A Killing in the Hills - By Julia Keller Page 0,39
she felt something pop in her shoulder. The back half of the Explorer whipped sideways in a vicious arc. Her left rear tire – the last thing that could stop her from flying off the top of the mountain – skidded to the edge.
If she was going over, it would happen in the next one-one-hundredth of a second.
Like, now.
The big vehicle teetered. It tipped over the lip of the road, hanging in space, tilting, tilting, and then it righted itself with a savage bounce.
Abruptly she was back on the road again, still going at an outrageous rate of speed. She wasn’t thinking, wasn’t breathing, just driving. Fast.
She risked a glimpse in the rearview mirror. The other car was well behind her now. The mystery driver was just rounding the bad-ass curve; he was bright enough to realize that a runty compact couldn’t overtake a Ford Explorer going at top speed. He wasn’t chasing her. His only advantage had been the element of surprise.
Bell gripped the wheel as if she fully intended to wrench it off the steering column. She was seized by a black desire for vengeance, for payback, and the sudden wild surge of emotion made her tremble worse than had the close call. He’d tried to kill her, for God’s sake. To murder her. She wanted to spin the Explorer around and she wanted to go charging after him, she wanted to chase him and push him off the goddamned mountain, she wanted to see him fly off the side of the road and end up in pieces. She wanted to do to him what he’d tried to do to her.
You bastard. You fucking fucker, you fucking fucking bastard. When I get you, I’m going to—
She knew this part of herself – the part that could turn ugly in an instant, the part that had nothing to do with pale blue cardigans and linen slacks and briefcases – and it scared her. It always had. Because she knew where it came from.
It came from her father, Donnie Dolan. King of all the rat bastards. His temper lived in her. Boiled in her veins.
Flying downhill, she repeatedly scanned both sides of the road with quick back-and-forth jerks of her head. Searching for a spot for a tight U-turn so that she could flip around and go after him, chase him down.
The berm was too narrow. If she tried it now and a heavy coal truck lumbered by as the Explorer made its swift pivot, its rear end hanging out as she ripped through the gears – well, she’d seen the results of accidents like that on mountain roads.
The paramedics would need a Shop-Vac to suck up the body parts.
So Bell kept driving. Going forward.
She sneaked looks in the rearview mirror every quarter mile or so. There was nothing to see. The sonofabitch was either deliberately hanging back, staying out of sight so she couldn’t get a read on his plate or a better look at his face, or else he’d pulled off the road somewhere, waiting for her to clear out.
She thought about calling Nick on her cell, but didn’t. By the time anybody got up here, the guy’d be gone.
She was breathing fast and shallow now, and the hot breaths hurt, they felt like tiny needles, as if she’d inhaled the contents of a pepper shaker somewhere along the way. The blackness inside her, the desire for instant vengeance, gradually began to fade. She relaxed her grip on the wheel.
Now she was aware of how much her fingers ached, from the pressure of holding on so frantically. Her shoulder throbbed. Her eyes burned. A headache smashed and roiled behind them.
Home, she thought. Just let me get home.
Bell slowly mounted the steps to her front porch. Only a few hours before she had left in a brisk professional hurry; she’d been fresh and pressed and focused, intensely preoccupied with the Albie Sheets trial and its precedents in West Virginia case law. Her steps were light and quick.
Now she covered the same ground in reverse. But there was no quickness. She wasn’t gliding. She was trudging. She was shaky and exhausted. And the reality of what had just occurred – the fact that someone had tried to kill her – kept coming back to her, filling her with rage. It was like a fever spiking over and over again.
Reaching the top step, she felt better. This old house did the trick. It was settling her down. Steadying her.