Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(2)

My head hurts so damn much. I want to curl up in a ball and sleep and sleep and sleep.

But I don’t. I can’t. Vero.

Forcing myself to move once more, I rummage right, then left, fingers fumbling in the dark. But I find nothing. No one. I search and search, first the backseat, then, more shakily, the floor. But no small body magically appears.

What if . . . She could’ve been thrown, tossed from the airborne vehicle. The car had tried to fly, and maybe so had Vero.

Mommy, look at me. I’m an airplane.

What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?

I must get out of the vehicle. Nothing else matters. Out there, something in the dark, the rain, the mud. Vero. I must save her.

I drag myself by the elbows from the front of my crumpled car to the back. Then, a sharp turn for the rear passenger’s door. But it won’t open. I yank the handle, smearing blood. I shove against the door. Cry, beg and plead, but nothing. It won’t give. The damage, the child’s safety lock. Shit!

One other exit. The way back, rear cargo hatch. Moving again, painfully slow as the pain in my head turns to nausea in my stomach, and I know I’m going to vomit, but I don’t care. I have to get out of this car. I have to find Vero.

The puke, when it comes, is a thin liquid spew that smells of expensive single malt and a long night’s regret.

I drag myself through the heinous puddle and keep going. First lucky break: The collision has jarred the rear hatch open.

I push it the rest of the way up. Then, when crawling proves too much for my bruised—broken?—ribs, I drag myself out with my arms and belly flop onto the ground. Mud, soft and oozing, eases my fall. I roll over, panting from the pain, the force of my exertions, the hopelessness of my situation.

Rain, rain, go away, please come back some other day.

Mommy, look at me, I’m an airplane.

I’m tired again. Fatigue, crushing and deep. I could just lie here. Help will come. Someone who saw the accident, heard the crash. Another motorist passing by. Or maybe someone will miss me. Someone who cares.

An image of a man’s face pops into my mind but is gone before I can catch it.

“Vero,” I whisper. To the falling rain, the oozing mud, the starless night.

The smell of smoke, I think idly. The heat of fire. No, that was the first time. Focus, dammit. Focus!

I roll back over and begin my journey.

The road appears to be high above me. There is mud, grass, scraggly bushes and sharp rocks between it and me. I hear distant sounds, cars whizzing above me, like exotic birds, and I realize, as I belly crawl forward inch by inch, that the vehicles are too far away. They are up; I am down. They will never see me. They will never stop and help me find Vero.

Another inch, two, three, four. Gasping as I hit a rock. Cursing as I tangle in a bush. My trembling fingers reaching forward, searching, searching, searching. While my head screams in agony and I pause, time after time, to retch pathetic little spits of bile.

Vero.

And then: Oh, Nicky, what have you done?

I hear that keening noise again, but I don’t stop. I don’t want to realize that the distressed animal making all those sounds is actually me.

I don’t know how long I wriggle myself up through the slipping, sliding mud. I know by the time I crest the hill, I’m covered head to toe in black ooze, and far from disturbing me, it amuses me. It’s fitting, I think. I look as I ought to look.

Like a woman who’s crawled from the grave.

Lights. Twin pinpricks, looming closer. I get up on my hands and knees now. Have to, if the passing motorist is to see me. And it’s okay, because my ribs don’t hurt anymore. My body has gone numb, the screaming in my head having overloaded all circuits and left everything else curiously blank.

Maybe I’m already dead. Maybe this is what the dead look like, as I get one foot beneath me and, slowly but surely, rise to standing.

A screech of brakes. The oncoming car, fishtailing briefly as the driver overapplies the brakes in the wet conditions. Then, miraculously, it stops, right before my raised hand and pale, rain-streaked face.

“Holy—” An elderly man, clearly shaken, is briefly illuminated by the interior light as he opens the driver’s side door. He steps out uncertainly, rises to standing. “Ma’am, are you all right?”

I don’t say a word.

“Is it an accident? Where’s your car? Ma’am, you want me to dial nine-one-one?”

I don’t say a word.

I just think: Vero.

And suddenly, I remember. I remember everything. An enormous explosion of light, terror and rage. A shooting pain not only through my head but through my heart. And in that instant, I recall exactly who I am. The monster from underneath the bed.

Across from me, as if sensing my thoughts, the old man recoils, takes a small step back.

“Um . . . just stay there, ma’am. Just . . . I’ll, um, I’ll phone for help.”

The man disappears back inside the dimly lit interior of his car. I don’t say anything. I stand in the rain, swaying on my feet.

I think, one last time: Vero.

Then the moment is gone, the memory passed.

And I am no one at all, just a woman twice returned from the dead.





Chapter 2




THE CALL CAME in shortly after 5 A.M.: single MVA, off the road, unknown injuries. Given that the town in question didn’t have a nighttime duty officer—welcome to the wilds of New Hampshire—county patrol was dispatched to handle the situation. That officer, Todd Reynes, arrived fifteen minutes later—again, welcome to the wilds of New Hampshire, or more accurately, long, windy back roads that never lead directly from here to there—just as the EMTs were struggling to strap a single muddy, bloody woman onto a backboard. The driver, he was told, had definitely suffered extensive injuries and reeked of enough alcohol to make standing next to her a risk for a contact high.