Chapter 18 Cursed
Cursed
I led a charmed life.
My SUV blew a head gasket on the way back, just after sunset.
I was going seventy miles an hour when the engine started to overheat. When white smoke started rolling out from the exhaust pipe, I lost power immediately.
I let off the accelerator and coasted to a stop on the side of the road as the engine hissed. I shouldn’t have trusted Lister’s dealership to work on my car. My car had a hundred and fifty thousand miles on her, but she’d never left me in the lurch.
I popped the hood and looked down at the aftermath with the flashlight on my cell phone.
My radiator fluid reservoir was dry. I poked around and pulled the oil dipstick, which came back milky with what I presumed was radiator fluid mixed in.
Fuck. I wasn’t a car-repair gal—I knew only enough to get by—but this looked expensive as fuck.
Still, I was lucky that it had happened in an area with no traffic, and that nobody had gotten hurt.
I stared at my phone. There was one bar here, and that was enough to call for a tow.
I opened my door and sat in the driver’s seat to wait, feeling the heat shimmering up from the pavement and smelling burning oil and radiator fluid as the engine cooked.
It would be hard to prove Lister’s guys had fucked up my car; it wasn’t like my car had just rolled off the showroom floor. But I was sure as fuck gonna try.
I scanned the highway, seeing nothing except hayfields and distant woods drenched in twilight. This was a pretty peaceful place to break down, as far as places to break down went.
Car headlights swept down the road, slowed, then pulled in behind me. Its windows were tinted, and no front license plate was required in my state. I watched in the rearview mirror as the car just sat there, engine on. I couldn’t see anything else.
My hand slid down for my sidearm. I didn’t like how this was going.
I felt as vulnerable as any woman with a breakdown in the middle of nowhere.
The driver of the car would be able to see through the headlights that there was only one person in the car before them, and see my ponytail. I closed my door and locked it.
Was this a run-of-the-mill opportunist? Or were the Kings of Warsaw Creek following me?
The headlights went out, and darkness washed across the road.
I heard a car door open, then another. Behind me, I could make out two shadows.
I inhaled, my heart beating steadily behind my sternum. If they wanted trouble, I’d give it to them. I clicked my gun’s safety off.
They were approaching from the driver’s side and the passenger side. If they were both armed, I’d have the chance to shoot only one before the other shot me…
A new set of headlights appeared on the road behind us, and I exhaled. The people from the dark car turned tail, climbed back into their car, slammed their doors, and peeled away.
I stared at the car as it passed me and zinged down the road. I saw two heads in the glare from the headlights behind me. The license plate was obscured by a certainly illegal tinted license plate holder.
The second car pulled up behind me, and red and blue lights switched on.
I sighed in relief.
A highway patrolman with a Marine buzz cut exited the car and came to my window. “Ma’am, can I help you?”
“Yeah, you certainly can.”
—
The tow truck showed up and I thumbed a ride with the highway patrol to the county line, where Monica picked me up.
“Hey, I really appreciate you riding to my rescue,” I said.
“No worries,” she said. “Where did you get the car towed to?”
“To Kapp’s Automotive.” Kapp’s was a smaller dealership specializing in luxury cars the next county over. They’d laugh at my battered little SUV. “I’m pretty sure they’re gonna say it’s toast.”
“Fuckers. Maybe they can help you build a case that Lister fucked it up?”
“I hope so. But honestly…book value on that car is only around three K. Even if I win a lawsuit, that’s not gonna touch a down payment on a new car.”
“You are, indeed, screwed.”
I scrunched down in the seat and sighed. I filled Monica in on what I’d learned so far today, omitting my little detour to visit my mother, and what I’d learned about Jasper. I also told her about the car that had pulled up behind me.
“What’s up with that?” Monica muttered.
“Dunno. I’m feeling like these guys are every—”
I was interrupted by Monica’s radio chirping. “C1, this is D6. Requesting your presence at 1142 Devlin Road.”
I lifted my eyebrow. “That’s the address for Lister’s dealership. Wonder if they got vandalized again.”
Monica frowned and reached for the radio. “I’m en route with L4.”
By the time we rolled up to the dealership, the place was lit like a Christmas parade, with patrol cars and fire trucks lining the service road entrance.
Monica rolled her window down at the roadblock, which was manned by Detwiler. “Detwiler, what’s going on?”
“You gotta see this for yourself,” he said, his eyebrows crawling up into his hairline. “Just don’t get too close.”
We tooled around, to find our path blocked by a fire truck. We parked and got out, walked around the fire truck, and were confronted by a firefighter.
“I’m sorry, ladies, but you can’t go any farther.”
“What’s going on?” I flashed my badge.
“A whole lot of destroyed cars.” He gestured to a line of caution tape.
He moved aside, and I sucked in my breath.
The parking lot had disappeared. A black pit had opened below it, swallowing dozens of cars and a corner of the building.
I wondered if the symbols spray-painted on those cars might have been a harbinger of what was to come, or if they had somehow summoned this disaster.
“What happened?” I whispered.
“Sinkhole,” the firefighter said. “Freak accident.”
“Anyone get hurt?”
“Fortunately, no. Just an unimaginable amount of property damage.”
Honestly, I felt a sting of satisfaction that Lister had gotten some of what was coming to him. “Is Lister here?”
The firefighter pointed to the edge of an EMS wagon. Lister sat on the bumper, holding a cup of coffee, staring into space.
“Mr. Lister?” I said.
He didn’t look at me. “I’m ruined. Totally ruined.”
“What happened?” Monica asked.
He shook his head. “I heard this terrible, terrible sound…like the earth opened up…and all those cars just fell in, one after another. Fifty-two brand-new cars.”
“Did they say why?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Insurance guy says that sometimes underground pockets form, worn away by water, and they break open…Of course, my policy doesn’t cover this.”
“That’s rough,” Monica offered.
“I’m cursed,” he said.
“Cursed?” I echoed, hoping he’d elaborate, maybe confess to something.
He shook his head. It seemed like he’d say more, but he only looked past us, at a black sedan pulling up. I couldn’t say it was the car that had pulled up behind me on the freeway, not for sure, but my skin crawled.
Jeff Sumner emerged and pushed his way through the crowd. He ignored Monica and me and went to Lister.
“It’s gonna be okay, buddy. It’s all gonna be okay. I swear.” Sumner’s eyes were hard and glinting when his gaze crossed mine.
When Monica and I retreated, I peered into the yawning pit of the car lot. From the depths, metal shifted against rock, squealing, echoing, bits of silt raining down.
And I swore that something laughed musically from the bottom of that pit, beckoning to me.
Transfixed, I slipped beneath the caution tape, listening. Water rushed from broken pipes, swirling around the bumpers of ruined cars.
Something thrummed and cracked below me. The ground shifted, pavement fracturing beneath my feet. I stumbled, and the blacktop I was standing on sheared away.
I twisted, clawed the air, grasping for a ragged edge of pavement as my feet kicked into space.
A hand grabbed mine and hauled me back, away from the pit. I was dragged back to solid ground, retreating behind the caution tape, scrambling back to safety as the firemen squawked into their radios.
“Jesus, Anna.” Monica’s hand was so tight around my wrist that it bruised me. “If you had gone down there, there would’ve been no way to bring you back.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Monica would risk herself to save me, even when I was being fucking stupid and didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t say that about very many people in my life.
And I understood that something down there would also stop at nothing to pull me down into its depths.
—
I got home just after midnight, when the fireflies lit up the forest at the edge of the house.
“You want some coffee?” I asked Monica.
“Nah. I’m heading home to bed. Catch you in the morning.”
We said our goodbyes, and I let myself into the house. Gibby came to greet me, his nails clicking on the scarred hardwood floors. Nick was in bed, snoring.
So much for that talk we were going to have.
I slipped into bed, and Gibby wriggled in between us.
I had faith that Nick would talk to me when he was ready.
I stared at the ceiling, thinking about this family I’d made.
Family was a terribly fragile thing. I didn’t want to let it go.
If Nick wanted to move away, I didn’t think I could bear being apart from him.
Not in the middle of the night, when all the fears that I couldn’t talk about clouded my head.
I couldn’t ask him how to interact with my mother.
My father had killed Nick’s mother, long ago, and Nick had lived with his grandparents.
I had a model of motherly love, certainly—my adoptive mother.
She and my adoptive father were enjoying their retirement, traveling.
They were currently on a cruise in Alaska.
I vowed that when they returned, I would take time off, enjoy my adoptive mom’s cooking and bring her flowers. Yes, that felt normal. Sane.