here. Since she had no reference points along the unfamiliar stretch of highway, and since she’d failed to look at the odometer when she’d left the truck stop, she had no idea how far from town she was.
She tried to ignore the approaching lights, again keeping the car as near the shoulder as she dared. This attack of nerves wasn’t like her. And she hated it. All she could do was put the unaccustomed anxiety down to her exhaustion and the emotional toll of the last few days. After all, her husband had died on one of the roads in this area.
She raised her eyes from the yellow line, watching as the approaching lights grew larger. And they were still on high, she had time to think before she realized that they were not only blindingly bright, they were also headed directly at her.
She blinked, attempting to see through the driving rain. In the split second she had to evaluate the path of the oncoming car, she knew she hadn’t been mistaken. It was headed straight for her car.
She swerved to the right, that reaction unthinking. The right tires left the road with a jolt as the headlights shone into her eyes, their glare terrifying.
At the last second before collision, she jerked the steering wheel, plunging the Toyota completely off the road. It bounced over some unseen obstacle as the pickup roared by, so close she couldn’t believe it hadn’t struck her car.
She had automatically slammed on the brakes, but as the car began to fishtail, she released them, trying to steer back up onto the road. The back right tire seemed to be slipping in the roadside mud. All she accomplished was to turn the car so that it continued to slide sideways along the shoulder for a few more feet until the right front fender struck a telephone pole.
Her rate of speed had been slowed enough by then that the impact was minimal. Restrained by her seat belt, her head jerked forward, slamming back into the headrest as the car came to an abrupt stop.
Stunned, she sat without moving as the wipers continued to clear the rain off the windshield, revealing the twin beams of her own headlights shining across the two-lane at an upward angle. She looked to her left, but there was no sign of the pickup that had run her off the road.
She tried to analyze her impressions of its make or model, but everything about the last few seconds had been a blur. She’d been too busy trying to avoid a collision to get a clear picture of anything about it except those glaring lights.
After a few seconds, she reached over and punched the off button on the CD player. In the sudden silence, the drumming of the rain and the noise from the back-and-forth movement of the wipers seemed to intensify. As did her feeling of isolation.
Someone had just run her off the road. She was out in the middle of nowhere with a possibly disabled car.
That was the first thing she needed to find out, she realized. Whether the car could be driven back into town.
Her knees were shaking so badly with delayed reaction that it was difficult to get her foot back on the gas pedal. She eased the accelerator down, but the back tires spun, unable to get any traction in the mud. After a couple of careful attempts, she shut off the engine and then killed the lights.
Now there was only the sound of the rain, but she felt safer in the darkness. If he came back again—
Despite the fact that her body was vibrating as if she had a chill, she had enough presence of mind to realize that thought had slipped over the line. Someone had forced her off the road, but the idea that the driver had made a couple of preliminary passes at her before he’d done so was ridiculous.
This couldn’t have been deliberate. A drunk driver. Or, as she had speculated before, teenage joyriders.
The arguments presented by her rational mind had no effect on the surety of its more primitive, instinctive part. Someone had deliberately caused her to wreck her car. The same someone who had sped by her with his lights on bright. The same someone who had passed her with an angry wail of his horn.
Who might even now be turning his truck around to come back and finish the job he’d begun. She could sit here and wait for him to return, or—
Put in those terms, the decision was simple. She reached across and grabbed her purse off the passenger seat. Even as she climbed out of the car, her fingers fumbled her cell phone out of the bottom of her bag.
She could call 911, although they probably wouldn’t consider a car in a ditch an emergency. Better to dial information and get the name of the nearest wrecker service. It would probably be out of Pascagoula, but there might be something local. In any case, it didn’t seem she had a choice.
And then she needed to call Mrs. Bedford. She had already missed supper, and if she were a couple of hours later getting home, as she suspected she would be, she knew Lorena would imagine the worst.
Wrecker first, and then the Bedford house. Even as she dialed information, the image of a pair of mocking blue eyes was in her head. She could imagine Jeb Bedford’s reaction if she told him what she believed had happened tonight. The same one anyone in this sleepy little Southern town would have.
That didn’t mean she was wrong, of course. It only meant that she would be alone in her opinion. Being alone, however, was something with which she was now very familiar. Something with which she had long ago made her peace.
CHAPTER SIX
IF IT HADN’T BEEN for Lorena, there was no way in hell he’d be out here in the rain looking for a car that had gone off the road. Or for the woman who had been driving it.
And who do you think you’re kidding?
Jeb had known who was on the other end of the line as soon as his aunt picked up the phone. Just as she had, he, too, had been listening for it to ring as soon as it had gotten dark.
He slowed as the headlights of his Avalanche illuminated a vehicle on the side of the road. It was sitting perpendicular to the two-lane, the right front panel crushed against a telephone pole. He had no doubt the car belonged to Susan Chandler.
He drove past the small silver car, evaluating the damage as well as he could through the fogged driver’s-side window. Then he made a U-turn in the middle of the deserted highway and guided the big sport utility truck onto the shoulder a few feet from the sedan. He was careful not to pull off the road far enough to get stuck in the ditch where the rear wheels of the Toyota were mired.
Although his headlights were directed at the driver’s side of the car, there was no sign of the driver. Just as it had when the phone rang, a knot of unaccustomed anxiety began to form in the pit of his stomach. If Susan Chandler wasn’t in her car, then where could she be?
She’d told Lorena on the phone that she’d already called a tow truck and was going to wait here until it arrived. Clearly, since the car was still in the ditch, that hadn’t yet happened.
He rolled down his window, sticking his head out despite the downpour. “Mrs. Chandler?”
He waited, but the only sound was the rain pelting the roof of his car. Muttering profanities, he opened his door.
After the cocoon of warmth the heater had created inside the cab, the wet chill immediately assaulted him. He knew from experience it would seep into the shattered ankle, aching along all the pins and wires and screws that held it together.
Given the situation, however, it didn’t seem he had any option other than to go look for his aunt’s guest. He eased down from the high cab, holding on to the handgrip until the undamaged right leg was solidly on the ground beside the left.
“Mrs. Chandler?” Again he waited, rain pouring down on his bare head and shoulders. Surely she wouldn’t be stupid enough to start walking back into town. But, of course, he would have passed her on the way if she had.
Maybe someone driving back into town had spotted the wreck and stopped to help. It was the kind of thing he’d expect almost anyone around here to do. Whether or not Ms. Chandler would be trusting enough to accept a ride from a stranger