Chapter 4
GRANT
I rocket toward the highway—and the semi-truck that I can tell doesn’t see me yet.
It won’t see me until I clear the trees. Oh fuck, oh fuck, I think, slamming the brake pedal to the floor. It’s useless. I’ll be obliterated in another thirty feet. I need to find another way to slow down, I need to—
Down shift!
My hand hits the gearshift a millisecond after the thought.
The engine whines as the RPMs kick higher.
I shift again—from second gear to first. And then I’m ripping onto the asphalt and cranking the steering wheel right.
The nose of the Jeep kicks two feet into the lane before I’m able to wrestle the vehicle onto the shoulder.
A horn bellows as the semi roars past in a massive rush of wind, so close it leaves the vehicle shaking.
It’s shaking like I’m shaking. Holy shit.
The Jeep drifts to a stop, and I put it in park and sit there gripping the steering wheel so hard my fingers leave indents in the rubber.
I nearly just died. But I didn’t. I’m somehow still alive, and I need to find a way back to the Airbnb ASAP.
I need to get out and flag down a car for a ride.
I’m about to do exactly that—my hand drifting toward the door—when motion in the rearview mirror catches my attention. Relief pours through me.
Police lights. A cop. They can help—
The relief vanishes in an instant. Don’t contact the police.
Fuck!
I stare at the cruiser as the door cracks open and the cop gets out. He’s tall with brown hair and wide shoulders. He strolls my way, touching the Jeep’s trunk when he passes, taking note of the car. By the time he reaches me, I’ve already got my window down.
“Close call there,” he says, leaning in. “You okay?”
“Yes,” I manage, even though my heart is beating in my throat.
“You don’t look okay. You’re bleeding.”
“What? Where? I—”
“By your ear.”
I finger the spot and remember the warmth I felt dripping down my face after being pistol whipped.
“Oh that. Yeah, I … must have hit my head when I swerved out of the way of that semi. I didn’t realize it was bleeding, though. Must have hit it harder than I realized. But I’m okay.”
“You sure?” he asks, taking stock of me. “That’s a pretty decent cut.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“What happened there, anyway?” the cop asks.
“My front tire blew out.”
He glances at it, then looks back. “You hit a pothole or something?”
I run a hand over my face and try to swallow my anxiety. This is already taking way too long. “Honestly, I’m not sure. It was fine one minute, gone the next.”
“Yeah, that can happen sometimes. These mountain roads get hairy. Where you coming from?”
“I was …” I stop, don’t finish the sentence—on a hike with my wife. The one thing I can’t do is bring up Avery while talking to this guy, and here I am about to do exactly that in the space of a few minutes. I take a breath and start again. “Just on a hike.”
He flattens his lips, his eyes ticking toward the glove box. “License, registration, and insurance, please.”
Feeling sick, I retrieve them and pass them through the window. He takes them and examines my license.
“Grant Wilson—that you?”
“Yes,” I say, gritting my teeth. I really need this guy to move it along.
You have anything to drink today, Mr. Wilson?”
“Jesus, what? No. I told you I was on a hike. That’s it. And I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
His eyebrows stitch together, and I mentally kick myself.
Keep your cool, Grant, you idiot. The last thing you need to do right now is piss this guy off.
For a second, I think it’s too late—that he’s about to ask me to step out of the vehicle for a roadside sobriety test, but instead he says, “Hang tight. I’ll be right back.”
And then he’s gone, slowly striding back toward his cruiser.
I watch him go, pulling a sliver of cheek between my teeth to keep from screaming.
I know right back means ten minutes at least. Probably longer.
He’ll have to enter all of my information into his computer system and make sure everything checks out.
Which it will. Of course, it will. But that doesn’t change the fact that every second he takes doing it is another second I’m stuck sitting here on the side of the road instead of getting back to the Airbnb like I’m supposed to.
Not that I can do that anyway—because the Jeep is completely fucked.
Just like me.
I watch five minutes tick past and then another ten before the officer returns. He hands me the documents.
“Okay, you’re all good. But I’m going to need you to call a tow truck. This thing is undriveable. There’s no way you’ll get a new tire on that rim. Looks like you dinged it up pretty bad. I’ll wait with you until the tow gets here. Make sure traffic sees you.”
“No,” I reply a little too fast. “I don’t have time for that. I really need to get home.”
“Like I said, you can’t drive your car like this.”
I fucking know that! I want to shout. My wife was just abducted!
I clench and unclench my fists. “Here’s the deal, Officer …”
“Gunn.”
I stare at him wordlessly. Gunn? Because of course I’m talking to a cop named after his weapon.
It would almost be funny in any other situation, but right now it only adds to my growing sense of unease.
A quick glance at the dash tells me it’s 1:23 p.m. It was right around 12:40 when I left.
I have exactly seventeen minutes left to get back to the rental.
“Officer Gunn, I can’t wait here. I need to call an Uber or a taxi.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, you won’t find transportation like that up here. You’ll need to wait for a tow.”
Tendrils of panic slide through my chest. I rage at him silently.
Goddammit! Things can’t get any worse than this.
But they can. The voice of the man in the mask scrapes through my head.
Don’t contact the police. Tell anyone what happened, and we’ll kill her.
I need to jar this guy out of standard operating procedure, and I need to do it now.
But I can’t unload on him. If I do, I’ll wind up in a jail cell and Avery will wind up dead.
Which means the only option I have left is to lie.
“Look,” I say, “the truth is I’m on vacation with my sister. She’s back at our rental, and she called me and said she isn’t feeling well. That’s why I was driving so fast. I need to get back to the house and make sure she’s okay. It’s a bit of an emergency.”
“Want me to send an ambulance over?”
Heat floods my cheeks. “No, don’t do that. She’s … not well.”
“Yeah, like you just said.”
I clench my jaw. “Mentally, I mean. She has … problems. If you send an ambulance to the house, it will freak her out. She might hurt herself.” The lies are flowing quicker now, piling up faster than I can handle.
I need to wrap this up before it gets too tangled.
“So that’s why I can’t wait around for a tow. ”
He massages his chin which is seeded in scruff, his mud-colored gaze pinned on me. I know he’s analyzing me, assessing whether or not I’m telling the truth. It takes every ounce of my willpower not to look away.
Finally, he sighs. “I just had to land traffic duty today, didn’t I? Listen, I’ll give you a ride if you promise to call a tow truck on the way. You can’t leave your car up here like it is. It’s a safety hazard.”
The offer hits me like a cinder block to the face. I have to take him up on it—I don’t have another choice—but there’s no way I can roll up to the Airbnb in a police car. They might be watching.
They could be watching now.
They might already know I’m talking to a cop. Jesus. I have zero idea what I’m up against. But I can’t sit here with my thumb up my ass and wait for a tow truck to show up, either. I need to go, and I need to go right now.
With a shaky breath, I get out of the Jeep.