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Mentally she dusted her hands of him. Done.
Her cell phone trilled, making her jump. She dug in her purse with her right hand and pulled out the phone. “Hello?”
“You never call, you never write.” Her sister Rose’s husky voice always reminded Lily of their mother. Iris, with her ebony hair and black-coffee eyes, looked the most like their mother, but Rose had her voice, low and just a little raspy, with a slow, sweet drawl that stretched her words like taffy.
“I talked to Iris just the other day.”
“I always knew you liked her better,” Rose said lightly. “I had a dream about you last night, Lil.”
“Yeah?” Lily slowed her car as she approached Dead Man’s Curve, where Black Creek Road formed a deep S as it followed the winding creek for a couple of miles.
“Yeah. Have you met a new man recently?”
McBride’s rugged face flashed through mind. “Why?”
“Because you’re going to fall in love with him.”
A shiver ran down Lily’s back. She ignored it, pressing her lips into a tight line. “Am not.”
“Well, you also help him find his daughter. I’m not clear on whether you do that before you fall in love or after.”
“Now I know you didn’t dream that. Iris told you about my visions.” Tucking her phone between chin and shoulder, Lily put both hands on the steering wheel as she navigated a sharp curve.
“Yes, she did, but I really did have the dream.”
“Well, you’re wrong on this occasion,” Lily said firmly. “I’ve spent time with the little girl’s father, and I assure you the last thing he’s thinking about is falling in love.”
Rose sighed. “It was a great dream. You were in the woods. There was a building with rickety wood steps. There he was—this incredible man, his arm around a little girl. He turned to look at you, and wow.” Rose’s voice dwindled to a contented sigh. “You were so in love with each other. It gave me chills.”
Hair rose on the back of Lily’s neck. If anybody but Rose were telling her these things, she’d laugh it off. But Rose’s gift, predicting a successful love match, was as strong as Lily’s, and much better developed. Still, Lily couldn’t see herself with Andrew Walters. “What did this guy look like?”
“All I remember is dark hair.”
“What about the girl?” Lily asked, thinking about Abby.
“I don’t remember anything except she had big dark eyes that lit up when she saw you.”
An image popped into Lily’s head—of the dark-haired child at the edge of her vision of Abby. Lily shivered. Too creepy.
“So tell me about these visions you’ve been having.”
Lily told her everything, including her newfound ability to make contact with Abby.
“She heard you? Cool! Any closer to finding her?”
Lily sighed. “I hope so. I’m worried, Rose. She’s so scared. I feel helpless.” She took a deep breath. “And during my last vision of Abby, I saw another little girl.”
“The kidnappers have another little girl?” Rose asked.
“I don’t think so. I think the little girl is somewhere else. Maybe nearby, though.” Having spent so much of her life running from her visions, Lily had never figured out how they worked. Did the appearance of the new little girl have anything to do with Abby’s kidnapping? Did the other child even exist, or was she a figment of Lily’s imagination?
Maybe it was just a one-time thing. A fluke. Crossed wires or whatever you called mixed-up psychic signals.
“I’ve gotta run, Lil—Iris is in the cellar boiling her eye of newt and I think I just heard something explode.” The humor in Rose’s voice assured Lily that her baby sister was exaggerating. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
Lily laughed. The sound startled her. How long had it been since she’d heard herself laugh? “If there’s still a house left by the time you and Iris get through with it, I’ll definitely be home for Thanksgiving.”
As she ended the call with her sister, she noticed headlights flickering in her rearview mirror.
* * *
HE GRIPPED THE steering wheel, his palms sweating inside his leather driving gloves. In the darkness ahead, all he could see of Lily Browning’s car was a pair of taillights glowing like red eyes. He pressed the accelerator to the floor, eating up the road between them.
She knew too much. Saw too much.
She would ruin everything.
He was close enough to make out the shiny chrome bumper of her Buick and the rectangular sticker with Westview Elementary School printed in white block letters on a field of red.
A schoolteacher, he thought. Panicked laughter rose in his throat. The most dangerous woman in his world was a bloody schoolteacher. How had this happened? How had everything gone so wrong so quickly?
No matter. It was going to end here.
Now.
* * *
WITH THE ON-RAMP to the perimeter highway backed up for more than a block, McBride went with a hunch and took Black Creek Road to avoid the snarl of traffic. If he was lucky, Lily Browning had taken the highway and he’d be sitting at her house waiting for her when she arrived. If not, he had a good chance of catching up with her on the winding back road.
Grabbing his cell phone, he called Theo Baker’s direct line. “Call a meeting of the task force for first thing in the morning. I’ve had a copy of the phone call couriered over—”
“Right here in my hot little hands.”
“Great. Get tech services to make a copy for everyone on the task force. Let’s see if anybody recognizes the voice.”
“Still think it’s a hoaxer?”
“Ninety-nine percent sure.” But it’s that one percent that could bite you in the ass, McBride thought as he ended the call.
The weather was worsening; fog rising to meet the pouring rain that was already cutting visibility to a few yards. McBride peered into the darkness, easing off the accelerator as he approached Dead Man’s Curve. Rain sheeted across the blacktop and pounded his windshield, keeping pace with the wipers.
Ahead, two glowing red dots pierced the gloom. Tail-lights, he realized. Lily’s car? Accelerating, he kept his eyes on the lights. As the road straightened for a long stretch, the taillights doubled. He squinted, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Now two sets of lights traveled side by side on the two-lane road. One car passing a slower one?
Suddenly, both cars jerked violently to the right. His heart sped up. Was that a collision?
His cell phone trilled, sending his taut nerves jangling. He grabbed it and thumbed the talk button. “McBride.”
“Lieutenant, this is Alli with Dispatch. You asked us to flag any call that came in from cell phone number 555-3252.”
Lily’s number.
“We’ve got a Lily Browning on with a 911 operator. She says another car is trying to run her off the road.”
“What’s her twenty?” On the road ahead, the pairs of taillights took another jarring lurch to the right.
“Black Creek Road, a mile before Five Mile Crossing.”
McBride’s heart jolted into high gear. He jammed his foot on the accelerator, ignoring the shimmy of the Chevy’s tires on the slick blacktop.
Suddenly, the taillights ahead disappeared from view. McBride’s breath caught. It took a second to realize the dispatcher was calling his name. “Yeah?”
“Sir, we just lost contact.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
LILY THREW HER dead cell phone into the passenger seat, wishing she’d plugged the adapter into the cigarette lighter before she’d left McMillan Place. At least she’d managed to give her location to the operator before her phone went dead.
Gripping the steering wheel, she braced as the car beside her slammed into her again, sending her sliding toward the shoulder. She steered with the skid, managing to right the car before it went over the drop off into the thick woods.
With no streetlamps on the lonely stretch of road, she could make out little about the other car or its driver. It was a dark sedan, an older model judging by its shape, with tinted windows that hid the occupant from view. Not being able to see who was driving her off the road only amplified her terror.
What if her assailant rammed her down the steep embankment into the trees? Would another passing driver be able to see her vehicle from the road? And what would her attacker do if she was trapped and vulnerable at the bottom of the embankment?
She couldn’t help but think of Debra Walters and Abby, alone on a stretch of desolate road, with nothing to protect them from the carjackers but Debra’s willingness to defend her daughter to the death.
Was the person behind those tinted windows the harsh-voiced man from her vision? He knew where she lived; could he have followed her to McMillan Place, waiting to make his move?
Around another curve, her headlights outlined the concrete rails of a bridge spanning a narrow gorge. Lily didn’t have to be psychic to know the other driver would double his efforts to send her off the road once they reached the bridge. And if she went over the side into the creek, she’d never survive the fall.
She sped up as she hit the bridge, praying her tires would grip the slick pavement long enough to get her safely to the other side. Her acceleration caught her tormenter by surprise, forcing him to gun his engine to keep from falling behind.
Lily’s tactic gave her enough of an edge to cross the bridge unmolested, but as she reached solid ground again, the dark sedan bumped against the back panel of her Buick and veered hard to the right. She had no chance to recover as her assailant’s maneuver sent her car spinning across the slippery road.
She held on, trying to keep from sliding over the opposite shoulder, but the momentum was uncontrollable. The world became a blur of dark and light as the Buick hit the shoulder and lurched backward down the fifteen-foot embankment, crashing into a tree with a bone-jarring crunch.
Lily’s head whipped forward and slammed back into the headrest, setting off a brief fireworks display behind her eyes. When the lights and colors faded, she forced herself to shake off the shock and take stock of her condition.
The trunk of the Buick had taken most of the impact of the collision with the tree, leaving the front part of her car in pretty good shape. Her airbag hadn’t deployed, though her seat belt had done its job, holding her in place while her car plunged off the road. She’d be feeling the bruises from the shoulder strap for days, and her headache was back with a vengeance. Beyond that, all her moving parts worked and she hadn’t really lost consciousness.
Shaking wildly, she cut the engine. Her windshield wipers stopped at half-mast, their rhythmic swish-swish abruptly silenced. The void was filled by the heavy drumbeat of rain on the roof and the low moan of wind in the trees behind her, a lonesome sound that amplified her sense of vulnerability tenfold.
She peered through the water sheeting on her wind-shield, trying to see the road. The maneuver that sent her spinning had been a risky move for the other car. Had it met its own fate on the opposite side of the road?
She leaned over and opened the glove compartment, scrabbling through the contents until she found the cell phone adapter. She’d feel safer once she got the 911 operator back on the phone.
But when she finally located her cell phone on the floorboard on the passenger side, its plastic skin lay cracked and askew, wires spilling out through the opening.
Thank God she’d already called for help before the phone went dead. But it would take time for anyone to find her on the long stretch of winding road. And if her attacker hadn’t spun out the way she had—
Light suddenly slanted across her windshield, splintered into glittering facets by the driving rain. She peered through the downpour, her heart in her throat.
Two powerful beams sliced through the gloom at the top of the embankment. They were steady and stationary.
Whoever it was had parked on the shoulder.
Panic zigzagged through her belly. What should she do? Stay put? Try to get out and hide in the woods?
She couldn’t risk the former; she might as well be a rat in a cage, waiting to be fed to a snake. Her shoes weren’t made for trekking through the forest, but she didn’t have to survive out there for long. She just had to hope help arrived before her assailant found her.
Opening her door was harder than she’d expected; the car had sunk into the mud, leaving precious little room to maneuver.
She squeezed through the opening, grabbing her raincoat as she stumbled through the sucking mud. She lost a shoe right off and had to waste time retrieving it, crouching low in hopes that the occupant of the car above hadn’t spotted her yet in the foggy darkness.
She took off the other shoe and squished across the soggy ground until she was well hidden in the trees. Flattening herself against the rough bark of a towering pine, she peeked back up at the roadway.
A dark figure stood at the edge, his large body back-lit by the high beams. He seemed to be gazing down toward her car, his hands curled into fists. Then he began loping down the embankment, taking little care as he slipped and slid on the slick grass.
She could make out only his shadow now, large and looming, so close that she could hear the ragged hiss of his breathing. Terror coiled like a viper in the pit of her belly, spreading poison until her body froze with fear.
When he jerked the driver’s door open, the glow of her dome light rimmed his profile, revealing the familiar set of a square jaw and tension lines carved on either side of his mouth.
Her knees buckling with relief, Lily dug her fingers into the pine bark to keep from sliding to the ground. A soft whimper escaped her throat as a splinter dug into her palm. “McBride.”
He whirled around, peering into the woods. “Lily?”
She willed her legs to hold her upright for the few uneven steps it took to reach the clearing where McBride stood. She couldn’t see his expression, now that the light was at his back again, but she heard his soft exhalation, saw his shoulders sag for a second before he closed the distance between them in two long strides and gathered her into his arms.
She wrapped hers around his neck as he lifted her out of the wet grass and into his tight embrace. His pulse hammered against her breast, keeping pace with her own racing heart.
“Are you hurt?” He started to release her, but she tightened her grip around his neck, shaking her head. He lifted one hand to tangle in her hair, brushing the rain-drenched mass away from her face.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m going to be a little sore, I think. But nothing permanent.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her battered car, then back at her. Now that her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, she could see the angry set of his jaw and the glitter of leashed violence in his eyes. “Who did this? Did you get a look at him?”
She tried to gather her wits, though the combination of delayed reaction and McBride’s hard body pressed against hers made coherent thought difficult. “It was a dark four-door sedan with tinted windows. I couldn’t see the driver at all.”
He uttered a terse profanity. “I saw it happening—I was about a quarter mile back when he started ramming you. But I couldn’t catch up in time.”
“That was you?” The lights in her rearview mirror. The ones that had given her hope for a brief moment. She pressed her forehead against his throat, her fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders as she realized just how easily her fate could have gone the other way.
“Did you see what happened to the other car?”
“All I saw was his taillights ahead. He must have spotted me coming, and gunned it. When I saw the skid marks on the grassy shoulder here, I stopped to see if you were hurt.” He ran his thumb down her cheek, letting it settle at the edge of her lower lip. His voice softened. “You’re trembling.”
She was. And as much as she’d like to attribute it to shock, the main thing sending shivers down her spine was McBride’s body pressed hard and hot against hers.
