Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Matthias’s phone jarred him from a sound sleep. The red light on the hotel’s alarm clock read two a.m. Adrenaline jolted him the rest of the way awake. His phone’s glowing screen identified the caller as the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
“Detective Matthias Honeywell,” he answered, already out of bed and reaching for his jeans.
The man on the other end of the call gave his name, but it evaporated from Matthias’s consciousness. “I’m afraid there’s been a traffic collision.”
“Emma,” he whispered. “Is she…?”
“She’ll be fine. The paramedics are checking her out.”
He would’ve been relieved… had she been the one calling him. “What about her sister?”
“Nell Anderson has been transported by ambulance to East Liverpool City Hospital.”
Matthias put the phone on speaker so he could pull on his jeans and a shirt. “How bad?”
“I’m no doctor, but from what I gather, she suffered a broken leg. Could’ve been much worse. Their car is undriveable. Would you be able to come to the scene?”
* * *
Matthias pulled up a map on his phone. From the hotel to the hospital was roughly forty-two miles northwest, with the accident scene another eleven miles north. With the destination set, he started the Jeep. He hadn’t made it out of the hotel’s parking lot before Emma called.
“Are you okay?” he demanded, not bothering with a hello.
“I think so.”
She didn’t sound okay. “Where are you? I’m coming to pick you up.”
“I’m still here. With Eric’s car.” She groaned. “He’s gonna kill me.”
“He’s not going to kill you.” Matthias steered onto the street.
Her laugh sounded anything but amused. “I’m calling him next. He needs to hear it from me.”
“The patrolman who contacted me said Nell’s on her way to the hospital.”
“I wanted to go with her, but they wouldn’t let me.”
“That’s a good thing. It means you aren’t hurt badly.”
“I’m better than she is. Or the car.”
He eased to a stop at a red light. “What happened?”
She didn’t reply right away. Had she fallen asleep? Matthias knew the kind of emotional trauma that would surface for her after her parents’ accident. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, secretive. “We were run off the road.” Even softer, she added, “And I’m pretty sure it was intentional.”
* * *
Less than an hour later, Matthias spotted the emergency strobes in the southbound lanes of Ohio Route 30 as he drove north.
Unfamiliar with the area, he had no clue how far he’d have to go to reach the next exit and turn around, so he pulled onto the berm, shut off the engine, and left his hazards on.
Traffic was light, making it easy to sprint across the two northbound lanes.
Staggering through the grass median strip in the dark was more of a challenge.
He climbed over the low concrete Jersey barrier and paused to take in the situation.
A tow company’s flatbed hauler was backed up to Eric’s Prius, which sat at an angle off the side of the highway, nose against a tree. A man in a work uniform was bent over, attaching chains to the car’s rear end.
A highway patrol cruiser was parked to the north of the tow truck and Prius, red and blue emergency lights sweeping the dark landscape. Flares sizzled along the edge of the road, warning what little traffic there was at this hour to slow down.
There was no ambulance and no sign of Emma. Then he spotted her as she stepped out of the cruiser and waved to him.
He returned her wave and waited for a tractor-trailer to roar past, buffeting him with a blast of air, before he jogged across the southbound lanes.
Emma met him at the side of the road, collapsing into his arms, trembling. Matthias noticed the patrolman exit the cruiser and approach. Matthias held Emma with one arm, extending his right to shake the cop’s hand.
“Drake,” he said. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Honeywell,” Matthias said and thanked him for calling.
Drake motioned to Emma. “I know Ms. Anderson wants to get to the hospital to check on her sister, but—” He brought his focus to her.
“We’ve put out alerts to the tri-state area about the car that hit you.
I know you didn’t get a good look at it, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find, considering it had to have sustained considerable damage. ”
Matthias sensed that Emma wanted to say something but held back. Instead, she thanked the cop.
Drake touched the brim of his campaign hat. “I’ll let you both get on your way. I hope you have a better day.” He started back to his cruiser but paused to point in the direction of Matthias’s vehicle. “Watch yourselves crossing the highway.”
Matthias raised a hand in acknowledgment.
He drew Emma to arm’s length away so he could take a better look at her in the light from the cruiser’s headlamps. Remarkably, she didn’t have any visible injuries. Concerned about the invisible ones, he gently cupped her face in his hands. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Ask me again when the adrenaline wears off.”
“What about your head? You’re still recovering from a concussion, you know.”
“Yes, I do know,” she said giving him a look filled with snark. “The airbags and seatbelts did their job. I may have some bruises, but I didn’t hit my head.”
He brushed her cheekbone with a thumb. “Good.” He released her face and took her hand. “Let’s go.”
Once safely across all four lanes and settled in the Jeep, Emma exhaled. Matthias shifted in his seat to look at her. “Okay, what weren’t you saying back there?”
She turned her head to meet his gaze. “He said they were putting out an alert to the tri-state area.”
“Yeah. So?”
“I don’t think they’ll find the car in West Virginia or Pennsylvania. I’m pretty sure he was tailing us all the way from Akron.”
Matthias did some quick mental calculations based on the GPS map he’d used to get here. “Akron’s almost… what? Eighty miles away?”
“About that. Yeah.”
“You’ve had a tail for eighty miles?”
“I think so.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“No.” She hedged. “Maybe.”
“What do you mean ‘maybe’?”
“I can’t be sure, at least not until I talk to Nell again.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I’ll tell you on the way to the hospital.” She waved at the road ahead of them. “There’s an exit about a half mile away. You can get turned around there. I’ve already broken my promise to Eric to not let Nell out of my sight.”
Matthias started the Jeep. “You didn’t really have a choice in the matter.”
* * *
Matthias may have been right about not having a choice, but it did nothing to soothe Emma’s heart. Nell had a broken leg at the very least. She was either on her way to or at the hospital.
Where doctors would administer pain medication. The same stuff Nell was addicted to.
After directing Matthias to the exit, across the overpass, and back onto Route 30 heading south, Emma placed the call she’d been dreading.
Eric’s greeting sounded panicked. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re fine. Mostly. But we were in a wreck.”
“Oh my God. What happened? What do you mean mostly fine?”
“We think Nell broke her leg. They took her by ambulance to the hospital in East Liverpool. I’m with Matthias. He’s driving me to her right now. I’ll call you once I get there and see her.”
“You do that. Wait. You said Matthias is driving you.”
She knew what he was getting at. “I’m afraid your car got a little beat up. They were loading it onto a flatbed when we left the scene.”
Eric fell silent for a few moments before she heard him exhale. “That’s okay. As long as you and Nell aren’t badly hurt. I can get a new car. I can’t get new sisters.”
Emma repeated her promise to call him again once she saw Nell and disconnected. “That went better than I expected,” she said to Matthias.
“You knew he wouldn’t give you grief about the Prius. Maybe later. In jest. After he’s sure you and Nell are healed.”
The thought of later, with Eric heckling her about his car, made her snicker. “Definitely.”
“Now. What the hell happened tonight?”
She began to tell him about the headlights in her rearview mirror. About how she believed the same car had followed her and Nell from the convenience store in Akron.
“By the time we made it this far, and he was still laying back, I’d convinced myself I was paranoid. That it was a coincidence. This guy was simply going in the same direction as I was. Or that it wasn’t the same car at all.
“Then what happened?”
She closed her eyes, replaying the events in her mind.
“I noticed the headlights getting closer, and the car moved into the other lane. I figured it was finally going to pass me after all that way. But just as he was almost beside us, he must’ve clipped my back fender.
I remember a jolt. Then I was in a spin and a skid.
I heard Nell scream. For a second, I felt airborne, and I thought we were gonna roll.
” Emma opened her eyes, staring at the road ahead, grateful that Matthias was driving.
“I remember wrestling with the steering wheel, trying to get control, but before I could, there was that tree we slammed into, and the airbags exploded.” She aimed a thumb over her shoulder. “You saw how the car ended up.”
“I did.”
“When I looked around for the guy who hit us, he was gone. I saw taillights in the distance and assumed it was him.”
“You told all this to that Ohio patrolman?”
“Not quite all of it.”
Matthias shot her a look. “What does that mean?”
“I told him all about the actual collision. I left out the part about the guy following us from Akron.”
“Why?” Matthias did not sound pleased.
“Because I wasn’t sure. Like I told you, it might not have been the same car. Heck, it probably wasn’t.”
“But you think it was.”
Did she? And was she ready to admit her fears to Matthias when she was well aware of how crazy they sounded? “I don’t know.”
“What about Nell?”
“She didn’t know about it. She fell asleep as soon as she polished off the bag of chips and was still sleeping when the guy hit us.”
“Rude awakening,” Matthias said, his voice filled with gravel.
She didn’t reply. They cruised past a road sign indicating they were getting close to East Liverpool and the hospital. Emma prayed she didn’t find Nell stoned on pain meds.
“You said you might know who was driving the other car,” Matthias said.
“I said maybe. I’m not even sure—”
He raised a hand, cutting her off. “Just tell me.”
She exhaled before telling him about Nell’s visit to Zeke’s brother.
“What’s his name?” Matthias asked.
Emma tried to recall Nell’s words. “I can’t remember. Lester? Levon maybe? It probably wasn’t him, anyway.”
Matthias didn’t say anything more, but she had a feeling he was far from letting it go.