it got for me to knuckle down and concentrate. Or not concentrate. Whatever.
After a fruitless half hour of driving in silence, I was climbing the walls and squirming in my seat with frustration. And that was when we hit the traffic.
I didn’t know whether refraining from talking was necessary, especially since the silence didn’t seem to be helping me, but I bit back a couple of curse words as I caught sight of the brake lights ahead and our car slowed first to a crawl, then to a stop. It was six thirty on a Sunday night, but I’d run into traffic snarls on the Beltway at two in the morning, so I wasn’t entirely surprised. Irritated, yes, but not surprised.
Steph glanced over at me as the traffic eased forward about six inches before coming to a stop again. “Anything?”
I shook my head and wondered if we should just give up. We weren’t getting anywhere—literally or figuratively—and being stuck in stop-and-go traffic is about as much fun as having a root canal.
“Maybe we should just take the next exit and call it a night,” I said. To hell with my vow of silence.
Steph gave me a withering older-sister look. “You aren’t seriously planning to give up after a half hour on the road, are you?”
We’d actually been on the road almost an hour, because the mansion wasn’t particularly close to the Beltway, but I supposed that wasn’t really very long in the grand scheme of things. Both Steph and I had understood that this would be a long, tedious night.
I shook my head. “Sorry. That was frustration talking. I can’t seem to get my mind to shut up so I can zone out.”
Steph shot me a droll smile as she propped her elbow against the window and laid her head down on her hand, waiting for the next opportunity to inch forward. “If anything can make your eyes glaze over, it’ll be this traffic. Now hush and get back to work.”
I hushed as ordered, and tried once again to let my mind wander. I spent more time than I care to admit mentally cussing out the traffic, wondering what the holdup was. My guess was an accident with rubberneckers, but if I was right, it was far enough away that we couldn’t see any flashing lights yet.
Roll forward. Stop. Roll forward. Stop. Roll forward . . .
I can get pretty damned keyed up sometimes, particularly when I’ve been dipping into the coffee too much, but eventually the monotony of the drive got to me. My mind drifted a couple of times, but I unfortunately noticed it drifting, which yanked me back into full alertness. But it took me less time to start drifting, and I figured I was going to either get myself into the zone or fall asleep.
I blinked, and saw that not only were we not stuck in traffic anymore, we weren’t even on the Beltway. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs.
I remembered thinking—dreaming?—that I was in a hedge maze, trying to find my way to the center. I’d mumbled to myself each time I got to an intersection and had to decide which way to go. I remembered a sense of urgency pressing on me, telling me to hurry. I’d started out walking, then switched to jogging, then to an all-out run. It was . . . clearer and more coherent than an ordinary dream, but fuzzier than just a flight of imagination. I honestly had no idea if I’d been awake or asleep.
The car came to a stop at a red light, and Steph turned to me with an inquiring raise of her brow. A couple of raindrops spattered on the windshield, and the trees swayed in a gust of wind. I leaned forward, staring up at the sky, but I saw no hint of the moon or of stars. The light turned green, and Steph drove through the intersection, continuing on straight, probably because I hadn’t told her to turn.
“Umm . . . Have I been giving you directions?” I asked.
Steph glanced over at me again. More raindrops spattered down, and she was forced to turn on the windshield wipers.
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “You’ve been kind of mumbling to yourself for a while. I thought you’d fallen asleep, only your eyes were open. Don’t you remember?”
I rubbed my eyes, but I knew I hadn’t been asleep. “I remember daydreaming, or something, about being in a hedge maze.”
I ran my hand through my hair in