phone and called the police. Then she got out and flagged down the vehicle that was coming up the hill. Thank God for this driver. Had this other vehicle not arrived on the scene, her attacker might have spun around and pushed her over the cliff. Blood dripped from her head and onto the pavement. Dizzy, she reached up and felt a cut on her forehead.
A convertible BMW roadster pulled over to the guardrail and stopped. To her surprise, Julian jumped out from behind the wheel. Her head now pounded, and she felt nauseous. She brought her hand up to her forehead again. Upon bringing it back down, she noticed that her palm was covered in blood. The lights from the suspension bridge began to blur, and she fell to her knees.
“Jesus! Are you okay, Mrs. Eaves?” Julian’s voice called out.
“Someone tried to run me off the road.” She could see the kid’s blurry silhouette running toward her.
“Dude! Someone was trying to off you?”
She held out her hand. “I’m bleeding.”
“Here. Take my shirt.”
Julian removed his T-shirt and pressed it against her head. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to his parked car. She felt close to passing out as he lifted her over the door and sat her upright in the passenger seat. He fastened her seat belt before jumping in next to her. Then he sped off, passing the minivan’s steaming pile of twisted metal. She held the shirt to her forehead before losing consciousness.
* * *
When she woke up, she saw a clock and a curtain. She recognized the hospital’s emergency room because she’d spent so many hours in it caring for Raisin.
“You okay, Isla?” Karl Bjornson said. “That was quite a crash.”
“Someone tried to run me off the road.”
“Did you get a good look at them?”
She shook her head, which pounded with pain. She wanted nothing more than to reach out and caress his smooth cheek.
“You’re lucky Julian McCallister arrived when he did and drove you to the emergency room.”
“Yes, lucky indeed.” She now felt guilty for talking bad about Julian.
“What were you doing over at Harper’s Point?”
“Giving Felicia Briggs a wash and blow-dry.”
“Someone had to be waiting for you to leave Harper’s Point, Isla. They must be worried because you’ve been digging into things that have happened in this town.”
“It was a truck or an SUV that rammed me. Something big.”
“And you didn’t see the driver?”
“They put their high beams on before attempting to run me off the road.”
“How did you manage to escape?”
“My dad taught me never to lock the brakes in a snowstorm. Always pump them and keep the wheel straight. Only this time I turned it.”
“Your dad’s a wise man. Doing that helped you spin around instead of going over the edge.”
“My dad is a wise man, even if he doesn’t quite know it anymore.”
KARL
IT MADE HIM SO MAD TO SHOW UP AT THE HOSPITAL AND SEE ISLA LYING there by herself. Where the hell was Ray? He should have been the first one here to comfort his wife. Was he working on his so-called seaweed business? After speaking with her and not getting any solid leads, Karl made his way into the waiting room and saw Julian sitting there and staring into space.
His head swam with conspiracies as he thought about all those intersecting lines on his whiteboard. He wanted to like Julian, not because the boy had helped Isla in her time of need, but because he genuinely wanted to like most people, even if in reality he didn’t. His inclination was to be alone, trekking in the woods or climbing a hill, and far away from others. But that didn’t mean he universally disliked people; they usually did something first to make him not like them.
Julian didn’t look at him when he sat down. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, while a mother and her sick kid walked in. The kid coughed nonstop, as if trying to expel a lung. Karl’s suspicion of Julian seemed unwarranted after the kid’s role as Good Samaritan. But what were the odds that Julian would arrive so soon after the crash? Was it a mere coincidence? Or had he been following the other vehicle in order to insure that Isla went over the edge of the cliff? Had he set the whole thing up?
The kid looked pathetic to him, with his long, greasy hair and his hipster jacket barely covering his shirtless torso. Then he remembered