Joyce Lamb

CHAPTER 1

    

     Jessie Rhoades squinted through the rain, flinching as lightning skittered across the black sky. Water raced down the windshield so swiftly the wipers couldn’t keep up. She knew she should pull over and wait out the storm, but there wasn’t much of a shoulder flanking the island’s narrow main drag. The thunderstorm was probably just the usual for southwest Florida. Rain would fall in a torrent for several minutes, then clear skies would claim the rest of the evening.

     Besides, it had been another stressful, eighteen-hour Monday at the newspaper, and she was eager to kick off her shoes and relax. Her destination was only a few minutes away. All she had to do was slow down and be careful. In fact, the familiar curve before her best friend Mel’s driveway was just ahead.

     She put her foot on the brake to slow for the small hill that preceded the curve.

     The brakes didn’t respond.

     Black ice.

     It usually caught visitors by surprise, especially Northerners. They didn’t realize that when rain on the road mixed with the oil left by heavy traffic, the resulting surface could be as slippery as ice. Jessie wasn’t a visitor, but she had relocated here from Illinois, so she knew how to handle ice.

     She pumped the brakes.

     Still, the car didn’t slow. She pumped more frantically.

     And then she saw the tree.

    

     ~

    

     Clay Christopher watched lightning spider-crack like splintering glass through the dark clouds. The thunder was almost continuous, deep and rumbling, rattling the foundation of the house. It was a reflection of his mood as he watched the storm over the Gulf of Mexico. It had been three years ago today that Ellen had died. No, was killed.

     They had been covering the never-ending unrest in Afghanistan for a cable news channel. Clay remembered it so clearly, how they had dashed across the street in Kabul while an intense firefight raged a full block away. They’d thought they were far enough away from the action, that no way would either of them be at risk.

     He had been in front, head down, flak jacket flapping, when he’d trip and gone down on one knee. Ellen had paused to help him, and he’d reached for her outstretched hand, already throwing out a “Thanks, hon,” when he felt her flinch.

     He again tasted the dirt their scrambling feet had kicked up, felt Ellen’s slim body stumble against his, saw her Nikon fly out of her hands. He caught her in his arms as she sank to the ground, her round, pale face a mask of bewildered pain.

     “El?” At first, he was as puzzled as she looked. Until he realized his hands were already slippery with blood. Ellen’s blood.

     “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus. You’re hit.” He stared down into her brown eyes, his mind blank about what to do. Her fingers gripped his arm hard, then went lax as her eyes threatened to roll back.

     The ping of a bullet off a nearby car fender snapped him out of his shock. He clutched his wife’s limp body to his chest and carried her to safety, where he lowered her to the dusty ground. She tried to speak, her lips barely moving. Raising his head, he began to yell for help.

     Now, Clay gulped down the last of his drink, crushing the remaining ice cube between his back teeth. The cheap gin had stopped burning his throat hours ago. Yet, he still felt the pain in his chest, the ache that never went away. It receded most of the time into a dull throb that flared only when something, or someone, reminded him of her. Or every March.

     He got up to pour another drink. A roar filled his ears, the only place he felt the alcohol.

     Damn it, he should have been over it by now. Why didn’t the pain go away? Why couldn’t he forget?

     He glanced around the house, taking in its tall windows, arched ceiling and ceramic tile floors. He and Ellen had searched for months for the lot and had found it on Calusa, a tiny barrier island off the southwest shore of Florida. They’d bought it with money he’d inherited from his grandfather, and construction had begun only three months before they’d headed to the Persian Gulf for six weeks to cover renewed military action there. They had decided it would be their final war-zone assignment, and then they would settle down to start a family.

     Now, plastic hung from the ceiling, cutting off the unfinished third of the house, marking the place where a baby’s room would have been. Clay had canceled the contractor’s work the week after Ellen died, unable to bear to finish the house without her and unable to put it on the market.

     He drained the liquor. He wanted his head to spin. He wanted to be falling-down drunk.

     He didn’t feel a thing.

     Except for that annoying sound in his ears. He that was when he realized it was not the buzzing that went with the drunkenness that eluded him. It was a car horn.

     Damned car alarms. People, tourists especially, didn’t have a clue when it came to car alarms. Florida thunderstorms were violent enough, with the beating rain and shaking thunder, to set them off by the dozens.

     He ambled to a front window and stared out at the water that fell in relentless sheets. Wind ruthlessly bent trees almost to the ground, let them snap back, only to bow them back the other way. That’s a metaphor for life right there, Clay thought. The ability to bend to the will of the universe was all that kept most people from snapping.

     He needed more gin.

     He didn’t bother with a raincoat or umbrella. Neither would be any match for the rain. His destination was a block up—a small grocery with a liquor department.

     When he opened the front door, a wall of moisture struck him head-on. He almost changed his mind, put off by the violence of the storm. But the prospect of slowly going insane if he stayed sober on this particular day urged him on.

     As he stepped outside, he ducked his head, telling himself he was an idiot, a pathetic, crazy idiot, to be so desperate. But he didn’t turn back.

     The rain, colder than he’d expected, soaked him in seconds.

     He kept his head down until the blaring car horn brought his chin up. Water streamed into his eyes as he took in the wreck of the car. Its front end was flush against the trunk of a banyan tree, steam, or smoke, billowing from under the crumpled hood.

     His heart started to hammer as he realized someone was still in the car.

     He wrenched open the driver’s side door. The driver, a woman, slumped against the steering wheel, her face turned away from him. He put a wet hand on her shoulder, hesitant to move her, aware of the damage he could cause if she had a neck injury.

     Then he saw the flames licking around the edges of the hood where the force of the impact had exposed the engine. The gushing rain didn’t seem to be having any effect on them.

     Clay made a decision. Better alive and paralyzed than dead.

     Trying to be gentle but quick, he unbuckled the woman’s seat belt and began to ease her out of the car, alarmed when her head lolled toward him and he saw blood.

     He lifted her free, grateful she wasn’t pinned. She hung limp in his arms, her head back over his forearm, one hand dangling, as he carried her to the house. The cold rain drenching her face, washing away blood in rivulets, did nothing to revive her.

     Inside, Clay placed her on the sofa, drawing the throw draped over the back over her saturated khaki slacks and white blouse.

     After he’d retrieved a towel from the bathroom, he dabbed at the blood at her temple, unable to resist taking a closer look at her. She was young, probably in her late twenties, with shoulder-length blond hair. Her nose was narrow, her lips full. Under normal circumstances he would have considered her striking, but at the moment she was too pale and lifeless.

     Fumbling with the cordless phone with one hand, he pressed his fingers to the inside of her wrist, where an irregular pulse beat.

     His alarm grew as it became apparent that the storm had killed the phone.

     Cursing under his breath, Clay dropped the towel and phone and scooped her up. He got her into his SUV in the garage and buckled her in, blanket and all. He would have preferred to take her to a better-equipped hospital on the mainland in nearby Fort McGregor, but he worried that would take too much time. As he drove through the deluge toward the island’s immediate-care clinic, he watched her for signs that she was coming to. She didn’t stir.

      When he carried her into the clinic’s waiting room, a woman in blue scrubs jumped to her feet and came out from behind the counter. “Bring her this way.”

     She led him at a brisk pace through a door and into an examination room. As he deposited the injured woman on an examination bed, a woman in a white doctor’s coat and a man in blue scrubs hurried in.

     “What happened?” the doctor asked. A gold name tag pinned to the lapel of her jacket read Dr. Marta Lewis.

     “Car hit a tree,” Clay said.

     “How long has she been unconscious?” Dr. Lewis asked.

     “Uh, I don’t know for sure. Half an hour, forty-five minutes.”

     “She’s awake,” the man in scrubs said.

     Clay looked down. Her eyes were the color of swirling smoke, the outer rims of her irises ringed in dark blue.

     “David?”

     He had to lean down to hear the whisper. At first, he thought she had mistaken him for someone else, but then he saw stark fear in her eyes. A terrifying thought hit him. “Was someone else in the car with you?” he asked.

     Blinking slowly, she seemed to force herself back from the edge of unconsciousness. She pressed her hand against the front of his shirt, as if to push him away.

     “Was someone in the car with you?” he repeated.

     Her hand dropped away, and her head rolled to the side.

     Turning, Clay stumbled toward the door. He imagined the car, a burned-out shell by now. No one had been in the front seat with her. He was sure he would have noticed. He tried to remember the backseat. Had there been a car seat back there, a child strapped in? Helpless.

     “Sir? We need you to fill out forms.”

     “Not now.”

     Outside, the driving rain struck him, and he broke into a run.