You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,4
Just get the car out of the road so you don’t get T-boned.
She twisted on the ignition. The starter scraped, but nothing happened.
“Oh, come on!”
Another try, and the engine turned over, but . . . a movement caught her attention. Something dark in the shards of glass in the rearview.
From the corner of her eye, she saw something move, a dark and skittering image in the spiderweb of the rearview mirror.
The back of her throat went bone dry.
Oh, God. The person she’d seen moments before.
The cause of the accident.
She glared into the mirror, tried to make out the idiot who had caused this wreck. The damned moron was behind her car, barely visible, but definitely there. And now moving to the center of the road.
As if to block her path again.
Still risking both their lives.
Megan’s temper spiked. What kind of a cretin would—
She threw open the door just as a cautionary Be careful cut through her mind. “Are you out of your mind?” she screamed, craning her neck for a better view. “Get out of the way! What the hell’s wrong with you?”
No movement.
Nothing but bitter cold air.
And the silent whiteout.
No person.
Just the eerie quiet, broken only by the rasp of the Corolla’s engine.
The warning hairs on the back of her neck raised.
Had it all been her imagination?
No, of course not.
She pulled the door shut and was about to back up when she saw the figure again. Right in the middle of the road . . . again. Almost taunting her.
What the hell was this?
It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s weird as hell. Not good. Get out. Get out now!
She swallowed back her rising fear.
What if the person needs a ride? What if they’re stranded?
“Who cares?” she muttered. It wasn’t as if the jerk-wad was waving her down, trying to get help. No, this was something else.
Something very wrong.
Something evil.
She touched her toe to the gas again.
Her damaged car struggled, wheels spinning.
“Don’t do this,” she whispered, her panic rising. She had to get out of here now. Her phone, where the hell was her phone? No time to search for it. “Let’s go,” she said to the car as the engine ground, the wheels spun, and she went nowhere. “Let’s go, let’s—”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the side-view mirror.
The person in black was approaching!
Now she trod on the accelerator. “Come on!”
Closer. Through the curtain of snow, a figure dressed in ski gear from head to toe—mask and hat to boots—made his or her way along the side of the whining car.
Megan let up on the gas, then hit it hard. The back end of the car shifted a bit, but the tires found no traction.
The person was right outside the door, and Megan was ready to yell at the cretin, to read the brain-dead idiot the riot act, when she noticed the gun, a black pistol in one gloved hand.
Oh. God.
She began shaking her head, still trying to drive off until the barrel of the gun was level with her head.
Megan’s heart dropped.
Fear curdled through her blood.
Panic jettisoned through her, and she started to turn. To run.
Leave here. Now!
“Get out!” the attacker growled.
Megan froze.
That voice!
Did she know this person? This nutcase?
She couldn’t tell. All she could focus on was the barrel of the gun.
Black.
Deadly.
Aimed straight at her heart.
CHAPTER 3
Valley General Hospital
Riggs Crossing, Washington
December 4
“I have to leave.” James Cahill gazed hard at the nurse adjusting his IV. Lying in bed, doing nothing, was getting to him. The hospital walls were closing in on him. And the not remembering? That was killing him.
“In due time,” she said pleasantly, offering him a sympathetic smile. Sonja Rictor, RN, according to the name tag that swung from a lanyard at her neck. In her forties, a knowing smile on her face, her curly red hair clipped away from her face, a sprinkling of freckles sprayed across a slightly upturned nose, she was slim and attractive. And, he guessed, blessed with a will of iron behind that empathetic grin.
“The time is now.” It was all he could do not to grab her wrist and give it a shake, to emphasize that he was serious. He’d always been a little claustrophobic, blessed or cursed with a lot of energy. That much he did remember. Being confined in a hospital was definitely not his thing.
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
She gave him an “I’ve heard it all before” look that, he supposed, was meant to shut him up. It didn’t.