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parents would be up and would want to know what had happened.
Maybe the best thing to do was go back to the party, find Alex, and convince him that it was time for them to go home. She would do the driving.
But that would be giving in, and she wouldn’t give in. She had been right, and Alex had been wrong, and it served him right that she’d walked out on him.
She made up her mind, and continued down the road.
Alex jockeyed the Mustang around Bob Carey’s Porsche, then put it in drive and gunned the engine. The rear wheels spun on the loose gravel for a moment, then caught, and the car shot forward, down the Evanses’ driveway and into Hacienda Drive.
Alex wasn’t sure how long Lisa had been walking—it seemed as though it had taken him forever to get dressed and search the house. She could be almost home by now.
He pressed the accelerator, and the car picked up speed. He hugged the wall of the ravine on the first curve, but the car fishtailed slightly, and he had to steer into the skid to regain control. Then he hit a straight stretch and pushed his speed up to seventy. Coming up fast was an S curve that was posted at thirty miles an hour, but he knew they always left a big margin for safety. He slowed to sixty as he started into the first turn.
And then he saw her.
She was standing on the side of the road, her green dress glowing brightly in his headlights, staring at him with terrified eyes.
Or did he just imagine that? Was he already that close to her?
Time suddenly slowed down, and he slammed his foot on the brake.
Too late. He was going to hit her.
It would have been all right if she’d been on the inside of the curve. He’d have swept around her, and she’d have been safe. But now he was skidding right toward her …
Turn into it. He had to turn into it!
Taking his foot off the brake, he steered to the right, and suddenly felt the tires grab the pavement.
Lisa was only a few yards away.
And beyond Lisa, almost lost in the darkness, something else.
A face, old and wrinkled, framed with white hair. And the eyes in the face were glaring at him with an intensity he could almost feel.
It was the face that finally made him lose all control of the car.
An ancient, weathered face, a face filled with an unspeakable loathing, looming in the darkness.
At the last possible moment, he wrenched the wheel to the left, and the Mustang responded, slewing around Lisa, charging across the pavement, heading for the ditch and the wall of the ravine beyond.
Straighten it out!
He spun the wheel the other way.
Too far.
The car burst through the guardrail and hurtled over the edge of the ravine.
“Lisaaaa …”
CHAPTER THREE
It was nearly two A.M. when Ellen Lonsdale heard the first faint wailing of a siren. She hadn’t been asleep—indeed she’d been sitting in the living room ever since the Cochrans had left an hour earlier, growing increasingly restless as the minutes ticked by. It wasn’t like Alex to be late, and for the last half-hour she’d been fighting a growing feeling that something had happened to him. The siren grew louder. A few seconds later it was joined by another, then a third. As she listened, the mournful wailings grew into shrill screams that tore the last vestiges of calmness from her mind.
It was Alex. Deep in her soul, she knew that the sirens were for her son.
Then, inside the house, the phone began to ring.
That’s it, she thought. They’re calling to tell me he’s dead. Her feet leaden, she forced herself to go to the phone, hesitated a moment, then picked it up.
“H-hello?”
“Ellen?”
“Yes.”
“This is Barbara, at the Center?”
The hesitancy in Barbara Fannon’s voice told Ellen that something had gone wrong. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Barbara’s voice remained professionally neutral. “May I speak to Dr. Lonsdale please?”
“What’s happened?” Ellen demanded again. Then, hearing the note of hysteria in her voice, she took a deep breath and reminded herself that Marsh was on call that night. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Just a moment, Barbara.”
Her hand shaking in spite of herself, she laid the receiver on the table next to the phone and turned toward the hall. Marsh, his eyes still bleary with sleep, stood in the doorway. “What’s happening? Something woke me up.”
“Sirens,” Ellen breathed. “Something’s happened, and the hospital wants to talk