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She blew out a long breath, probably not from relief. By now, she was probably kicking herself for even coming to the estate.
He understood how she felt.
There was another flash of lightning, and as the white-hot spear sliced through the darkness, Ryan thought he saw something on the road just ahead. A shadow, maybe. Maybe one of the horses had gotten out of the pasture. He automatically leaned in closer to the windshield, trying to look through the rain and the murky night to determine what it was.
But it was too late.
The dark-colored car came out of the thick curtain of rain. Not on the other side of the road, either.
Right at them.
Ryan heard Delaney scream. A sound of terror that he was sure he would remember for the rest of his life.
If he had a rest of his life, that is.
As he swerved to the right, it occurred to him that this could turn out to be a fatal accident. He knew what was out there.
A deep, six-foot-wide irrigation ditch.
Almost certainly overflowing with rainwater.
A second later, Ryan took out the almost certainly. Even though he tried to keep the car on the road, he wasn’t successful. They hit the narrow shoulder of soggy, slick gravel, skidded and then plunged right into the watery ditch.
Chapter Four
One second Delaney was breathing.
Then, she wasn’t.
The air bag hit her face and chest. The impact of the collision into the ditch, coupled with that slam, knocked the breath right out of her. Before she could react, she felt the icy cold water begin to gush into the car, spilling onto her feet and legs.
Reality quickly set in.
They were no longer on the road. The car was on its side, her side, harshly angled into a gaping ditch. The collision had crushed in her door, so much so that it vised against her right shoulder.
Trapping her.
If she didn’t do something fast, she was going to die.
She forced herself not to panic. No easy feat. Her heart was already pounding, and adrenaline was pumping through her.
Frantically, Delaney batted back the milky-white air bag so she’d have some room to maneuver and so she could see. Beside her, she felt Ryan do the same. She wasn’t successful. With each jab of her fist, each slam of her hands, the air bag shifted, but there was no place for it to go. And along with the crushed-in interior, it was literally holding her in place.
The water didn’t cooperate, either. It got deeper. Fast. It came in not as a trickle but a flood. Rushing into the car through the edges of the windows. The doors. And from the floor. Filling it. It rose past her knees. To her waist.
And it just kept on coming.
Along with it came the panic. The fear. She had to get out of there.
She felt Ryan’s hand bump against her left hip. Because Delaney was still battling the air bag, she didn’t immediately realize what he was doing. She quickly became aware that he was unlatching her seat belt.
“Come on,” he said.
It wasn’t a shout, but a calmly spoken statement as if this weren’t the life-and-death situation it had quickly become.
Ryan didn’t wait for her to comply. He caught on to her shoulder. Pulling. Tugging. Delaney did some maneuvering of her own. She rammed her forearm into the air bag, shoving it aside, and she slipped through the opening and into Ryan’s waiting arms.
It wasn’t an easy fit.
Even though his side of the car wasn’t bashed in, there was an air bag in the way, and he hauled her onto his seat, sandwiching her between the air bag, the steering wheel and his solid body.
He didn’t waste any time. With the exception of headlights that were buried beneath the water, it was pitch-dark and she couldn’t see much, but Delaney heard the soft grind of his window. It seemed to take an eternity to lower.
With each passing second, her heart beat faster. She prayed, while the water got deeper. Rushing into the car and rising until it swirled around her chest.
Then the soft grinding sound stopped.
The window stopped.
The headlights vanished.
Ryan cursed. Still not with much emotion. The stalled window and lack of light didn’t deter him. He slammed his shoulder against his door.
It didn’t budge.
Another slam. So hard that it shook the entire car and sent a wave of water careening right into her face. Delaney gasped. Nearly panicked. But then she thought of her son. Of Patrick. If she panicked, she’d die.
Because of him, she had to stay alive.
Somehow.
Delaney pulled in a long breath, holding it in her lungs. It wasn’t a moment too soon. The muddy water surged and rose. Racing in all around them, swirling and coiling, smothering, until it covered her throat. Her chin. And finally, her entire face.
God, she couldn’t breathe.
Even though there wasn’t nearly enough space for her to escape, she scrambled toward the narrow opening of the window, but Ryan held on to her. That didn’t do much to steady her heart or ease the overwhelming feeling of terror building inside her.
She lost the battle she’d been fighting with the panic. She had to have air. She had to breathe. She had to get out of there now.
Still, Ryan held on to her.
Why?
She forced herself to think, to calm down so she could conserve what little oxygen she had left in her lungs. It worked. After only a few seconds, it occurred to her what he might be doing. He was probably waiting for the car to be totally immersed so the pressure would be equal on both the inside and outside. Only then could they open the door and get out.
It was their one chance at surviving.
Ryan made another sway of movement. Not a battering motion as before. Delaney did some moving of her own, trying to find the door handle so she could try to open it.
He beat her to it.
Her fingers closed over his. His skin was so cold. Like death. But she pushed the eerie thought aside, and their joined hands pulled back the handle.
The door opened.
Relief rushed through her, but Delaney knew this didn’t mean they were out of danger. They still had to make their way out of the ditch.
Ryan hooked his arm around her waist and got them out of the car and into the shadowy water. She pushed her feet against the side of the vehicle and used it as leverage to propel them forward. So did Ryan.
Together, they surfaced.
Delaney gasped, pulling in the much-needed fresh air, and she reached for anything she could use to haul herself out of the ditch. She managed to latch on to a handful of mud and grass. Unfortunately, the soft squishy mixture wasn’t good grasping material. It slipped right through her fingers, and she would probably have sunk right back into the water if it hadn’t been for Ryan.
He stabbed his elbow into the muddy embankment, using it to anchor them, and in the same motion, he thrust them both forward. Away from the water and the car. And onto the gravel shoulder.
To safety.
Her lungs felt starved for air, and Delaney sucked in several feverish breaths. Beside her, she heard Ryan do the same. But other than that, he didn’t take any more time to recover from the ordeal.
Scrambling to get to his knees, Ryan tried to position himself in front of her. But he couldn’t. It took Delaney a moment to realize why. Their hands were locked together. Specifically, their fingers. She felt around and located the problem. The butterfly charm on her ring had somehow slipped beneath Ryan’s wedding band.
He pulled his hand away, still trying to reposition himself. Delaney did the same. A few tugs, and she felt something snap. The butterfly charm broke off, and Ryan and she were free.
Ryan immediately placed himself between her and the country road. Even through the rain and darkness, Delaney could see that he was searching for something. His eyes whipped first to one end of the road and then to the other.
Delaney did the same, but she saw nothing other than the night and the rain. Even the momentary illumination from a flash of lightning didn’t reveal anything. Definitely no sign of the other car that had careered toward them.
The car that had caused the accident.
Ryan cursed again, and this time, there was raw, uncut emotion.
Delaney wasn’t immune to emotion either as a sickening feeling coursed through her.
Perhaps this had not been an accident at all.
“I’LL BE RIGHT BACK with your statements,” Sheriff Dillon Knight informed Ryan. The lanky, denim-clad sheriff stood and headed for the exit of the interview room. “You and Ms. Nash can leave as soon as you’ve signed everything.”
Ryan glanced at Delaney, who was across the room on the phone talking to her babysitter. She nodded, an acknowledgment that she’d heard the sheriff.
Acknowledgement and relief.
Relief was certainly a reasonable reaction considering they’d been at the Grandville hospital and then the sheriff’s office for two-and-a-half hours. During that time, they’d been questioned, examined by one of the local doctors, bandaged, and then questioned again. What they hadn’t had was a moment of privacy or peace. Delaney probably wanted nothing more than to get out of there and go home to her son. Ryan overheard snippets of her conversation with her babysitter to confirm that.
Are you sure Patrick’s all right?
Please tell him I’ll be there soon.
Tell him I love him.
Kiss him good-night for me.
Definitely the words of a mother worried about her child, even if her child was probably too young to know what those reassurances meant.
They’d been lucky. Damn lucky. They’d gotten away with a bruise on Delaney’s right arm, a scrape on his neck and some assorted nicks. They would no doubt be stiff and sore for a few days, but all in all, the injuries were minor.
Lucky indeed.
Ryan took a long sip of the sludge-black coffee that the sheriff’s deputy had provided. The too-strong brew was bitter, obviously hours past its prime, if it’d ever had a prime. And yet Ryan welcomed the heat. Plus, it gave his hands something to latch on to so that he wouldn’t fidget. It was either that or stuffing his hands in his pockets. The coffee won out in the end. Too bad it couldn’t stop his mind from fidgeting, but that was asking a lot of mere hot coffee.
Even though he was in dry clothes—loaner jeans and a T-shirt courtesy of the hospital—the icy coldness of the water had seemed to seep all the way into his bones. It was a cold he’d never forget.
And he wasn’t about to forget the accident anytime soon, either.
As he’d already done a dozen times, Ryan went through the events that led up to them being plunged into the irrigation ditch. To paraphrase an old saying, the devil was in the details, and his gut feeling was that something sinister had happened tonight.
The road leading to the estate was private. Hardly used by anyone but his staff and him. Yet, the other car had been there. At the sharpest curve of the road near the deepest, widest part of the irrigation system. With no headlights on. And on the wrong side of the road. It’d come right at them.
Then disappeared.
Ryan didn’t think it was a phantom or a ghost car. Nor was it some illusion caused by the storm.
No.
The vehicle had been real. And now the question was to find out who’d been behind the wheel, why they had been on the road, and why the driver had done what he or she had done.
Ryan would get answers to those questions, and he wouldn’t rely only on the sheriff to help him. He’d call Quentin Kincade, his security guru, and get some investigators on this immediately.
“We won’t have to be here much longer,” he heard Delaney say. Ryan wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince herself or him. She hung up the phone, scrubbed her hands over her arms and started to pace.
Yep. She was a pacer.
Ryan had learned that about her over the past two-and-a-half hours. A pacer, a lip nibbler and a mumbler. He’d also discovered that she wasn’t a coffee drinker, had instead opted for bottled water. Perhaps because she was nursing and didn’t want the caffeine, or maybe because she was already too jittery.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure.” She’d answered too quickly for it to be anything but rote. It did stop her, however. She quit pacing, briefly met his eyes and shook her head. The motion sent a lock of her now-dry dark brown hair slipping down onto her forehead. She raked it away. “I just need to get out of here.”
Ryan understood completely. The fatigue was quickly becoming a factor, and he wasn’t sure he could think straight much longer. As a rule, he never liked to be in a situation where he didn’t have a clear head. “If the sheriff’s not back in a few minutes, I’ll see what I can do to speed things up.”
Another nod. “Thank you.” She paused a heartbeat. “For everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
Because it’d been a while, too long, since he’d said something that genuinely cordial to anyone, Ryan decided it was a good time to shut up and drink his godawful coffee. This forced proximity, and the remnants of the danger had created some kind of weird intimacy between Delaney and him.
Intimacy that neither of them wanted.
She folded her arms over her chest and resumed her pacing in her borrowed jeans and the faded blue T-shirt that swallowed her. It was at least three sizes too big, and yet it somehow managed to skim and accent every curve of her body. And she had some curves.
