Page 2 of Poisoning Ivy
The little car used to be blue—we saw it the first time not long after it happened. My father parked us right in the middle of the steep road and ran to the edge, looking down at where the car was suspended in the trees, a haunting sound still playing over the speakers, and the headlights casting an ominous haze through the foggy night.
The driver died in the car, and his passenger—a woman—was thrown through the windshield. They found her decapitated body in the woods, and months later, what was left of her head showed up in the Holmes’ backyard lake. Rumor has it that the woman was dead even before the accident—that he’d intentionally severed her and was taking her up the mountain to bury the body. They say it was her ghost who stepped out in the middle of the road and made him lose control.
My father sent one of his men to scale down the side of the mountain and confirm the driver was dead on impact. The animals feasted on him for months, but I imagine his skeleton is still hanging upside down, belted into the car, which is still stuck wheels-up in the trees, too far up the mountain for emergency services to reach. When we roll past the spot where he went over, I imagine that night— myself as the woman in that car.
Realizing we don’t have enough momentum to make it up the mountain, Cody throws the car in reverse instead. Gravel crunches under the tires and kicks up to hit the back of the car, causing little sounds like hail as it pops against the undercarriage. It feels almost like a freefall, and I wonder howwell the tires are gripping the road or if we’re just letting gravity knock us back down the mountain at this point.
All the while, Cody glares into the rearview mirror, as if he could do anything to control it if a car happened to be climbing up behind us at this point. There are eight cabins on the mountain, each staggered far enough apart that all you can tell of your neighbor is whether they’re home by the smoke rising from the chimney. It’s late summer, which means that the majority of the neighbors aren’t even home, choosing to spend their time on the coast or the lake, soaking up every drop of sunshine they can get before the frigid air begins to creep in and steal it away.
I curl my fingers around the door handle with my uninjured hand, bracing myself for the impact to come.
It's probably a better fate to go out like this. No neighbors around on the mountain means that when my husband kills me, my body may not ever be found. At least this way, a crash will be public. Maybe he’ll lose consciousness, and I can make a break for it. Run and disappear into the woods somewhere and never be found.
Maybe I could swallow my hurt and my pride and run tothem.
The blare of a horn behind us steals my breath, and I turn around to look out the rearview mirror in time to see the semi jackknife as we approach the main road, turning to miss us. And itdoesmiss us, though we don’t miss it. The back of Cody’s Jetta slams into the cab of the truck, and the crunch of metal has me tense just before impact.
This time, I don’t brace myself as we slam forward. Cody’s seat belt catches him—my face catches me.
It’s not a hard hit, but I feel the immediate trickle of blood, which comes a fraction of a second before the airbag deploys—too little, too late. The sound of crackling glass, still sprinkling down from the shattered back window, joins with the blare of our horn, busted with the airbag that Cody strikes his fistagainst. As ifthat’sto blame for the backslide, as if he didn’t completely ignore the signs that say, ‘four-wheel drive only’.
A glance at my husband assures me that he’s fine, well enough to slam his hands against the steering wheel over and over again, his knuckles splitting with the force.
My thoughts are disjointed as I realize the opportunity to run is gone.
Lights come at us fast. At first, I think it’s a flashlight, someone coming to check on us. But it’s not the beam of a flashlight that blinds me, making it impossible to see the source behind it.
Headlights.
The realization comes a minute too late to make my body move, though I have nowhere to go anyway.
The impact ricochets me like a pinball—forward, then back, then finally coming to a rest against the glass.
But by that time, I’m already fading into unconsciousness.
Chapter two
Killian
“What do we got?” I ask the minute I’m out of the truck. I leave it on, the headlights illuminating the scene of the pile-up. They didn’t need to call me, but I’m glad they did, considering this fucking mess is blocking access to my goddamn house. I’d have been pissed off if I fucked this woman in her apartment in town and then came home to realize I couldn’t get to my house to shower her off of me.
Rob greeted me at my door the minute I parked, staring curiously at the blonde in my passenger seat.Cami, I think? We were together when I got the call that there’d been a pile-up on the highway. I brought her with me so she could at least suck my dick in the front seat on the way here, and even that didn’t give me the release I needed. But this might.
“Mostly minor injuries.” Rob says, leading me to where my team is working to move the cars out of the way in an effort to get to the one in the middle. Lit up by a bunch of headlights, they look hazy and distorted. Maybe I drank too much. “Looks like this car in the center of it all slipped down the mountain, nailed the semi, which tried to swerve. When he did, the pickupbehind him got the back right of the trailer, sending it into the front of the Jetta. The dumbass in the Hyundai wasn’t paying attention and boxed them in. Looks like mostly broken bones and lacerations, and a lot of bitchin’ about who’s gonna pay for all the damage.” He rolls his eyes.
“Fucking city assholes.” I groan, eyeballing the bumper of the Jetta that’s currently in pieces on the ground.
These fuckers roll up once in a blue moon and don’t respect the rules of our town, let alone the rules of the mountains. Shit like this isn’t unprecedented, but not here. All the cabins on my road are privately owned, not free to be used as a vacation rental for horny teenagers or city-slickers who want to play at the rustic thing for a bit. The driver was clearly lost.
“Who the fuck takes a Jetta up a mountain road?” I grumble, pivoting to take in the scene, matching up Rob’s account with the evidence on hand.
“Folks who are rich enough to fix the damage our roads do to the undercarriage.” He shrugs.
It’s nothing new. People come from all around the country to stay in towns like ours, forgetting they’re guests. No respect or fucking human decency. Sometimes, they have to pay for that disrespect with their lives.
My eyes scan the crew that’s assembled, finding Rob’s claims to be true. The truck driver, with his arms crossed over his broad flanneled chest, mostly just looks annoyed at the inconvenience. Next to him, a woman with tears tracking down her cheeks shakes uncontrollably, despite the only injury I see on her being a cut on her right arm. No doubt she’s the Hyundai driver, and she was probably looking down at a TikAgram or some shit, excited to have service again. Sitting on the curb is a man with his head hanging, his arm folded gingerly against his chest and his white starched shirt saturated with blood.
Found my Jetta driver.
