Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 14

RELEASING HER AS SUDDENLY AS HE’D GRABBED HER, HE turned abruptly and climbed into his truck. He cranked the engine and left it to Britt to leap out of the truck’s path as he wheeled it around and headed for the road. She choked on the dust cloud that rose behind him.

Tears of outrage made red blurs of his taillights. Once they had disappeared, she was left in total darkness. Quickly, she retrieved her handbag from the ground and got into her car. The driver’s seat had been moved back as far as it would go to accommodate Raley Gannon’s long legs, and all the mirrors had been adjusted. Having to reset everything made her even angrier than she already was, and she was bristling.

The condition of the road didn’t improve her state of mind. It allowed for only one speed-slow. She never caught sight of Raley’s taillights again, although she continued to eat his dust all the way to the main road. It was nothing to brag about, but at least at some point in time the road had been tarred. Maybe during the Truman administration.

She consulted the directions he’d written out for her-she supposed she should be grateful for that much consideration-and turned as indicated. She kept her car at a moderate speed, not only because the road cut through dense forest, making it dark and winding, but because she needed time to reflect on her experience with Raley and prepare herself for what lay ahead. Before things could get better, they would get worse, and she dreaded that interim.

She had been on her own since her parents had died less than a year apart-her father of lung cancer when she was a senior in high school, her mother of a stroke a few months later.

As a college freshman, she hadn’t had the luxury of mourning her mother. Not wanting to skip a whole semester, she’d taken only a week off from classes to handle the funeral and deal with all the paperwork left in the wake of a sudden passing. Then she’d dusted herself off emotionally and returned to her studies, accepting that she was an orphan now and that what she made of her life was strictly up to her.

She was the beneficiary of her parents’ modest life insurance policies, which she used to finance her education. Upon graduation, she sold the family home. That had been a painful decision, as it represented a definitive severance from the only family life she’d had, but she’d needed the proceeds from that sale to subsidize the menial wages she earned at various cable stations. These jobs amounted to little more than internships, but she used them to gain experience with video cameras and editing equipment, in addition to writing and producing her reports.

At one station, in exchange for access to the editing room, she had to empty the wastepaper baskets and sweep up each night after everyone else had gone home. She didn’t like it, but she did it, telling herself that it was character building. It also earned her an extra thirty-five dollars a week.

Eventually she moved to a station with a wider viewership where she didn’t have to pull janitorial duties to augment her salary. Over the course of the next few years, she went from station to station, always moving up, learning, gaining experience, and developing her on-camera technique.

By the time the job in Charleston became available, she had acquired industry know-how along with an engaging TV persona-salable assets. Being hired as a feature reporter represented a quantum leap in her career. The job wasn’t going to make her rich, but she could afford her mortgage and good designer knockoffs.

Although she would always lament the premature deaths of both parents, she was suited to living independently. Or maybe she had embraced her solitary state only because she knew she had no choice. Either way, she was accustomed to earning her own keep and standing on her own two feet. She was reliant on no one. She was free to make decisions without interference from anyone.

Tonight, however, she wished to be not quite so free. She didn’t feel so much independent as alone, friendless, and vulnerable. These were rare and unwelcome sentiments for her, so she wasn’t sure how to cope with them. Why, after living totally on her own, was she wishing for someone on whom she could lean, from whom she could seek counsel, receive reassurance?

But there was no one, was there? Just as there had been no one when at age eighteen she’d been left parentless. Now, as then, she must accept and deal with the circumstances with as much determination and dignity as possible. She had survived so far. She would survive this.

But how could she help but be apprehensive over what the next few hours would bring? Would the policemen staked out at her house treat her kindly, or would they swarm her as she alighted from her car? Would she be handcuffed, read her rights, and hustled into a squad car before being given a chance to offer any explanation for her disappearance?

However it played out, it would be unpleasant and humiliating. She was a suspect now. The detectives wouldn’t extend her any more courtesies just because she was a television personality. Clark would be less polite, Javier more cynical. The interrogations would be more grueling.

Even if Bill Alexander acted with dispatch, he couldn’t get her released on bail until her arraignment hearing, and that wouldn’t take place until tomorrow at the earliest, requiring her to spend at least this night in police custody.

Jail. The very thought of it, even for one night, made her physically ill.

And then something even worse occurred to her. She was accused of murdering a police officer. As if that weren’t bad enough, to the court’s eye, it would appear that she had fled to avoid arrest. Thank you, Raley Gannon.

While his kidnapping stunt had given her ammunition for a more solid defense than the feeble “I don’t remember,” it also had greatly reduced her chances of being released on bail. Prospects were good that she’d be kept in jail until her trial, and God knew how long that would be.

One second she was grateful for Raley’s intrusion, because his information would be invaluable to her defense. The next second she wanted to throttle him. For a number of reasons.

When he’d grabbed her like that, why hadn’t she pushed him away or put up some kind of resistance? She hadn’t been afraid that he would hurt her. If he hadn’t harmed her in the last twenty-four hours, he wasn’t going to.

Still, she shouldn’t have just stood there and let him manhandle her like that.

Calling him a coward had been a calculated attempt to keep him talking. As much as he’d told her, there was more he had omitted. She’d deliberately goaded him, hoping to make him lose his temper and blurt out something that would help exonerate them both.

The taunt had sparked more of a reaction than she’d bargained for. And a different kind of reaction than she’d anticipated. Her ill-chosen words had given him an opening, and he’d taken it. He-

The thought was interrupted by her cell phone’s musical ring.

Automatically she reached for her handbag, then thought: My cell phone?

The two men were bored.

They were extraordinarily patient men who could sit for hours without moving, or even blinking, if the job required them to do so, but they’d rather be out and about, active, doing something instead of sitting in a room waiting for their next assignment.

They were presently playing an unambitious game of gin rummy and monitoring a telephone line on which they’d planted an illegal bug earlier today. Of all the boring aspects of their work, monitoring a telephone line was perhaps the biggest snore.

They were currently operating under the aliases of Johnson and Smith, and like the false names, the two men were practically interchangeable, having matching skills and personalities. They had no ties to anyone on the planet and had loyalty only to whoever was paying them at the time. In cash.

Their names weren’t on any rolls for taxes, driver’s licenses, Social Security, nothing. They’d left the country a decade and a half ago to fight a secret war against various factions in an African nation that few Americans had even heard of, much less could point to on a globe. There, the individuals they had been vanished. When they reentered the United States, they had different names, fingerprints, identities, and even those records had soon been destroyed.

Their employment was always temporary, but they sometimes worked for a client more than once, and they had a long list of satisfied customers-nations, cadres, individuals. They always worked as a team and were exceptionally good at what they did because they had absolutely no compunction about doing whatever was necessary to get the job done. Neither possessed a conscience. Their souls had been sacrificed in a wasteland of unimaginable violence.

Most remarkable, however, was that they weren’t at all remarkable. The violence they were capable of was belied by ordinary looks. They didn’t wear paramilitary camouflage. The weapons they carried were well concealed even to people trained to look for such, and their weapons of choice were their hands. Their strength came from conditioning, not bulk. They could pass for accountants, junior professors, or something equally benign. In a crowd, they could blend in so well as to become invisible.

They had blind obedience to whomever was paying them for their services. They never suggested an alternate plan, never expressed their opinions unless asked for them. They were incurious to the point of indifference about their orders. They didn’t care a whit about the whys and wherefores of a job. They were apolitical and nonreligious. They did what they were told to do without question or discussion.

Those attributes made them ideal for their current retainer’s needs. They’d been hired to disable Britt Shelley and kill Jay Burgess.

They’d been shown Britt Shelley’s photograph and had seen her on television. They’d picked her out the minute she came into the bar. The Wheelhouse itself had served their purpose because it was crowded and busy, and the waitresses were so rushed that trays of drinks were kept on the bar long enough for a sleight of hand to take place without anyone noticing.

They’d been given explicit instructions and had carried them out to the letter. They’d been told to neutralize the woman and leave it to look like she had killed Burgess, and that was what they’d done.

It had helped that Burgess was careless about setting his security alarm. Getting inside the town house had been a matter of opening a terrace door and strolling in. The drug had hit Britt Shelley hard, and when Johnson and Smith had ambled into Burgess’s living room, Burgess was anxiously asking her if she was all right. Clearly she wasn’t.

Taken by surprise, weakened by his illness, and more than a little intoxicated himself, Burgess had been easily overpowered. The two pros had then forced the couple to drink the bottle of scotch. Burgess had protested, but he’d complied. The woman was too far gone to care what was being done to her, so they’d funneled the scotch down her throat with no difficulty.

When both were incapacitated, Johnson and Smith had stripped them of their clothing, put them in the guy’s bed, then smothered the guy. They’d planted the empty condom packet on the sofa, all the while being careful not to leave any traces of themselves for a clever crime scene investigator to find.

The stage had been set precisely as they’d been told to leave it. Everything had gone as planned…until this morning, when it was discovered that Britt Shelley had up and disappeared. This had really pissed off their retainer, who hadn’t anticipated that development. Initial efforts to track her had rendered nothing.

So they’d been ordered to keep tabs on Bill Alexander, attorney at law. At first their client had considered having them torture the lawyer until he gave up the whereabouts of his client. But it was soon determined that his frantic nervousness was genuine and that, when he was seen in news reports averring to police that he had no idea where Britt Shelley had gone, he was telling the truth.

However, the assumption had been that he would be the first person she’d contact when she resurfaced-if she wasn’t found by the police and arrested first-so Johnson and Smith had been ordered to bug the lawyer’s phone.

Duck soup. He was a bachelor who lived alone and was too penurious to hire a maid. During the day, while he was at his law office, his house stood empty. The two-man team had been in and out in a matter of minutes and had spent the rest of the day monitoring their equipment, waiting for something to happen.

Finally it did. Their ears perked up when they heard the dial tone and the beeps of Alexander punching in a number. Johnson dropped his cards and made note of the time. Smith started the recorder.

Three rings, then a hello. Female voice, sounding hesitant and puzzled, then exasperated.

“Ms. Shelley! Thank God you answered!”

“Mr. Alexander?”

“Where have you been? Haven’t you heard the news? The police have issued a warrant for your arrest.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Where did you go?”

“I didn’t exactly…go. It’s a long story. I’ll explain everything when I get home. I suppose the police are watching my house.”

“Yes, you’ll have quite a reception committee. I must warn you, Ms. Shelley, that they obtained a search warrant this afternoon. Prepare yourself for a mess.”

“A search warrant? Why?”

“Because you’re a fugitive!”

“No, I’m not.”

“What would you call yourself then? When a person flees to avoid arrest-”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, that’s how it looks to the police. To everyone.”

“I know, but I can explain. I-”

“As you said, save the explanation until you arrive. And the sooner the better. Where are you now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Not sure?”

“I’m an hour away, at least. I’ll be there as soon as I can get there.”

“If you’re not captured first. Both Twenty-six and Ninety-five are crawling with-”

“I’m not on an interstate. I’m in the boondocks, and the roads aren’t great. Do you know where Ye…Ye…”

“Yemassee?”

“Yes, this says I’ll go through there.”

“What says?”

“Long story. From there I take…uh, River Road to Highway Seventeen.”

“Okay, okay, get here as soon as you can. I’ll go to your house and wait for you there. When you arrive, do not say a word unless you’ve cleared it with me. Do you understand, Ms. Shelley? Not a single word.”

“I understand, but I have a lot to tell. Primarily, that Jay’s murder is linked to the fire.”

“The fire?”

“The police station fire five years ago.”

“He was one of the heroes. Everybody knows that.”

“Yes, but there’s much more to it. Jay was-”

The call ended abruptly.

Johnson looked at Smith, who shrugged and said, “Sounds like her cell went dead.”

They heard Alexander redial twice, but both calls went automatically to voice mail. With a muttered “Damn,” he hung up.

Smith reached for his cell and punched in a number that no one knew except him and Johnson. As soon as it was answered he said, “Her lawyer just called her. We’ve got a recording.”

Without further ado, Johnson started playing back the recording.

Their employer listened to it straight through, then when it ended, said, “She remembers that Jay told her something about the fire. Her memory wasn’t totally wiped clean.”

A bit defensively, Smith said, “Sometimes the amnesia is temporary. Each person reacts differently to the drug.”

“In hindsight, I should have had you kill her, too. You could have made it appear like a murder-suicide. But it’s too late for seconding-guessing, isn’t it? However…”

Apparently their boss’s mental gears were cranking.

“She ran, and that’s actually to our advantage. It makes her appear criminal, capable of killing her ex-lover. Also desperate and liable to say just about anything to save her own skin. If she starts casting aspersions on Jay Burgess and his heroism, who will listen? Or, better yet…”

Johnson and Smith could see it coming: Better yet was that Britt Shelley never have an opportunity to say anything to anyone, sparing their retainer more worry and trouble.

They left the hand of gin rummy unfinished, happy to have something more stimulating to do.

Raley noticed that his truck was almost out of gas. It would be an annoyance to stop and fill up but even more of an inconvenience for the tank to run dry between here and his cabin.

He wheeled into the first service station he came to, got out, and walked up to a small structure to prepay. The cashier conducted the transaction through a window with metal bars. Signs were posted saying that security cameras were in place, but Raley seriously doubted that. One thing he didn’t doubt was that a loaded shotgun was underneath the counter, out of sight but handy.

He returned to the pump and fit the nozzle into his gas tank. As he did so, he noticed Britt’s windbreaker lying in the bed of his pickup, where she’d angrily pitched it. Seeing it gave him a twinge of remorse, although it shouldn’t have. Admittedly, he’d acted like a bastard most of the time they’d been together, but she deserved no better from him.

As soon as she got back to Charleston, she would be in the limelight, and that was where she thrived, wasn’t it? Perhaps not immediately, but soon enough, she would be cleared of all suspicion regarding Jay’s murder. She would have her career-making story. He had filled in the critical elements that had been missing from it, and had added a touch of melodrama as well. So while she might not feel too kindly toward him at this moment, she would soon be thanking him.

As the tank continued to fill, he gazed in the direction of the city. He was homesick for it, for movie theaters, for restaurants that served shrimp and grits and crab cakes, for ball games, for long Sunday jogs along the harbor.

Mostly, though, he missed his work, which he’d loved.

Maybe he’d loved it even more than he’d loved Hallie. That was a tough confession, but in all honesty, he regretted being robbed of his career more than he regretted losing her.

He’d come to realize that, if she had loved him as much as she claimed, she wouldn’t have doubted him. Once he’d admitted to responding to Suzi Monroe’s initial flirtation, Hallie should have accepted as absolute truth everything else he told her, just as his parents had. She should have believed him without hesitation or qualification.

But she hadn’t. If she had, she wouldn’t have let him go so easily. And if he’d loved her as much as he’d thought he did, he wouldn’t have retreated, leaving her free for Jay to grab.

You’re a coward.

He could see where Britt might think him a coward. But it wasn’t courage he’d lacked, it was backup. A smart man didn’t barge ahead, slinging accusations against people in authority, unless he had proof. If you didn’t have solid proof, the next best thing was a witness who could corroborate your allegations.

Now, after waiting for five long years, he finally had one.

To Britt it might appear that he had armed her, then sent her to the front to fight his battle for him, not knowing that he planned to wage his own war from behind the lines. That was the only way this conflict could be won, because at this point he wasn’t even sure which of the two surviving heroes had conspired to have Jay killed.

Both McGowan and Fordyce had been in on the plot to stop his arson investigation. Had one acted singly to have Jay silenced, or were they in cahoots? One thing was certain: Neither was the hero he pretended to be.

Raley would happily let Britt receive all the credit for exposing them, their deceit, and their crimes. All he wanted was exoneration. He wanted his life back.

Of course, he didn’t delude himself. It wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Each of these men had much to lose, and neither would go down without a struggle. Each also had the resources to fight long and fight dirty.

Whoever was responsible for Jay’s murder was accustomed to subterfuge, and was good at it. He must have been keeping a close eye on Jay, afraid that, in light of his recent diagnosis, he might feel compelled to confess before dying. Britt had said that Jay called her earlier that same day to make their date. Which meant a plan to kill him and leave her the only viable suspect had been quickly plotted and implemented. One or the pair of them had moved with swiftness and surety.

As soon as Britt began raising questions about the fire, the so-called heroes of it would come under scrutiny by the public as well as by the police. One or both would begin to squirm, and Raley planned to be watching to see who squirmed the most, who was the most desperate to defend himself against nasty allegations, and who was most willing to give up the answers that Raley didn’t yet have about the fire.

He intended to get them. He’d thought of little else these past five years. Now, because of Jay’s death and Britt’s involvement, he could finish the job without the fear of being disbelieved or discredited. He supposed he had Jay to thank for that.

That was all he had to thank Jay for. Jay, Pat Wickham, Cobb Fordyce, and George McGowan. The first two were out of it. The other two were about to experience the kind of public scourging Raley had received.

They would become the focus of local media. Britt would see to that. Everything they said and did would be reported. The louder they protested, the more pressure she would apply. She would be in her element.

The gas nozzle shut off. Raley replaced it on the pump and screwed the cap back onto his tank. He waved a thanks to the watchful, taciturn man in the barred window. Then, lifting the windbreaker out of the bed of the pickup, he took it into the cab with him and tossed it on the passenger seat along with his chambray shirt.

He pulled away from the station, but as he was about to turn onto the road that would take him home, he braked instead and let the engine idle while he wiped beads of sweat off his forehead and stared at the windbreaker. It didn’t smell like hound dog. He’d only told her one had slept on it to rile her. It smelled like her.

She would probably be arrested and booked for Jay’s murder immediately. But it wouldn’t be long before she would play the card he’d given her. When she did, she’d make instant enemies of two powerful men.

She would be all right, though. Neither Fordyce nor McGowan was crazy enough to hurt her, not while she was standing in the glare of television lights and the attention of every person in South Carolina was on her. Her celebrity would protect her. Besides, she would be in police custody.

But, God, that woman was reckless when it came to getting a good story. In her determination to nail it, would she throw caution to the wind, lose all perspective and good common sense?

Looking back in the direction from which he’d come, he wondered if he’d been clear on the directions he’d given her. Had he told her not to turn left until she crossed the double railroad tracks? If she turned left after crossing only the single track, she could drive for miles before realizing her mistake.

Hell, had he made that clear? When writing down the directions this morning, he’d been distracted by thoughts of her sleeping in his bed, curled up on her side, knees pulled to her chest, so the directions might not have been as detailed as they should have been.

He shot a glance down at the windbreaker, then with a heartfelt expletive, turned the pickup onto the narrow road in the direction from which he’d come and practically stood on the accelerator.

“Damn him!”

Her cell phone had been in her possession all along.

Fifteen minutes after her phone battery ran out, abruptly ending her conversation with Bill Alexander, she was still seething. She’d discovered her ringing cell phone in a zippered compartment of her handbag that she never used. Gullibly, she’d believed Raley Gannon when he’d told her he left her phone behind.

She wondered how many other fibs he’d told her, how many half-truths.

If they came so easily to him, and he was able to tell them so convincingly, could she believe his story about Suzi Monroe’s death? He’d heard her say during her press conference that she’d been given a date rape drug that had wiped clean her memory of her night with Jay. Was it even remotely possible that Raley had concocted a similar scenario for his own vindication?

A tale like that would also implicate Jay Burgess in all sorts of misdeeds, and it was clear that Raley bore a grudge toward his former best friend. In one fell swoop, he could clear himself and destroy Jay Burgess’s heroic legacy.

Was she being taken in?

If so, Raley was a great liar, because she believed everything he’d told her. She also gave credence to his story because he had withheld some of it. Based on experience, she knew that people with the most valuable information were often the ones most reluctant to impart it. He knew more about the fire, its origin, or something that he was withholding.

Sooner or later, he would have to give up everything he knew or speculated, because she had no intention of letting him sulk out there in the woods while she took on the CPD, Fordyce, and McGowan all by herself.

After she shared the story with Detectives Clark and Javier, someone would be dispatched to find Raley Gannon and bring him in for serious questioning. The fire chief would be clamoring to talk to him, too. Raley would be forced to divulge what he knew, and Britt Shelley would be on the scene to cover the story as it unfolded.

Jay had promised her a groundbreaking story, and he’d been true to his word. It troubled her, though, that the charmer she’d known and the deceiver Raley had described were the same man. If everything Raley had told her was the truth, and she believed it was, then Jay had sacrificed a girl’s life, his lifelong friendship with Raley, and even his own honor as a police officer. He’d forfeited all that to protect whatever it was that Raley had been about to discover, something so terrible that Jay felt he must confess it in order to die in peace.

Unfortunately, his killer hadn’t allowed him to unburden his conscience.

Britt was so deep in thought, she didn’t realize she was lost until her headlights shone on the city limits sign of a wide-spot-in-the-road town she’d never heard of that wasn’t in Raley’s directions. Pulling onto the shoulder, she consulted his handwritten notes.

“Double railroad tracks?” The railroad tracks where she’d taken a left turn were fifteen miles behind her. “Would have been nice if you’d emphasized that, Gannon,” she muttered as she made a U-turn. Of course he had written “double railroad tracks,” she just hadn’t read the directions carefully enough. But still…This had cost her a lot of time. Bill Alexander would be having a fit.

Her windshield was spattered with dead bugs. Twice she’d caught the glowing topaz eyes of deer in her headlights. Fortunately they’d stayed in the underbrush at the side of the road and hadn’t dashed out in front of her car. But she’d slowed down anyway.

The backtracking cost her almost half an hour. As her car bumped over the all-important double railroad tracks, she cursed Raley Gannon once again and made the correct turn.

“Go a quarter mile, then watch for a sharp right,” she read aloud from the paper she now held against the steering wheel in her line of sight to avoid making another mistake. “Okeydokey. Here we are,” she said as she found the turn.

The road was dark. The branches of trees on both sides spanned it to form a canopy. It meandered through the woods, crossing swampy areas and creeks, tributaries of the major rivers, she supposed. She really should explore this area of wild beauty. She would do that.

If she didn’t go to prison, she thought grimly.

Yes, definitely. Getting back to nature would be on her things-to-do list. But she wouldn’t venture into this low country wilderness without a guide. Not without someone who knew their way around.

Raley, maybe.

Or maybe not. He didn’t like her. He’d said so.

She jumped when an owl-or some nocturnal bird with a wide wingspan-swooped across the road directly in front of her grille. Then, feeling foolish over her jumpiness, she laughed with self-deprecation. But who wouldn’t be a little nervous driving alone at night on a dark country road?

A few minutes later, she was actually happy to notice a pair of headlights up ahead. The vehicle was on a side road, waiting for her to pass so it could pull out. She was relieved that it turned onto the road behind her. She welcomed the company.

But then the headlights loomed up in her rearview mirror.

For one irrational moment, she thought, Raley! He was coming back to Charleston with her.

But immediately reason asserted itself. He wouldn’t be coming from that direction, the headlights were too low to belong to a pickup, and Raley certainly wouldn’t zoom up behind her, practically riding her rear bumper. He wouldn’t flash his headlights onto bright and leave them on, as this driver had. Raley wouldn’t drive that dangerously close to another car, not even to get her attention and announce his presence behind her.

“Jerk,” she muttered as she gave her car some gas. The other driver did the same and stayed directly on her bumper for the next half mile. If he was impatient with her for driving the speed limit, why didn’t he just go around? There wasn’t a double yellow stripe prohibiting passing, but even if there was, anyone who didn’t have qualms against tailgating wouldn’t have qualms about breaking the no-passing law. There was no oncoming traffic to prevent him from passing her.

Raising one hand against the glare reflected in her rearview and side mirrors, she could make out two silhouettes in the other car. They appeared to be male, but she couldn’t tell with any degree of certainty, and now she was going too fast not to keep both hands on the wheel.

They were probably kids, making mischief, too foolish to realize they were playing a life-threatening game. She should do a story on it, posing the question: Should the legal driving age be raised to eighteen?

After another mile, she was frazzled. Her hands seemed grafted to the steering wheel from gripping it so tightly. Her shoulders ached with tension.

“You win.” She eased her car closer to the shoulder, which was nearly nonexistent. But the driver didn’t use the extra space to go around. Instead he pulled up so that his right front bumper was slightly overlapping her left rear one. She moved over more, until her right tires slid into soft mud. The other driver compensated, keeping their bumpers only inches apart. “What is wrong with you, you moron?”

But her irritation was steadily turning into panic. This was more sinister than teenagers playing a prank. Should she speed up, slow down, stop? All of the options posed risks, especially the last one. She was barely dressed. Her cell phone was dead. She had no weapon. She hadn’t seen another car for half an hour. Occasionally she had noticed lights from homes tucked into the woods, but not for the last few miles.

No, stopping wasn’t an option. Slowing down hadn’t discouraged him; he’d simply pulled his vehicle closer to hers. That left her only one thing to do, keep her speed up and hope that they wouldn’t crash before they reached the heavily traveled Highway 17, or that these two would tire of their game and leave her to go her way.

But instinctually she knew that wasn’t going to happen. This was menacing, not playful. The two in the other car meant to hurt her.

The driver seemed to have an uncanny knack for keeping his headlights shining directly into her mirrors. They were blinding her. Going on the offensive, she pressed her accelerator to the floorboard and at the same time jerked her wheel sharply to the left. She missed clipping his right front bumper by a hair. Now back on the hardtop surface, her car surged ahead.

But the advantage was short-lived. The other vehicle roared up behind hers, then whipped around the rear of it and overlapped bumpers again. “Dammit!” she shouted in fear. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

Again, she was blinded by his headlights, but up ahead she could make out the signpost for the river. Just beyond the sign, the shoulder tapered to nothing and the road narrowed to form a bridge.

Britt’s anxiety increased. She thought of the blackwater river she and Raley had crossed several times on their way from his cabin to the airstrip. Even with her limited knowledge, she knew that several great rivers converged and emptied into St. Helena Sound and from there into the Atlantic, their direction of flow shifting four times a day, depending on the ocean tide.

A lot of water. People died in it. Recently she’d reported on the recovery of a man’s body. He was an experienced swimmer, but he’d drowned when his fishing boat capsized. Two kayakers had been lost for days before their bodies were recovered miles downstream from where they’d put in to take advantage of a river swollen by heavy spring rains.

She’d feel safer once she was across that bridge. But when she sped up with that purpose in mind, the driver matched her speed and inched closer to her car.

In desperation, she flattened the gas pedal onto the floorboard again. Even then her speed wasn’t enough to pull ahead of the other vehicle. Just as she reached the signpost, the other driver outmaneuvered her. He edged his car to the right, forcing her off the road and onto the soft shoulder that soon gave way to nothingness.

She was probably going close to a hundred miles an hour when her car hit the water. It slammed into the surface of the river with such impact that her air bag deployed. That saved her life but wasn’t really a blessing. Because she was still conscious when her car was swallowed by the greedy, swirling water.