Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
It was nearly six in the evening and the day hadn’t cooled down at all. The temperature still hovering around the thirty-three degrees Celsius mark.
Kenny surveyed her inhospitable surroundings apprehensively, convinced that she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. With the red sand, sun-scorched shrubbery, and mostly dead trees from the last bushfire that had ravaged the area, this place could quite literally be described as hell.
This was what she got for insisting on doing this drive alone.
She’d mistakenly believed that the nearly seven-hour long drive would somehow give her clarity.
Help her mentally prepare for what was to follow once she reached her destination.
But all it had done was make her even more apprehensive and cement her fear that this was a colossal error in judgment.
She didn’t enjoy driving. She didn’t like traffic.
And now that she found herself on this dusty, gravel road in the middle of nowhere, she questioned her very sanity.
Surely only a madwoman would have set off to parts unknown, in an unfamiliar car, with an uncertain and likely hostile reception awaiting her at the other end of her foolhardy journey.
She stopped her car in the middle of what could barely be described as a road, and curled her hands around the top of the steering wheel, before resting her forehead on her knuckles.
Her air conditioning had died just past Mossel Bay and she’d spent the last hour slowly broiling in this overpriced, useless hunk of metal.
Driving with the windows down had become a necessary evil.
As a result, Kenny was not only hot but also windblown, had probably swallowed a fair few tiny winged creatures, and now, thanks to this nightmare of a road that she’d been rattling down for the last twenty minutes, she was also covered in a fine layer of red dust, which was turning to mud on her sweaty skin.
“Fucking fantastic,” she muttered, lifting her head to glare at the road that still stretched ahead of her, without any end in sight.
She should’ve let Paul drive her. But she’d wanted to prove…something. She wasn’t even sure what anymore. Whatever it was definitely wasn’t worth this.
She glared at the car’s infotainment screen. The map had disappeared completely now, leaving only the blue line of her route on a white screen.
She stared at it in disbelief and horror before even that line disappeared and a No Signal sign popped up in its place.
“Oh my God,” she yelled at the screen. “You’re literally leading me to my death, you bastard!”
Recalling way too many horrific stories of people continuing on in situations like this before winding up stranded and/or dead, Kenny eyed her petrol gauge and then cast a look at her one bottle of water, before swearing and putting the car in reverse.
No way was she going to continue on without water, and on only half a tank of petrol. Better to get back to the highway, where at least she had signal, and regroup.
She reversed until she reached a suitable spot on the narrow road to execute a three-point turn. She managed that pretty efficiently and was about to pat herself on the back when the rear right wheel dipped and the car just…refused to move an inch farther forward.
“Oh no…come on, man! What the hell?” She revved the engine but the wheels simply spun, kicking up dust and debris which flew in through the open windows, caking Kenny and the car’s formerly pristine interior with even more of that annoying red dust.
She got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her, frustrated beyond measure. A quick walk to the back of the car confirmed her worst fears. The right back wheel was stuck in a pothole filled with what looked like fine, loose sand.
She planted her hands on her hips and glared at the tire, before kicking it and then yelping when her big toe screamed in agony.
She hopped around on one foot, swearing like the proverbial sailor, while feeling like a beleaguered cartoon character.
After a few minutes of more futile swearing while the throbbing in her toe lessened—that would teach her to kick at tires while wearing flip-flops—she glared at her car for a long moment, before looking up and down the road in the vain hope of seeing a car approaching.
Or at least the dust trail of one in the distance.
No such luck.
The heat shimmered on the surface of the road, and the silence was broken by nothing but the occasional lonely call of a fish eagle, and the loud, persistent buzz of thousands of cicadas off in the distance. Well, she hoped they were off in the distance.
Kenny definitely wasn’t up to dealing with a horde of cicadas descending upon her like some biblical plague right now.
She got back into the car and sat there for a while, staring at the desolate road. She checked her phone. Still no signal.
“So this is where I die,” she intoned glumly. She wasn’t usually so prone to melodrama, but if ever an occasion called for it, surely this was it.
She considered her choices. She could go the route of wait and see, which wasn’t great. It was nearly half past six and the light would only last another three hours tops. She definitely didn’t fancy sitting here in the dark. There was bound to be wild animals out here.
She wasn’t too far from the town of Riversend, but her drive into this hellscape had been half an hour long, so her walk would back be twice that, or longer in this heat. No guarantee she’d make the town before nightfall.
Or maybe she could go in the direction the GPS had originally sent her down, in the hopes of finding Tina and Harris’s house. But since she wasn’t sure it was right, that would be a fool’s errand.
Or she could walk until she got signal again. It hadn’t been too far back that she’d had a signal, so the walk would be, what, five minutes? Ten? It couldn’t possibly be more than that.
It was the only viable option, really.
She switched the car back on to close the windows, and then grabbed her phone and water bottle, and reluctantly exited the vehicle.
The cicadas sounded even louder now. But that was probably because the silence around the buzzing insects had intensified. Even the eagle had moved on.
She stared down at her feet, noting her big toe was starting to swell and bruise, and for a brief moment she entertained the notion that it might be broken.
She shoved the thought to the back of her head and considered the wisdom of changing into sturdier shoes.
She had a pair of sneakers carelessly tossed in the back of the car.
It would likely hurt the toe like hell, but it would be better than possibly slipping and falling in these flimsy flip-flops.
Also with scorpions and other venomous creatures skittering about, it was better to be safe.
Decision made, she quickly donned her sneakers, wincing when the pain in her toe escalated from bearable to excruciating in an instant.
Why the hell was she even out here in the first place? Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling her to just move on with her life.
She shook her head impatiently. That didn’t matter right now. Regret and doubt would not change her current reality. She was in a somewhat precarious predicament. One that could go badly very quickly if she wasn’t careful.
She limped determinedly back in the direction she’d first come, valiantly ignoring the escalating pain in her foot, and checking her phone for signal every couple of minutes.
She kept her eyes trained on the dusty road ahead, extremely cognizant of the fact that there were definitely venomous snakes lurking close by.
She was soon enveloped by a swarm of biting midges, and no matter how much she swatted and swung at them, they dogged her every step.
She looked back after five minutes and was alarmed to note that her car was actually farther away than she’d thought. She stopped and checked her phone again.
“Oh, thank God!”
One bar. Just one. But hopefully it was enough. She didn’t think, just called the only person who could possibly help her right now.
Only the phone rang and rang and rang. Before going silent. Not to voice mail. Which meant that he’d declined the call.
She stared at the screen for a long moment, desperation warring with pride.
Another glance reconfirmed her dire circumstances. She tapped out a quick text.
Please answer your phone, Smith. I’m in trouble. I need help.
Two blue checkmarks. Same as all the other messages she’d sent him in the month since he’d left. With not one response to any of them.
Still, he’d seen her message and had just hung up on her, which meant that he had the phone in his hand. Hopefully, he didn’t hate her so much that he’d ignore a plea for help.
Her pride and her heart were both already too badly bruised to want to find out, but she was all out of options and he was closer to her right now than AAA.
She swatted at those bitey midge bastards again, and swiped a forearm across her grimy forehead before saying a silent prayer and redialing.
More interminable ringing followed by a click and then silence.
For a second she believed he’d ended the call again but then a slight, weary sigh betrayed his presence at the other end of the line.
“Smith?”
“What do you want, Kenna?” Nothing but icy hostility in that voice.
“I was coming to see you—”
“Why the fuck would you want to do that? Our lawyers can handle everything.”
Her heart dropped, and she felt abruptly sick. It had been the unwelcome arrival of the issue of divorce summons that had set her on this foolish course in the first place.
She should have known the moment the document had been served at her office a week ago that trying to speak about this with Smith would be futile.
“I see that now,” she whispered. She’d been such a fool. She should let this—him—go. It truly was over.
“Right, good.” His tone was brusque. Dismissive. “That’s settl—”
Crap.
She felt like a prisoner who’d wasted her one phone call.