Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,104

this?” She jerked her arm in an arc, indicating the house. “You have his son, too. And what do I have?” Bending abruptly, she scooped Nick’s jacket off the floor and brandished it at Abby. “This! This is what I’m left with.”

“You have a daughter,” Abby said.

Sondra looked blank as if she didn’t comprehend Abby’s meaning, and then she turned and swiftly left the room.

“I’ll stop her.” Jake took the gun from Abby and went after Sondra. Abby followed him.

“Let her go, Jake,” she called. “The police will get her. Let them handle it.”

But Jake didn’t respond; he didn’t do as Abby said, and when she heard the back door slam behind him, her heart dropped. Where were the police?

Sondra was backing down the driveway when Abby got outside, and Jake was watching her go. Abby joined him. “She won’t get far.”

“What is wrong with her?” Jake ran a shaky hand over his head. “I thought for a second we were goners.”

“Why don’t you put that thing down?” Abby indicated the gun.

He said, “The safety’s on. It can’t hurt anybody now.”

“I think the reason we’re standing here is because of your cool head.” Abby’s voice slipped.

Jake put his arm around her shoulders.

They heard the approach of sirens.

“Thank God.” Abby felt limp with relief.

Sondra was halfway down the driveway when the first patrol car pulled in behind her, blocking her exit. The two officers were outside the vehicle in moments. One had his hand on the butt of his holstered gun and was cautiously approaching the driver’s side of Sondra’s car.

The other was just as cautiously coming up the drive toward Jake and Abby as if he questioned which of the three of them was the danger. Abby would never know why, but some intuition made her turn to Jake and say, “Let’s go in the house,” and she had started that way when, all at once, she registered the hard rhythmic revving of a car engine and the sudden squeal of tires on the asphalt. She heard the police officers’ warning shouts, and now Jake was shouting.

“Holy Jesus Christ, Mom! Run!” He pushed her, herding her in front of him across the drive.

Abby wasted a precious moment looking in the direction of Sondra’s car as it hurtled toward them, but Jake’s fist against her back was insistent. They had nearly reached the porch when the car rounded the corner of the house, coming straight for them. Abby, with Jake on her heels, flung herself toward the porch; they half fell up the back stairs.

She waited for the collision and instead felt the wind when Sondra’s car veered at the last second and tore past them; she smelled the exhaust, the burning rubber. Lying on the porch, breath gusting from her chest, Abby imagined she could smell Sondra’s lunacy, her maddened rage. Or maybe it was the stench of her own fury, her own hysteria that burned down through her core. She couldn’t have said. She was clinging to Jake.

One cop car flew past, siren screaming, and then the second. Abby heard the screech of metal when they broke through the fence.

“Holy shit!” Jake lifted his head off the porch floor. “Are they in the pasture? Where does she think she’s going? She can’t outrun them.”

Abby didn’t answer. She didn’t think outrunning the police was Sondra’s intention.

Moments later, the sound of the crash was horrific, otherworldly. Neither Abby nor Jake saw it happen. They were getting to their feet, dazed, half in shock, but one of the officers told them when he returned from the scene that Sondra had hit the utility pole at the north end of the pasture and was ejected from the vehicle.

“She was going straight at it like a bat out of hell,” he said, “and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. Not much way she was going to survive driving like that.”

Hours passed while the police and other rescue workers did their jobs. The coroner came, and a tow truck was brought in for Sondra’s car. Looking on from the back porch at the emergency traffic strung out over her property, Abby was reminded of Kate’s ranch after the flood. The sight was as surreal now as it was then. It made her feel light-headed.

Charlie came, and Abby was glad for his company, his support. It was some time after he heard what had happened, when he had digested the enormity of the danger she and Jake had been in, that he said, “It’s like that