it.
Rosalie came to the table, her black eye now faded to yellow. Soon it would be gone, like the man who’d given it to her. She was laughing at something Jeff said, her mannerisms less stiff and awkward than they’d been the other couple of times I’d seen her. Jeff was right: She was better off without Lou.
I started to say something about Dan Franklin, but Jeff kicked me under the table. I glared at him, but he was shaking his head and frowning. This wasn’t the time.
I caught Rosalie looking at me thoughtfully a couple of times, and then she’d quickly look over at Jeff. I didn’t want to know what she was thinking.
Bernie patted his daughter’s hand all through dinner. Jeff caught my eye a couple of times and winked as his mother told stories about the old people on the bus to Sedona. It was a family dinner that seemed perfectly normal. Except for the fact that two people were dead.
I didn’t want coffee. It would keep me up. It had been a long day, and after we’d cleaned up I asked Jeff whether he could take me home.
Sylvia offered her cheek, and I gave her a kiss.
“Don’t worry about anything,” she whispered as she kissed me back.
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but she’d already moved on to Jeff and was saying good-bye to him now.
Bernie had already taken Rosalie back into the living room, and Jeff and I stepped out into the night. It had grown cold, and I shivered in my T-shirt.
“You okay?” he asked as he opened the car door for me.
“Just turn the heat on,” I said, settling back and closing my eyes.
He didn’t say anything else as he climbed in his seat and turned over the engine. I felt the car moving, and it lulled me into one of those half-awake, half-asleep states.
I was so out of it that I thought the sound was in a dream. I opened my eyes and saw the bright lights straight ahead. They blinded me, and suddenly my body was jerked back against the seat as Jeff spun the wheel, the car skidding sideways across the pavement.
But he hadn’t been fast enough. The impact of the crash caused the air bag to explode, and it slammed into my face so hard I thought my nose was broken.
Chapter 52
Suddenly it was quiet. Too quiet.
A streetlight a few feet away cast a dim yellow beam across the road, but everything around it was black. Like being inside with the lights on and not being able to see anything but your own reflection in the windows.
Then I heard something-couldn’t put my finger on it-but the air bag began to slowly deflate.
“You okay, Kavanaugh?” Jeff’s voice pierced the silence.
I turned my head slowly-everything hurt-and saw a glint of something in Jeff’s hand. A pocket knife.
“What happened?” I asked, surprised that my voice sounded normal, even though it was too loud in my ears.
“Car was coming straight at us. I swerved right into a pole or something. That’s why the air bags inflated.”
But that wasn’t what I’d meant.
A rustling outside the car caused me to tense up, pain tearing through my muscles. My eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, but I still couldn’t see anything outside the car.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Jeff put a finger to his lips, the streetlight illuminating his silhouette. He shifted down in his seat and indicated I should do the same. Pain shot through my back and up to my neck, but I moved past it as I heard more rustling. It sounded as if someone or something was walking through the shrubs along the side of the road, just beyond the car.
We were facing the desert. I glanced in the side-view mirror. Behind us, on the other side of the street, town houses stood in line like toy soldiers, but it was a development that was only half finished. No lights in any windows.
No cars on the road, either.
Nothing except that blasted streetlight, which was more of a hindrance than a help. I saw now that the pole we crashed into was another streetlight, but it wasn’t working.
Jeff put his fingers to his ear, pantomiming a phone. I wondered where his was as I stretched my arm to reach my bag on the floor. As my fingers touched the fabric, an explosion rocked the air.
I yanked my hand back, my whole body shaking.
It wasn’t an explosion. It was a gunshot.
Who was out there?
Jeff’s hand encircled mine, and he squeezed tight, as if to say it would be okay.
But I wasn’t convinced. Someone was out there. Someone who’d tried to run us down and was now shooting at us.
Well, one shot.
Made me wish Willis hadn’t found that gun I’d had. Not that I knew how to use it, but it was big. Big enough to make a statement, even if I just waved it around.
After a few minutes of silence, I reached down again for my bag.
Another shot rocked the air.
Whoever was out there could see me.
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
Jeff was holding on to my hand so tightly that when he squeezed it again, I barely noticed. I moved my head slightly, and he was looking out the front window. I didn’t think he could see any more than I could. Unless his time in the Marines had given him some sort of natural night-vision goggles.
The air bags hung, deflated, in front of us like empty sacks. I was acutely aware that my face felt as though it were on fire. I had turned my face slightly when the bag inflated, and I sensed that my cheek had a huge rug burn. I was afraid to touch my nose, as if any movement would cause whomever was out there to shoot again.
“We can’t just sit here like this,” I whispered.
“Got any ideas?” he whispered back.
“You’re the Marine. What did you do when you got shot at in the desert?”
“I never got shot at in the desert. Except for now.”
His other hand inched toward the door. Great. He was going to try to open it, and we’d both get blown away. But as I contemplated how to stop him, he fingered the knob that maneuvered the side mirror.
It moved a fraction of an inch.
And another gunshot pierced the air and shattered the mirror.
Jeff seemed to have been expecting that because he didn’t move his finger.
“He’s behind us,” he whispered. “I saw the car.”
“Could you see
“I saw a shadow. He’s standing right at the trunk, watching us.”
A shiver shimmied across my shoulders and down through my legs. “What does he want?”
“Want to ask him?”
I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it tightly.
“I’ve got a plan,” he said.
“Will it get us killed?”
“Hopefully not. But you have to scooch down further. He can’t have a good visual.”
That didn’t make me feel very confident. But we couldn’t just sit here, held hostage by some unknown guy with a gun.
“I’m going to start the car and back up into him,” Jeff whispered.
