“What are you doing?” she shouted, leaning hard on the horn to alert him.
But he looked right at her, as if to suggest that he had no choice in the matter, and he shrugged. Then, without warning, he gunned his engine and cut her off, missing the oncoming car by a matter of feet, and sideswiping the BMW as he shot past.
Clare did the only thing she could do. She hit the brakes and swerved in an attempt to avoid him. But there was no room to maneuver. The BMW’s wheels spun out of control and lost contact with the road, and the car hurtled down the embankment and slammed into the trees.
Four
“Clare? Clare, can you hear me?”
She heard a woman’s voice calling to her, but it was coming from so far away that she didn’t think it was necessary to reply. If the woman really wanted her, she reasoned, she would come closer, so that Clare wouldn’t have to raise her voice in return.
“Clare?” the woman said again, this time sounding as though she was right beside her. “Open your eyes, Clare. I want you to open your eyes for me.”
Clare thought about doing that, but it seemed like just too much trouble. She was so tired and her head ached so badly that all she wanted to do was go to sleep. She decided, if she kept still, the woman would eventually go away.
But the woman didn’t go away. She kept calling and calling to her until Clare’s head began to throb even more and she finally had enough and opened her eyes. Annoyance turned to alarm. She was in a place she didn’t recognize, lying on something hard and unforgiving, and the light was so bright that it hurt to focus on anything.
“Well, there you are,” a woman she was quite positive she had never seen before said. The woman was dressed in white. “You had us worried there for a minute.”
As Clare wondered who she was, a man she was also sure she had never seen before loomed up beside the woman. He, too, was dressed in white. She wondered who these people were, and what they wanted with her. She wondered where she was, and what she was doing here. She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t seem to move.
“No, no, you don’t want to do that,” the man said quickly.
It was then Clare realized that, aside from her pounding head, she couldn’t feel the rest of her body. Her eyes widened fearfully. “Am I dead?” she whispered.
“My goodness, no,” the woman chirped. “Although I don’t mind telling you how lucky you are that you’re not.”
“Am I in an asylum?” Clare asked.
“No, you’re not in an asylum,” the man told her. “You’re at Harborview Medical Center.”
Clare was confused. “If I’m in a hospital, then why am I in a straightjacket?”
“You’re not in a straightjacket.”
“Then why can’t I move?” she said, beginning to whimper.
At that, the man and woman in white seem to vanish and Dusty Grissom and Erin Hall appeared in their places. Only now it wasn’t light in the room anymore, it was dark.
“You were injured in an accident, Mrs. Durant,” Erin said gently. “Do you remember?”
Clare thought for a moment. “Yes, I remember,” she said finally. “I fell off the mountain.”
“No, you were driving on Mercer Island and your car went off the road.”
“Mercer Island?” Clare repeated vaguely.
“Yes,” Erin said.
“What was I doing there?”
“You took Julie to her art class.”
There was confusion in Clare’s eyes. “Julie? Where is Julie? Did something happen to Julie?”
“No, no, no,” Erin assured her. “She’s safe at home.” The detective had called the house in Laurelhurst the moment the accident report came in, and Doreen had immediately driven down to collect the girl.
“Why can’t I move?”
“You injured your spine and apparently there’s some temporary paralysis. You’re wearing a cervical collar until the doctors can fully evaluate your condition.”
Clare closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again. This wasn’t about the mountain. That was in the past, and this was the present. She forced herself to think.
“Someone tried to pass me on a curve,” she said.
“Do you remember that?” Dusty asked eagerly.
“I think so,” Clare replied. “I think I tried to get out of the way. Is that when I went off the road?”
“Yes,” Dusty told her.
***
According to two eyewitnesses, both of whom stopped to help, the BMW careened right off the road and into the trees. The two good Samaritans pulled the unconscious woman to safety barely a minute before her car exploded into flames.
“I don’t know,” one of the witnesses reported at the time, “but I have to say it looked to me as though it was deliberate.”
“What do you mean it was deliberate?” one of the Mercer Island police officers detailed to the scene asked. “You think she was trying to commit suicide?”
“No, no, no,” the witness corrected him. “I’m talking about the guy who ran her off the road. At first, I thought he was drunk, or crazy, or something, but now I think he meant to do it.”
“You’re saying someone intentionally ran her off the road?”
“Yeah,” the other witness corroborated. “It happened right in front of me, and I saw the whole thing. The guy was driving in my lane, and then just at the last minute, when I’m starting to wonder how in hell I’m going to get out of his way, he cuts over and sideswipes her. I know he saw me, and I know he had plenty of time to get back in his lane, but he waited until he got right to this spot here, where the road curves and the shoulder narrows. Poor woman, she didn’t have a chance.”
“Did you get a look at him?” the
