⠀⠀"They're gone," Stiles announces suddenly.
⠀⠀"What?" Brietta's eyes finally flicker over to her side mirror, and her body tenses at the absence of headlights in the reflection. "Where did they go?" she asks in confusion, letting up on the gas and down-shifting between gears, allowing the car to slow incrementally.
⠀⠀Stiles clicks on his walkie-talkie from the backseat, and Sheriff Stilinski's voice crackles through the radio. "All units. Suspect is on foot, heading into the Iron Works."
⠀⠀"Shit. The hunters know," Brietta cringes, sharing a worried look with Scott and Stiles.
⠀⠀She takes a hard right, guiding the car toward the old Iron Works building, speeding past abandoned warehouses before executing one more sharp turn. A large open doorway appears on the side of the building, a relic from its delivery days. Brietta turns the wheel sharply, tires squealing in harmony with the urgency of their escape.
⠀⠀"Stop, stop, stop!" Scott yells suddenly, unbuckling his seatbelt and climbing over into the back to sit with Stiles.
⠀⠀Brietta slams on the brakes as she, too, spots Derek squatting down behind a large piece of equipment. The tires squeal in protest once more, and Stiles reaches across and into the front seat to swing the passenger door open for Derek.
⠀⠀"Get in! Get in!" Brietta yells, her heart pounding as she watches Derek race to the vehicle through a spray of bullets.
⠀⠀As soon as he is inside the car, she shifts gears and slams her foot down on the gas pedal again, taking off while a hunter, whom Brietta can't see, shoots at the moving vehicle rapidly with an automatic weapon.
⠀⠀"What part of 'laying low' don't you understand!" Scott yells at Derek as they speed back out of the building. Brietta takes them in the opposite direction. "Dammit! I had him!" Derek yells angrily, slamming his hand down on the dashboard.
⠀⠀"Who? The Alpha?" Stiles pipes up frantically from the backseat.
⠀⠀"Yes!" Derek snaps, "He was right in front of me, and the fucking police showed up!"
⠀⠀"Woah, hey-. They're just doing their jobs," Stiles defends immediately. Brietta turns her head just in time to catch Derek fixing Stiles with a sharp glare before she refocuses her eyes on the road.
⠀⠀"Yeah." Derek snaps in annoyance, and Brietta feels eyes burning into the side of her face, "Thanks to someone who decided to make me the most wanted fugitive in the entire state."
⠀⠀Brietta tightens her hands around the steering wheel. "Can we move past that? I thought you forgave me when you let me drive your car," seeing that he is still glaring at her, she huffs out a breath, "Look, I'm sorry, but, in my defense, we had to have a scapegoat, and when someone gets impaled with claws in their chest and throws up black blood, they usually don't survive!"
⠀⠀"Well, I did!" Derek scoffs, "It takes a while to heal from Alpha-inflicted wounds, you know."
⠀⠀Brietta snaps her head to Derek, disregarding the fact that she needs to have her eyes trained on the road. "No, I didn't know. Did you know that you are very cagey and that you keep a lot of information from us? Information that, if you had told us, wouldn't even have us in this situation!"
⠀⠀"Alright! Alright-." Stiles interjects before turning his attention to Derek, "How did you find him?"
⠀⠀Derek doesn't respond, and Scott huffs from the backseat. "Can you try to trust us for like, half a second?" Scott snaps, leaning forward from the backseat.
⠀⠀"Yeah!" Stiles agrees, leaning forward in his own seat to stick his face between Brietta and Derek. "All of us."
⠀⠀Derek shoots him another dark look, and Stiles retreats into the backseat again. "Or just them," he concedes. "I'll be back here."