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She’d left home without thinking which direction she was going. When she finally noticed her surroundings an hour later, she was driving along a winding, deserted rock-and-gravel road. Almost at the same instant a deer appeared in her headlights.
The deer froze. And so did she.
At least, for that part of a second that would have allowed her to brake before she hit the animal. Or make a wiser choice than the one she made.
Morgan had seen enough accident victims as a firefighter to know that hitting anything head-on, even if she was only going forty-five, was a bad move. So she jerked the wheel to miss the deer, then jerked it again to miss the gnarled trunk of an ancient black walnut—and flipped her Jeep.
It rolled three times before it came to an abrupt and jarring halt right-side-up in the embrace of a copse of spruce. Sometime during one of those rolls, the driver’s side air bag had deployed. It was already deflating, but Morgan smelled the acrid scent of the cartridge that had exploded to fill it with air, and watched wide-eyed as a stream of white smoke rose behind the steering wheel.
It had all happened so fast!
Morgan couldn’t believe she was alive. And apparently unhurt. She gasped with relief and felt a sharp pain in her chest. Not entirely unhurt. She had either badly bruised or broken a rib. She reached down with a trembling hand to fumble at the seat belt release.
She felt tremendously relieved when she heard a click and the seat belt let go. With the constricting pressure gone from her chest, she took another deep breath.
“Ow,” she croaked. Could that excruciating pain be the result of a rib that was simply bruised? She would have to be very careful. If she put a broken rib through her lung out here in the middle of nowhere, it was goodbye, so long, adios, baby.
She recognized the swelling along the back of her neck as a whiplash injury. Warm blood dripped from her chin, and she realized she must have bitten her cheek or her lip.
Morgan was afraid to move. Afraid to discover another injury. Most of the full moon’s light was blocked by trees that had only half shed their autumn leaves. She reached around the deflated air bag, searching for the keys, which she found in the ignition. She tasted blood as she caught her lower lip in her teeth for luck—and turned the key.
The car was dead.
“Bad words. Bad words. Bad words,” she muttered.
There was no sign of civilization from where she was sitting. Thank God she’d brought her cell phone with her. She’d almost left it at home, because she was afraid Nash would call, and she didn’t want to speak to him until she’d sorted out what she was going to say. She certainly didn’t want to talk to him now. Not after doing something so stupid. Better to call 911.
Morgan reached—carefully—into the shallow pocket of her black leather jacket.
And found it empty.
“Bad, bad words.”
She reached up gingerly to turn on the interior light to search for where her phone might have landed. Which was when she realized the windows on the passenger’s side of the car were shattered. Had her cell phone gone out one of those broken windows?
She felt a flash of panic and shoved it down. She’d recently heard a story about a woman who’d lost control of her car on Route 40 and hit a tree. She’d been found—ten days later—partially consumed by wild animals and riddled with insects.
“That’s not me,” she said out loud.
She tried to turn her head to look in the backseat, but it hurt too much. She shoved at the driver’s side door and it screeched open. She eased herself sideways, groaning when she realized that one of her ankles was swollen the size of a grapefruit.
“Great. That’s just great.”
Her Jeep footwell was high enough off that ground that she would have a drop when she got out of the car. She braced herself with her hands, then scooted off the seat and landed on her uninjured foot.
Even that little bit of jarring hurt both her chest and her ankle. She hissed in a breath and held it as she put pressure on her injured foot.
“Ow,” she said again. “Oh, ow.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, relieved that her ankle was only sprained. Painful, but not impossible to walk on. The back passenger door was crushed and wouldn’t budge. She limped to the hatch and opened it and crawled up inside on hands and knees, leaning over the backseat to search for her phone.
She was appalled at how weak she felt. Shock, she realized. Maybe she was even bleeding internally, if that rib was broken and tearing into her flesh.
She knew too much about internal bleeding. Too much about broken ribs stabbing into lungs. Too much about shock killing you as fast—or even faster—than your actual injuries.
She couldn’t find her phone. She consoled herself with the thought that, even if she found it, there might not be any reception out here. If someone picked her up on the road, she wouldn’t need her cell phone. And if no one picked her up tonight, she could always hobble back here and hunt for her phone in the daylight.
She suddenly realized how cold it was. Cold enough to see her breath. Cold enough to make her shiver in the light leather jacket she’d grabbed on her way out the door.
Morgan found a dogwood limb she could use for a makeshift cane and followed the trail of destruction caused by her Jeep back to the road. Her flourescent watch showed it was six minutes past midnight. What were the chances someone would be coming along this two-lane, rock-and-gravel road at this hour?
Morgan stood at the edge of the road and looked in both directions. She wasn’t even sure which way led to the closet place where help could be found. She hadn’t walked ten steps before—to her amazement and delight—she saw a pair of headlights in the distance.
Almost sagging with relief, she watched the car make its slow, winding way toward her. To her surprise, the car stopped fifty yards downhill from her. She started to yell at the driver as he stepped out of the car into the bright moonlight. For some reason her breath caught in her throat and held her silent.
Why is he stopping there?
As she watched, he slid a small, slender body out of the backseat and hefted it over his shoulder. A very long striped, light-and-dark scarf was draped around his neck. The woman’s long blond hair hung almost to his butt, nearly even with the length of his scarf.
Morgan instinctively stepped back into the shadows a moment before the stranger looked in her direction. Her heart was racketing in her chest, and she held her hands over her mouth to keep him from seeing her breath in the cold air.
She stared hard at the license plate of the car, so she could identify this probable killer to the police. But it was too far away to make out the numbers. She had no idea of the make or model. To her, it was simply a dark-colored, four-door car.
The man disappeared into the undergrowth at the side of the road. He came back empty-handed five minutes later, got into his car and drove away.
Morgan realized what a narrow escape she’d had. What if she’d shouted out to the man? What if she’d become his next victim? No one—not Nash, not Carter—would have known what had become of her. She chastised herself for naming Nash first.
You’ve been spending time with Nash. That’s all. You miss Carter. You love Carter. In six months you will marry Carter.
If she survived the night.
When the car disappeared from sight, she struggled back onto the road and began hobbling in the opposite direction the killer had taken. Even with her makeshift cane, her ankle hurt. Her chest hurt. And she was very, very cold.
Morgan saw the headlights appear over her shoulder before she heard the car wheels on the stone-and-gravel road. She turned and saw a dark-colored car. For an instant, she was afraid it was the killer. She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes had passed.