now someone had run Renee off the road and she’d lost her life. She wasn’t alive anymore. Becca couldn’t quite grasp it. Hudson’s sister, the only family he had left, was gone. The vibrant dark-haired reporter with the feeling she was being persecuted was gone.
She was about to follow after Hudson despite what he’d said when he came back through the doors, his face pale. She wanted to gather him in her arms and hold him tightly, but he seemed somewhat distant, clearly still unable to process all that had happened in such a short time.
“I called Zeke,” he said in a strange voice. “He was the only one I could think of to call.”
“I’m so sorry.” Becca’s eyes burned.
“I don’t believe she’s gone, Becca. I saw her. I saw…the body. But I still don’t believe it.”
Then she wrapped her arms around him and he pressed his forehead to hers. She felt the shudder go through him and squeezed her eyes shut on her own teary emotions. She wanted to be strong for him. She wanted to help.
“I’m going to the crash site,” he muttered, pulling away. “I want to see where it happened.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Becca followed him out to his truck. “You okay to drive?”
He nodded, got into his cab, pulled back onto Highway 101, and drove south, past the turn to 26 and inland. It was a spot they hadn’t passed on the way to Ocean Park Hospital, but it was definitely on the way to Deception Bay, the small town near where Renee had been staying.
It was a surreal trip. Neither Becca nor Hudson said much. The day had been surprisingly nice with the sun gaining control of the clouds, not the other way around, though now the early evening shadows were stretching inland and the sun was descending toward the sea.
And then they were there. A section of guardrail was twisted back, the metal hanging over the edge of a cliff. A gaping hole. Gravel had been stained with differing colors of spray paint, evidence left from the team reconstructing the accident.
Hudson pulled the truck to a stop, and he and Becca sat and stared at the break in the rusted metal rail far above the ocean. Then they climbed from the vehicle and Hudson walked to the edge, but Becca hung back, feeling queasy and strange. She stayed by the truck, one hand on the front fender, while Hudson went to the rim and looked over, his hair ruffled by spurts of wind, the sleeves of his denim shirt pressed against his arms from its force.
Becca couldn’t move forward. Logically, all she had to do was put one foot in front of the other but there was a barrier she couldn’t see, holding her in place. An oppressive, invisible wall. And then she heard the dull roar that heralded a vision, the sudden blindness, the building headache. “No,” she pleaded, although it could have been in her mind.
Ringo whined at her from the car. One of her hands was still on the hood, and she concentrated on it with all her strength, turning toward the vehicle for support before she was completely taken over by the vision.
She expected to see Jessie but instead she was in a vehicle herself, spinning the steering wheel, screaming, desperately trying to gain control. Trees and brush flashed by as her car plunged off the road and down the embankment. Her car. It was her car! Her accident! Instinctively Becca cradled her abdomen, protecting her baby. She could hear the rush of the engine from the car behind her, the one that had forced hers over the edge. In a panic she glanced back. She saw him driving away, heading like a maniac away from the scene of the crime.
And then blackness. Nothing but blackness.
Hudson scanned the accident scene. He was sick with grief and it had driven weariness into the marrow of his bones, but he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t let this terrible nightmare become a reality.
“Who did this?” he whispered. He didn’t believe it was an accident. Someone had purposely run Renee off the road. And the colored paint on the asphalt road and gravel shoulder told him the sheriff’s department agreed.
Why?
He tore his gaze from the sheer rocks that led to the gray and white plumes of surf far below. He glanced at the ground, saw the tire tracks. He could see where she had stomped on the brakes but had been unable to gain purchase. The tracks just lost their tread as the wheels locked and the car kept moving straight toward the edge and through the guardrail, propelled over the cliff.
Pushed!
Intentionally forced over the edge to her death.
“Goddamned son of a bitch.” His body was freezing. The deputy had alluded to the accident but he’d been holding back information; Hudson had felt it at the hospital but had been too absorbed in his own pain to pick up the signals. Someone had intentionally run Renee off the road.
His chest swelled with misery. He felt incapable of crying and didn’t know why. He wished he could. That there was some way to release the weighty buildup of sorrow that was choking him.
Becca made a strangled sound and Hudson looked her way to see her clinging to the front of his truck just before she slid to the gravel. He raced to her side, covering the ground in four large leaps, grabbing her just as she sprawled in a heap.
“Becca!” He heard the tremor in his voice. The quake of real fear.
She was breathing. Her eyes moving. And he was glad that it was one of her “visions” and not some deadly disaster. There had been too many of those.
He cradled her head and rocked her and his eyes burned, unaware of the crash of the sea and the wind blowing through his hair. Cars traveled past, slowing, then speeding forward in this snaking area of roadway, but he clung to Becca, his thoughts jumbled with fear and fury. Something was happening to their group. Something was after them. Wasn’t that what Renee had said? Or near enough?
What was it?
Several minutes passed while Becca lay in his arms, her body twitching as if she were fighting off an attack. When she slowly opened her eyes, she gazed at him for a moment in bewilderment.
“Jesus, Becca, you scared the hell out of me,” he said.
She blinked several times, then inhaled sharply. “Renee,” she murmured.
“You had another vision.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” She slowly sat up, feeling weary.
“What did you see?” he asked tautly. “Anything about Renee?”
She looked into his tortured blue eyes. He believed in her visions at some level, but it was small comfort in the face of such loss. “I saw an accident,” she said carefully. “Where a car was run off the road by another driver. But it wasn’t Renee.”
He gazed at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
“I think it was…me. My accident. From my past.”
“Was Jessie any part of it?”
“No…”
“It was more a memory, then?”
