, that was definitely the right idea. But what then? Even if our plans to go to Daegu were cancelled for now, I didn’t feel like it was possible for us to just casually wander around aimlessly on the streets lugging that suspicious storage container in the trunk.

Sungmin read the question on my face easily. “You know how to hotwire a car, don’t you?” He stepped out of the car. “You’ve done it before.”

Technically I hadn’t ‘hotwired’ Mr. Do’s Eclipse. I hadn’t needed to. But I did know how. I just wasn’t sure if I was willing to do it.

Unlike the first time where I had needed to get a car that was good enough to race, any car would do. Despite the lower requirement, it still took us a bit of time to find a car in an inconspicuous enough place for us to make an attempt on it.

“I won’t be much help, so I’ll just keep an eye out,” Sungmin said. Despite his words, he was shifting uneasily and seemed to watch me more than anywhere else.

My heart sank as I started on my task. During our search, I’d also picked up a few bits that would be useful as tools for our heist. Speeding on the streets was a minor infraction. A proper car theft like this was a real crime. I wedged a door jam into the car door and I was able to open the door after disengaging the manual lock with a spindly wire tool.

Immediately the car’s alarms wailed indignantly. Sungmin cursed and despite saying he was going to keep a lookout, he fussed over me as I struggled with the console.

“Fuck! I thought you knew what you were doing?!” he hissed anxiously.

I glared at him. “Calm down,” I rasped at him. “Keep watch!” Car alarms went off all the time. They were basically part of the city ambiance. Hardly anyone paid them any attention. Unless you had some guy scrambling around nervously cursing and flailing about like Sungmin was doing.

I found the wire that controlled the car alarm and cut it. The sound choked off and Sungmin relaxed visibly.

Despite me knowing in theory how it worked, actually hotwiring the car was a bit more tricky than I expected. Minutes continued to drip past as I could only get the engine to sputter weakly (a bit like me, actually).

“Could you hurry it up?” Sungmin demanded anxiously. He was hovering over me again as I fumbled around clumsily with the console wires. He was absolutely terrible at keeping watch.

I gritted my teeth in frustration. “Sungmin, just–”

“HEY! What are you doing?!” A stranger’s voice had both of us bolting up. Panic shocked like ice water as I saw that the man approaching us was wearing a security outfit. He was flanked by a police officer. I struggled to get back onto my feet.

“Fuck!” exclaimed Sungmin. He pulled me up. “Make a run for it.”

“What about the–” I glanced at the container we’d painstakingly carried here.

“Too fucking late for it now,” Sungmin growled. Despite saying so, he gave it one last pained look before he bolted.

“Sungmin!” I hissed. I stumbled after him.

“Stop!” the policeman demanded.

I quickly realized that this was game over for me. On any other night, I could have easily sprinted fast and long enough to evade capture by most, but tonight I was in no shape to run at all. Almost as soon as I started, I found it impossible to breathe, and I could barely keep myself from breaking into a racking cough. As I struggled to keep up with Sungmin my vision blurred and spots of black flickered across it like holes in a film strip.

I veered into an alley and collapsed against a wall, wheezing and coughing painfully. To his credit, Sungmin stopped for a minute to try to pull me back to my feet. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he panted.

Was he really asking me this?! I struggled to breathe, and couldn’t even begin to retort. But he winced as he remembered. We’d managed to outrun our pursuers by a little, but the policeman shouted as he spotted us.

“I’m sorry,” Sungmin said. He dropped me and gave me one final, mournful backwards glance as he left me behind.

I didn’t blame him. I just hoped he could get away.