she was taking a phone call or checking an address. The painkillers she’d taken earlier began to work and the dizziness eased a little. She thought again about trying to reach for the purse.
But before she could make the move, she heard the sound of tires popping on gravel, the rumble and surge of an automatic transmission shifting gears and the slam of a car door.
Even her hearing had gone haywire, because she couldn’t tell which direction any of it was coming from. Behind her? Far side of the road? She didn’t know whether to call out or stay silent.
She heard footsteps crunching on the gravel shoulder. They stopped beside her open car window. A man cleared his throat. “Everything okay here, ma’am?” The voice was gravelly and slow and faintly threatening. Again, she didn’t know what to do. Wish it would go away, or ask it for help?
“Um, yes, just resting my eyes,” she lied, to buy a little time. Maybe in a few seconds she could summon the ability to open her eyes and move enough to look at him, see what kind of a man he was, whether he looked as if she could trust him.
She tried it, letting a slit of vision appear between her lids, but the light and blurring hit with merciless speed and she couldn’t see a thing.
There was a pause. The voice stayed silent, but the feet didn’t move. Then the man spoke again, deliberate and slow. “I’m a Vermont state trooper, ma’am. You’re going to need to look at me, and show me your driver’s license.”
The woman with her head and arms on the steering wheel didn’t move, in response to Daniel’s request.
He couldn’t see her face at all, couldn’t tell how old or young she was, or what she looked like. Dark hair with gleaming golden lights fell around her head and onto the wheel, as effective as a deliberate disguise. He could see the frame of her dark glasses, but on a summer afternoon those were hardly a sinister attempt at concealing her identity.
She seemed a little on the thin side, the knobs of her backbone visible through a stretchy cream-colored top, as well as the faintest outline of a light blue bra. Below that, she wore a filmy patterned skirt.
She was in her twenties or thirties, he decided. The skin on her hands was smooth and soft. Her nails were neat and clean and bare of polish. The clothing looked clean and summery and of good quality, suited to the late-model car she was driving and the warm July afternoon. A chunky purse lay on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and a bottle of water had rolled against the seat back.
Nothing out of place, except for the fact that she didn’t move.
He assessed the situation. She could be on the point of passing out from drink or drugs. She could be mentally ill. She could be working some kind of a scam, luring passing motorists to stop and offer help, at which point her accomplices would appear out of the undergrowth for a gunpoint robbery. Daniel had been a hospital security guard in New York City for three years, then a police officer in New York and a state trooper here in Vermont for a total of five. He’d seen all of these scenarios and worse.
“Are you ill, ma’am?” he asked, after weighing the wording of the question in his mind.
“Yes, a migraine. A bad one.”
“I’d like to show you my ID.”
“My vision is blurred, and I’m having a dizzy spell. I can’t see.”
“In that case, I’m going to have you feel the insignia on my shirtsleeve. It’s a double chevron. I want you to know that I’m an officer of the law.” Leaning down to the open car window, he kept his eyes on the screen of shrubby trees beyond the shoulder of the road, waited for the sound of slurring—either real or faked—in her voice.
She reached up, found his shirtsleeve and felt the raised weave of the insignia, rubbing neat fingers across the fabric, brushing his bare upper arm with the heel of her hand just below the hem of the short sleeve. The touch was accidental, yet oddly personal. “Okay. Thanks,” she said. “I do believe you.”
“Do you need medical attention, ma’am?”
“Yes.” If she was faking, then she was good at it. If she was impaired by substance abuse, it didn’t show.
“I’ll call the ambulance,” he said.
“No, that’s … not necessary. Not an ambulance.”
First indication of something not quite right. He went on high alert. If the “dizzy spell” was bad enough that she really couldn’t move, then why didn’t she want an ambulance?
But she was speaking again. “Call my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“He’s a doctor. Andy McKinley. He lives just a couple of miles from here. He’ll come get me.”
Daniel knew Andy quite well. Doctors and law enforcement officers tended to know each other in a rural community like Radford. There was a connection between hospital emergency rooms and crime, and he and Dr. McKinley had been involved in various incidents together. Andy was a good guy. Understood the police angle. Went the extra mile. Didn’t let any ego get in his way. Daniel would almost call him a friend.
He didn’t let on to this woman right away that the name was familiar, however. In his experience, personal information was best handled on a need-to-know basis, and he considered that most people needed to know very little about him.
Some people—work colleagues, and his sister, Paula, for example—said that this showed in the way he talked, and the way he often paused before he talked, but he didn’t care and he wasn’t prompted to change.
Andy’s sister would learn of his connection with her brother soon enough. No sense wasting time or words over it now. “Andy McKinley,” he echoed, giving nothing away. “Can you give me his number?”
Obediently Scarlett reeled off the digits of Andy’s cell phone, then heard a moment later, “Andy? It’s Daniel Porter, here.”
What?
The name ambushed Scarlett from out of the past. She couldn’t take it in, couldn’t react. Daniel—that other Daniel—had grown up in Vermont, somewhere near here. Indirectly, two steps removed, that Daniel Porter was the reason she was here, now, although he wouldn’t know it, and she hadn’t thought of the Vermont connection herself in years. Hadn’t thought about Daniel at all, except for the maddening fact that he wouldn’t stay out of her dreams.
But now he was here.
Because it had to be the same man.
She couldn’t know for sure, since the blurred vision meant she couldn’t look at him and his voice wasn’t enough to go on, but it had to be him. This man had said he was an officer of the law, she’d felt the insignia on his shirt and she knew that a law enforcement career had always been Daniel’s goal.
It had to be him.
She waited for a whole slew of possible emotions to wash over her—anger, regret, embarrassment, self-doubt and loss—but none of them came. She was simply too shocked.
“I have your sister here,” he said into the phone, “pulled over on Route 47, just coming in to town.” He
