angel sent from God. And I know she’s watching over me. As a matter of fact, she’s watching over me right now. I swear to God, sometimes I can feel her.’
Dinah paused and swallowed away the lump that had formed in her throat. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s a crazy goddamn mess out here so I need to let you go. I need to concentrate on driving.’
‘How far away from home are you?’ Derrick asked.
Dinah squinted again through the windshield. Almost as if on cue, a flash of lighting exploded overhead, allowing her to catch a quick glimpse of a green exit sign on the side of the highway. Maverick Road. ‘About five miles now,’ Dinah said. ‘Should only take me about twenty more years to get home at this rate.’
Derrick clucked his tongue. ‘That sucks, girl. Anyway, be careful out there. I’d hate for anything to happen to my favourite client.’
‘Don’t you mean your only client?
Derrick laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s what I said. Anyway, I’ll call you in the morning. I’ve got some ideas I want to run by you. Some really big stuff in the works.’
Dinah switched off with Derrick and sighed. No doubt he was cooking up even more crazy schemes designed to get her even more publicity – as if publicity was something she needed any more of. She already had more publicity now than she knew what to do with. Enough to choke a horse.
Dinah shook her head in exasperation. When she’d agreed to do the reality television show six months earlier she’d known that the media scrutiny would be intense, but she’d had no idea just how intense it would be. Last week, she’d actually caught a photographer snooping through her garbage. Lord only knew what he’d been looking for – or what he’d found.
Chasing away the unpleasant thought with another quick shake of her head, Dinah’s heart nearly stopped dead in her chest when her tires suddenly hydroplaned on the slick pavement of the highway. She sucked in a sharp breath over her teeth that sent a sharp stab of pain shooting through her lungs and slammed down her foot on the brake pedal – the exact opposite of what all the experts told you to do in situations like this.
The car fishtailed wildly out of control, then took a sharp left-hand turn and headed directly toward the concrete divider in the middle of the highway. Dinah squeezed shut her eyes and gripped the steering wheel with all her might, bracing for bone-crushing impact.
But it never came.
Opening up her eyes again when the car finally came to a gentle stop five seconds later, Dinah gasped. The concrete divider was staring her dead in the face from no more than three feet away.
Before she knew it, she was laughing and crying at the same time. Against all odds, she was still alive.
And she knew exactly who to thank for that.
Lifting her stare to the heavens, Dinah breathed out a grateful sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Marilyn,’ she said. You’ve always been mama’s little angel, haven’t you?’
CHAPTER 24
Nicholas switched off the flashing lights and wildly blaring sirens of the ambulance before swinging it around the southwest side of Dinah Leach’s guesthouse ten minutes later. Purchased at auction for fifteen thousand dollars a year earlier with proceeds from Timmy’s television work and outfitted with all the latest bells and whistles, the ambulance was a Trojan horse to ensure he crossed off the first name on his list without drawing any undue attention to himself. After all, more was more sometimes, especially for a girl like him. His mother’s idea, of course.
Nicholas switched off the engine and studied the guesthouse. The reality star’s overflow housing looked impressive in its own right. Twice the size of a normal person’s house and a hundred times nicer. Sitting about thirty yards away from the main dwelling, it provided the perfect cover he’d need to get away with what he already knew would be his exceedingly perfect crime.
Stretching his neck six inches to the right, Nicholas lifted his left wrist to check his Mickey Mouse watch. With any luck at all, the two ladies he was waiting for would arrive at just about the same time. The sky had reached its darkest point of the night now and the howling wind seemed more insistent, more intense, transforming the spitting rain from earlier into a thunderous downpour that danced a gleeful jig on the ambulance’s metal roof. From the look of things, hurricane Allison