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“No, no, no!” The lights were coming at her again! Faster than before. She held tight to the wheel with her left hand and grabbed Wolfie’s collar with her right. “Lord, help us!”
As if in answer to the frantic prayer, the headlights swung to her left. Had her panic been for nothing? What a foolish mistake.
Releasing the dog, Maggie put both hands back on the steering wheel. As the other vehicle drew even, she glanced over at it, expecting to see young men, waving beer cans and whooping it up.
There was only the driver. What a surprise. She could tell he’d turned his head to look at her, but it was too dark to make out his features.
“As soon as he passes I’ll get his license plate number so I can report reckless driving,” she told herself, reaching into her purse to feel around for a pen.
In that split second of inattention the other driver swerved. The trucks collided. Metal scraped, bent, squealed.
Maggie fought to stay on the pavement. An inch more to the right and her tires would slip onto the muddy shoulder!
The truck shimmied. Wolfie barked. Maggie did her best to maintain control. It was no use. She hollered, “Hang on, boy,” as the outside wheels edged a fraction too far and carried them off the road with a lurch.
They bent a mile marker post, then bumped and jostled down the rain-slick grass slope and slid diagonally toward a barbed-wire fence at the bottom.
If Maggie tried to steer while sideways on the steep incline, she knew, she would lose control and roll. All she could do was ride it out. And pray.
* * *
Flint was finishing an enjoyable evening meal at the Allgood residence and discussing who might have been behind the shooting at the animal rehab center when the sheriff’s phone rang.
Harlan answered and listened briefly. “Well, what’re you callin’ me for?” Flint saw him begin to scowl. “Okay, okay. I’ll head out there ASAP. Where’d you say it was?”
Flint pushed back from the table. “What’s happened?”
“Single-car accident. A truck skidded off Highway 62 out by the Anderson place.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“The witness didn’t know.”
“Why are you responding? Can’t the highway patrol handle it?”
The sheriff nodded as he buckled his utility belt and checked his gun. “Probably. They’ve been called, too.” He tilted his head at Flint. “You might wanna grab your gear and come along.”
“Why? Was a deer involved?” That kind of collision occurred often during the fall of the year.
“Don’t know. Don’t think so.”
Puzzled, Flint pulled his jacket on over his bulletproof vest. “Okay. If you think you need me, I’ll come with you.”
“It ain’t for my sake,” Harlan said as he kissed his wife’s cheek and hurried to the kitchen door. “It’s for yours. The witness says the truck’s from Maggie’s job. Nobody drives it but her.”
* * *
The vehicle that had slammed into Maggie had kept going. As soon as her truck stopped sliding, she turned off the ignition key and unbuckled her seat belt. She and Wolfie were okay. That was the important thing.
Taking a moment to collect herself, she buried her face in her pet’s ruff and silently thanked God, then sat back. “Well, what do you think, Wolfie? Shall we hike up to the road and flag somebody down?”
As Maggie’s random thoughts began to sort themselves out, she realized she had a better way to summon help. She reached for her phone. Her purse wasn’t on the seat anymore. Feeling around on the floor of the cab didn’t help, either.
She tried to shoulder open her door. It was stuck. Thankfully, the passenger side worked. Wolfie cleared her with a bound and began leaping through long, wet grasses and wildflowers like a spring lamb at play.
“Stay with me, boy, while I find my phone.”
Ignoring her, he began to sniff at their surroundings while she stood in the thigh-high grass to explore beneath the seat. Her fingers touched soft leather. Got it! However, as she pulled her purse out she noted that it felt far too light. Half its contents were missing.
“Rats!” She leaned in and patted along the floor mat. The cell phone had to be there. Too bad she didn’t have a flashlight.
Wolfie’s sharp yelp made her jerk. The barrage of angry barking that followed was unmistakable. He was defending her. But from what?
Maggie had held very still when he began to bark. Now she slowly backed out of the truck cab and scanned their surroundings.
Hackles up, her dog was looking past her toward the road. A vehicle was idling on the shoulder of the highway and someone was getting out. She cupped a hand around her mouth and shouted, “Have you called 911?”
The dark figure merely stood there. Wouldn’t an innocent passerby answer? Ask if she was injured?
“Hello? Do you have a phone?”
Flustered, she peered up at the other truck. Not only was it the same size and color as the one that had hit her, but the part of it that she could see looked uneven!
Maggie reached across and clicked off her headlights. Suppose that was no Good Samaritan up there? Suppose it was her unknown enemy? Had he come back to finish the job he’d started?
Frightened, Maggie gave up the search for her missing phone and edged around the front of her truck. Wolfie was already on the opposite side of the barbed-wire fence separating the roadway from a pasture. Climbing back up to the pavement to flag down a passing motorist was out of the question at this point. So, what options were left?
She could stand there until her nemesis decided to make the next move, or she could take matters into her own hands. Undecided, she studied him. She had Wolfie on her side and the other driver had...a gun! The glint of a chromed pistol in his hand was brief but quite enough incentive.
Maggie whirled and raced to the section of fence her dog had shimmied under, dropped onto her stomach and crawled through the way a commando would.
A gruff shout echoed. “You can’t hide.”
That actually helped. She rose to all fours, sprang to her feet and ran, positive she heard someone in pursuit. Wolfie paced her for a few moments before diverting toward the nearest patch of woods.
“Good boy.” Maggie followed, panting. At least one of them was thinking straight.
Forest shadows swallowed her. She slipped on wet leaves beneath the trees, falling and recovering over and over until her energy and adrenaline were spent.
Hands resting on the muddy knees of her jeans, she gasped for breath. Wolfie circled back and licked her face.
Prayer was called for, she knew, but her heart was too dispirited to even try.
Kneeling in the wet leaves she slipped an arm around her dog’s neck and let tears be her unspoken plea.
Nobody knew where she was but God.
And her enemy.
* * *
Flint used his emergency flashers and made better time than the sheriff. Spying a cluster of headlights along the opposite shoulder, he knew this was the accident scene. Maggie had almost made it into town. Why in the world had she run off the road? Was she speeding? Talking or texting? Had she lost focus for some other reason?
None of those ideas made sense. The teenage Maggie he remembered had been conscientious to a fault. Surely her basic nature hadn’t changed that much.
Flint parked in an open spot on his side of the highway so he wouldn’t have to make a U-turn and left his hazard lights on as a warning to passing drivers.
Traffic was sparse. He jogged across all four lanes in seconds. Several civilian motorists had stopped and were pointing to the wreck. A uniformed police officer at the base of the incline cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, “No sign of the driver.”
Flint’s heart beat hard and fast. If Maggie wasn’t there, where was she? Had she been kidnapped? No. That idea was too far-fetched. But why leave her truck? Nothing made sense.
He stepped off the outer berm, slipping and sliding his way to the bottom. Plenty of others had obviously been down there, because the vegetation was trampled. What if their carelessness had destroyed evidence that would lead to finding her?
Pulling the flashlight off his utility belt, he played the beam over the scene.
Someone touched his arm. “Simmer down,” a deputy said. “As soon as the sheriff gets organized, we’ll form a search party. We’ll find her.”
“What about her dog? Has anybody seen a big dog that looks like a wolf? They’re usually together.”
The officer radioed to the top of the embankment, “Any of you guys see Maggie’s dog?”
Flint felt like a fool. They all knew her and Wolfie and probably cared more than he did. She was one of their own. So why was the urge to track her down so strong in him?
He walked away, playing his light over the ground as he went. Except for the trampled area around the truck, there was no sign of her. Still, he refused to give up. The minute a search party formed, he’d join it, whether anybody liked it or not. He was going to help hunt for her, period. He was...
The beam of his light reflected off drops of rain clinging to the barbed wire. The whole fence glistened, except for one narrow place on the bottom strand! Flint’s breath caught. If nobody else had knocked off the water, there was a chance that Maggie and her dog had done so in passing. Hopefully, they were the only two.
He waved his light like a beacon and shouted, “Over here! I think she went through here.”
Nobody paid attention. He tried again. A few bystanders waved back and continued to talk among themselves, but other than that, he was ignored. Delaying only long enough to shout at the closest officer, “Tell Sheriff Allgood that I think the victim went through the pasture fence just south of here,” Flint went into action.
Once he got through the fence, it was harder to tell which way Maggie and Wolfie had gone. The pasture was already springing back. That slowed his progress. Bent grass, broken stems and an occasional crushed weed were all he had to go by.
The faint path turned so abruptly Flint almost missed the clues. It looked as though Maggie was headed for the woods where her passing would leave no crushed grass.
That should make it harder for him to track her. Fortunately, it would do the same for whoever she was fleeing from—unless there was more than one person after her and they could fan out to cover a wider area.
Picking up his pace, Flint prayed he’d reach Maggie before anyone else did. Before it was too late.
THREE (#ulink_497b524a-b91b-500f-9711-5851d4a4dbc8)
Being born and raised in the country gave Maggie an advantage. Not knowing exactly where she was took much of it away. Most Ozark homes and farms weren’t located too far apart, but there were also untouched acres of forest that had claimed canyons, and any other land too rocky for pasture or crops.
Spent and discouraged, Maggie sat on a protruding shelf of shale while she caught her breath. Moonlight came and went as wind from the earlier storm pushed lingering clouds across the sky. Sheet lightning flashed in the distance, providing a snapshot view of her surroundings.
She closed her eyes and folded her hands to pray, but only chaotic thoughts resulted. They darted madly through her mind like tiny fish in the shallows when a shadow fell over the water. Thoughts of rescue kept recurring. So did divine guidance. And—Flint?
Maggie’s eyes popped open. “No. Not Flint. Anybody but him.” Surely God could send someone else to save her.
The soft sound of her voice drew the weary dog and she draped an arm across his shoulders the way she would have a human friend. “Yes, Wolfie, I have you, don’t I? And if I was sure you wouldn’t stop to chase rabbits all the way home, I’d let you lead me.”
She sighed. “We couldn’t stay with the truck. But I kind of wish I’d aimed for the lights of farmhouses along the highway instead of following you into the wilderness.”
He slurped her cheek and ear.
“Yeah, well, maybe your path was best, but now what?”
The dog stiffened as if in reply. His nose twitched and he lifted it to face the breeze, then raised his hackles.
Maggie tensed. Listened. Held her breath until her body forced her to exhale. What she had thought was the sound of her panting dog was actually farther away, in the direction she believed they had come. It wasn’t loud. And it faded from time to time, but it was definitely there.
She stood slowly, dismayed by a wave of dizziness. Pushing herself to the edge of her endurance was one thing, but this consequence was unexpected. How could she run when she could hardly keep her balance? And what if she fainted?
“I have never fainted in my life and I’m not going to start now,” Maggie insisted in a whisper. Wolfie wagged his bushy tail.
Demanding that her body comply, she turned to start up the slope behind them. The third step dropped her against the trunk of an enormous oak and there she stayed while bright flashes of color danced at the edges of her vision and the forest seemed to vibrate. This was not good.
Beside her, Wolfie began to growl.
Maggie followed his line of sight, seeing nothing but drifting, shimmering, moonlit shadows. Clearly, she was not going any farther, so what could she use as a defensive weapon?
A nearby deadfall caught her eye. She managed to break a portion of a loose, rotting limb from the fallen tree. It wasn’t much of a club, but at least it wasn’t too heavy to wield. She’d played baseball as a child. It was time for a little batting practice. Even if she only got one swing, it was better than just standing there.
“Wolfie, heel,” Maggie ordered quietly. “Down. Stay.”
Resting the section of limb on her shoulder, she propped herself behind the massive oak and waited.
A twig snapped. Wolfie started to rise, but the flat of Maggie’s hand in front of his nose stopped him. It wouldn’t be long now. Truth to tell, she was looking forward to clocking the guy who had run her off the road.
She tensed. The dog was quivering beside her, as ready as she was. Another cracking sound. Heavy breathing. Almost there!
Fight-or-flight emotions gave her a needed jolt of energy. She poised and mustered her strength, waiting for just the right moment to swing.
* * *
Tracking had been part of Flint’s job training. He’d temporarily lost Maggie’s trail when she crossed a field of exposed rock, but he knew she couldn’t be far ahead.
Should he call to her? No. That might tip off anyone who was stalking her. He couldn’t chance it.
Bending low to inspect a patch of disturbed leaves, he sensed imminent danger and began to rise.
Flint’s forearm came up just in time to absorb most of the blow. Bits of rotted wood rained down like snowflakes. He shouted, “Officer of the law” as he ducked to the side to avoid further strikes and drew his sidearm.
His flashlight found its target. Someone was preparing to hit him again. “Freeze!”
In a heartbeat, he understood. Maggie had thought he was her enemy and had defended herself. Bravo for her. Too bad her aim was so good.
He raised both hands, diverting the light and the gun. “It’s me. Maggie, it’s me. You’re safe now.”
