Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(7)

“Maybe.” Wyatt straightened, not completely satisfied, but now was not the time. Later, after the vehicle had been towed from the site, when entire doors and whole seats had been meticulously removed and sent to the state’s lab for testing, then they’d get down to it. The position of the driver’s seat. The mirrors. Imprint from right hand here; imprint from left hand there. Not to mention the Total Station analysis as well as the stats recovered from the electronic data recorder. An accident like this wasn’t reconstructed in a matter of hours, but in a matter of days, if not weeks.

But they would do it. Thoroughly. Meticulously. So the whole world could know what a Glenlivet-swilling mother had done to herself and her child one dark and stormy night.

As if on cue, Wyatt heard barking from above. Canine unit had arrived.

He straightened, stepping away from the vehicle, glancing at his watch instead.

Eight twenty-two A.M. Approximately three hours and fifteen minutes after first callout, they had an accident still to investigate and, more important, a child yet to find.

In the end, he decided, all paths led in the same direction. Back up the muddy ravine, to the silver ribbon of road, where this tragedy had first started and where the search dog now waited.

He and Kevin started climbing.





Chapter 3




LOOK AT ME, Mommy! Look! I can fly.”

She runs away from me, arms stuck straight out from her sides, rosebud mouth supplying the appropriate airplane noises. I admire her long dark hair bouncing behind her, as her little legs chug around the tiny space.

I wonder if I’d been this energetic when I’d been her age. Or this brave as she leaps over one obstacle, weaves expertly around the next.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I already know the answer to this question and it’s better off left alone.

Enjoy this moment. Four-year-old Vero, learning to fly.

She giggles, revving up now, gaining momentum. And the sound of her joy lifts the weight off my own chest. She turns a corner, around the ragged brown sofa—stuffing coming up through a tear, someone should fix that, should I have fixed that?—and I can see her face, chubby cheeks flushed pink, gray eyes bright beneath thick lashes, as she zeroes in on her target and heads straight for me.

“Mommy! I can fly, I can fly, I can fly.”

I love you, I think. But I don’t say it. The words don’t come out. I stand there, bracing for impact as she barrels toward me.

Slow down. Take it easy. It’s almost as if I know what’s going to happen next.

At the last second, her tiny foot catches the leg of the coffee table, and for a moment, she is genuinely airborne, body stretched out, hands and feet grappling in empty space.

Vero’s eyes, widening.

Her mouth, forming a perfect startled O.

“Mommy!” she yells.

Shhh, I try to whisper. Don’t make a sound. Don’t let him hear you.

She lands hard. Thump. Crack.

Then the screaming begins in earnest.

Shhh, I try to whisper again.

As those gray eyes well with tears, bear into mine.

A man’s shout from the bedroom of the apartment. Followed by footsteps, heavy and ominous.

“Mommy, I can fly,” Vero says, and she’s no longer crying. She is providing a statement of fact.

I know, I want to tell her. I understand.

I wish I could reach out, touch her hair, stroke her cheek.

Instead, I close my eyes, because somewhere in the back of my mind, I know what’s going to happen next.


* * *



I WAKE UP to machines beeping. Bright lights, strong enough to hurt my eyes. I wince reflexively, turning my head away, then immediately wish that I hadn’t, as fresh pain explodes in my forehead.

I’m in a hospital bed. Lying straight on my back, hands tucked to my sides by scratchy white sheets topped by a thin blue blanket. I examine the metal bed rails framing each side of the bed, then the wires sprouting from an attachment on my finger leading to all kinds of monitors. My mouth is dry, my throat parched. I would moan but don’t feel like making the effort.

I hurt . . . everywhere. Head to toe, knees to elbows. My first thought is that I must’ve fallen from a twenty-story building and broken every bone on impact. My second thought is, why did they bother to put me back together again? If I finally got the courage up to jump, couldn’t the rest of them leave well enough alone?

Then I see him, head slumped forward in the chair next to the foot of my bed.

My heart constricts. I think: I love you.

My head explodes. I think: Get the f*ck away from me!

Then: What the hell is his name again?

The man’s face is weathered, heavily lined with worry and stress even in sleep. But it gives him a lived-in look that is far from unattractive. Closer to early forties than late thirties, dark hair shot through with liberal streaks of gray, body still lean after all these years. I like that body; I know that with certainty.

And yet, I don’t want him to wake up. Mostly, I wish he’d never found me here.

“Mommy, I can fly,” Vero whispers in the back of my mind.

I think of that old pilots’ joke: It’s not the flying that’s the hard part; it’s the landing.

The man opens his eyes.

It comes as no surprise to me that they are brown and somber and deep.