it was the same pickup that had been traveling in the opposite direction only moments before, its headlights on high. She watched until the red of the oval-shaped taillights disappeared around the curve ahead.
Only then did she draw a deep, relieved breath. The first one she’d taken in a while, she realized. Even if it was the same truck, she told herself, there were dozens of explanations. A couple of kids out joyriding. Or maybe the driver had forgotten something and had needed to go back to town for it.
Just because the same vehicle passed her twice on a relatively deserted stretch of highway didn’t mean she should get paranoid. Despite those attempts at self-assurance, she automatically slowed the car. Let whoever is in such a hurry get far ahead. Let him get to Linton long before I do. Let him arrive, take care of his business and get out of my way.
After a few minutes, that ridiculous sense of threat began to fade. She even managed to relax the grip her hands had taken on the wheel and to sit back in the seat. Despite the poor markings, the centerline was proving to be a reliable guide. Only a few more miles to the town limits, and then she could look for the turnoff that would take her to the Bedford house.
Daring to glance away from the road a moment, she adjusted the heater, feeling better as the warm air began to fill the car. She pushed the button on the CD player, letting the familiar, relaxing sound of Norah Jones’s voice wash over her.
She looked up at the rearview mirror to find the road behind her still deserted. There would probably be very few people out on a night like this. Even as the thought formed, headlights appeared in front of her at the top of the next rise. Her hands automatically tensed around the wheel again.
Ridiculous, she chided herself as she loosened them. Even if this were the same pickup, that was no reason to act as if its driver were targeting her. He probably hadn’t thought twice about her car, except to bemoan her lack of speed.
She tried to decide if the truck would have had time to return to town and then make it back here. Since she had no reference points along the unfamiliar stretch of highway, and since she’d failed to look at the odometer when she’d left the truck stop, she had no idea how far from town she was.
She tried to ignore the approaching lights, again keeping the car as near the shoulder as she dared. This attack of nerves wasn’t like her. And she hated it. All she could do was put the unaccustomed anxiety down to her exhaustion and the emotional toll of the last few days. After all, her husband had died on one of the roads in this area.
She raised her eyes from the yellow line, watching as the approaching lights grew larger. And they were still on high, she had time to think before she realized that they were not only blindingly bright, they were also headed directly at her.
She blinked, attempting to see through the driving rain. In the split second she had to evaluate the path of the oncoming car, she knew she hadn’t been mistaken. It was headed straight for her car.
She swerved to the right, that reaction unthinking. The right tires left the road with a jolt as the headlights shone into her eyes, their glare terrifying.
At the last second before collision, she jerked the steering wheel, plunging the Toyota completely off the road. It bounced over some unseen obstacle as the pickup roared by, so close she couldn’t believe it hadn’t struck her car.
She had automatically slammed on the brakes, but as the car began to fishtail, she released them, trying to steer back up onto the road. The back right tire seemed to be slipping in the roadside mud. All she accomplished was to turn the car so that it continued to slide sideways along the shoulder for a few more feet until the right front fender struck a telephone pole.
Her rate of speed had been slowed enough by then that the impact was minimal. Restrained by her seat belt, her head jerked forward, slamming back into the headrest as the car came to an abrupt stop.
Stunned, she sat without moving as the wipers continued to clear the rain off the windshield, revealing the twin beams of her own headlights shining across the two-lane at an upward angle. She looked to her left, but there was no sign of the pickup that had run her off the road.
She tried to analyze her impressions of its make or model, but everything about the last few seconds had been a blur. She’d been too busy trying to avoid a collision to get a clear picture of anything about it except those glaring lights.
After a few seconds, she reached over and punched the off button on the CD player. In the sudden silence, the drumming of the rain and the noise from the back-and-forth movement of the wipers seemed to intensify. As did her feeling of isolation.
Someone had just run her off the road. She was out in the middle of nowhere with a possibly disabled car.
That was the first thing she needed to find out, she realized. Whether the car could be driven back into town.
Her knees were shaking so badly with delayed reaction that it was difficult to get her foot back on the gas pedal. She eased the accelerator down, but the back tires spun, unable to get any traction in the mud. After a couple of careful attempts, she shut off the engine and then killed the lights.
Now there was only the sound of the rain, but she felt safer in the darkness. If he came back again—
Despite the fact that her body was vibrating as if she had a chill, she had enough presence of mind to realize that thought had slipped over the line. Someone had forced her off the road, but the idea that the driver had made a couple of preliminary passes at her before he’d done so was ridiculous.
This couldn’t have been deliberate. A drunk driver. Or, as she had speculated before, teenage joyriders.
The arguments presented by her rational mind had no effect on the surety of its more primitive, instinctive part. Someone had deliberately caused her to wreck her car. The same someone who had sped by her with his lights on bright. The same someone who had passed her with an angry wail of his horn.
Who might even now be turning his truck around to come back and finish the job he’d begun. She could sit here and wait for him to return, or—
Put in those terms, the decision was simple. She reached across and grabbed her purse off the passenger seat. Even as she climbed out of the car, her fingers fumbled her cell phone out of the bottom of her bag.
She could call 911, although they probably wouldn’t consider a car in a ditch an emergency. Better to dial information and get the name of the nearest wrecker service. It would probably be out of Pascagoula, but there might be something local. In any case, it didn’t seem she had a choice.
And then she needed to call Mrs. Bedford. She had already missed supper, and if she were a couple of hours later getting home, as she suspected she would be, she knew Lorena would imagine the worst.
Wrecker first, and then the Bedford house. Even as she dialed information, the image of a pair of mocking blue eyes was in her head. She could imagine Jeb Bedford’s reaction if she told him what she believed had happened tonight. The same one anyone in this sleepy little Southern town would have.
That didn’t mean she was wrong, of course. It only meant that she would be alone in her opinion. Being alone, however, was something with which she was now very familiar. Something with which she had long ago made her peace.
CHAPTER SIX
IF IT HADN’T BEEN for Lorena, there was no
