A Killing in the Hills - By Julia Keller Page 0,38

Not here. Not now. Even checking the rearview mirror again when she’d felt the first smack had been a bad idea.

Fleetingly, Bell wondered if this was some kind of a joke, if maybe the mystery driver thought it was funny to kid around on the sharpest curve at the highest point in four counties. But she knew better. Nobody joked like that on mountain roads. The driving was too treacherous, the potential consequences too severe.

Could it be some jerk she’d pissed off on a recent case? A vengeful family member, maybe, who thought that a black sheep brother-in-law or a renegade cousin had gotten a raw deal from the law? Doubtful. She’d been threatened – every prosecutor had been threatened – but the nastiest threats always came from those least likely to follow through. From swaggering loudmouths who were cowards at the core. Show-off tough guys. All talk and no action.

The next jolt was harder. So hard that Bell pitched forward in her seat, feeling the vibration travel in a split second from the back of the Explorer up through her pelvis and then branch into her hands, which clutched the steering wheel with growing fervor. The attack had escalated from a nudge to a homicidal punch. This was personal.

The wicked curve splashed up ahead of her now, a harshly abrupt twist to the left. If you missed it – the road that continued on after the curve was virtually perpendicular to the stretch upon which Bell was traveling – you would fly straight off the edge of the mountain.

Into wide, airy, endless space.

After which you would plummet into the gorge.

If you were lucky, you’d be killed in the fall. Otherwise – if you survived it and stayed conscious – you’d surely know from the smell that your gas tank had ruptured upon impact and your vehicle would shortly be swaddled in flames and you’d burn to death. God bless blunt-force trauma, she thought. Oblivion’s definitely the best-case scenario.

Bell’s initial response had been to brake and brake hard, fighting him off, letting her speed drop from forty to thirty-five to thirty to twenty. She jammed her foot against the pedal as hard as she could and held it there, leg straight, shoulders reared back, so that when she hit the curve she’d have a chance of maintaining some small bit of control even with the bastard riding her bumper. Each time she’d cut her speed, though, the other car countered by pressing harder and still harder, as if the vehicle itself – not just the driver – wished her ill, wanted to make her miss the curve and jump the road, wanted to fling her off the side of the mountain.

The slower she went, the harder the other car bored in, its force propelling her toward the curve.

Who the hell is this guy?

As the end approached, as her momentum critically escalated, Bell all at once stopped thinking about the road or the curve or the other driver and she thought about Carla, she thought about her sister, she thought about her father, a man dead for three decades now but still in her mind, especially in moments that mattered. So it’s true, Bell mused, astonished that she had time to think, time to picture Carla’s face, when she was just a few seconds away from hurtling headlong into the curve. You really do see your life in front of your eyes, thirty-nine years flashes past, it’s all true. She carved out, deep in the center of her desperate panic, a small niche of calm.

And in that place she saw Carla, she saw her child, her baby, and Bell thought, She’ll be okay. Everything will be okay now.

She had an idea. Abruptly she slid her foot from the brake to the gas. Instead of trying to slow down, she shot ahead. Instead of fighting the other car’s force, she suddenly separated herself from it, and the Explorer – Wish I could kiss that big old V8 engine – leaped forward like a panther spotting prey.

If I’m going down off this mountain, I’m going down fighting. Not riding the goddamned brake. ’Cause I’m not ready for my Thelma and Louise moment.

A small gap sprang open between the compact and the Explorer.

The curve roared up in front of her windshield. It’s not even a curve, that doesn’t do it justice, it’s as sharp as a damned T-square. But what the hell. Here goes. Bell yanked the wheel to the left so hard that