Page 64 of Killer on the Homestead
Sohell noshe didn’t just want justice. She wanted to live. She was going to have to fight. Creatively, sure, but fight nonetheless.
She hadn’t paid close enough attention to how far she’d run off the highway route, but it couldn’t have been more than a mile or two. Which meant she was smack-dab in the middle of nowhere on foot. The closest hint of civilization she could think of would be Hope Town—the former ghost town turned into a kind of community as a safe haven for people who needed it. But that still had to be miles off.
She could walk miles. She had concerns about the head injury, but she could walk miles. If she was slow and careful. If she kept to cover, like these trees. She could get there and then she could call the cops.
Something too close to panic bubbled in her chest.
But she couldn’t panic. She had to think. Get out of the trees. Find new cover. Maybe if she could lure Terry deep enough away from the highway, she could double back and get back to the highway.
She pushed off the tree, had to close her eyes for a minute and breathe through the dizziness that threatened to take her out. She wouldn’t let it.
She damn well wouldn’t let anyone take her out.
Chapter Nineteen
Duncan sped his way toward Bent. His mind was racing in a million different directions. But he knew how to handle that, he reminded himself. He knew a million ways to focus. Back then, every game had felt like life or death.
Now that his situationreallyfelt like life or death, he realized how ridiculous it had been to put so much pressure on himself for agame.
He gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could, especially with his bad arm, and focused on the throbbing pain in his shoulder. Sometimes pain could be a great focal point and motivator. He used it.
He drove with the idea he’d retrace Rosalie’s steps. Drive to the hospital, then from there head to the sheriff’s department. And if there was no sign of her, then to Wilde and Fool’s Gold. And if she wasn’t there, and hadn’t gotten back to him, then what?
No. He couldn’t deal inthen whats. One step at a time. He made it to the hospital parking lot and finally had to force himself to loosen his grip on the wheel. He was sweating, a mix of worry and pain, and he needed to be more in control.
He did a quick circuit of the hospital parking lot. He saw his mother’s car. Wondered how Owen was doing. He should stop in, make sure Mom was taking care of herself.
He would. He’d come back. Once he figured out what the hell was going on with Rosalie. It was probably something so ridiculous, and yet he couldn’t get past this driving need to makesure.
Because maybe she was just ignoring him, but it didn’tfeelright. She’d said she would call him, and she’d said so reluctantly. Rosalie might want to push him away sometimes, but she wasn’t aliar.
But she could have gotten caught up in something, and then wouldn’t he feel stupid if he’d gone around tracing her steps?
“I’d rather feel stupid than guilty,” he muttered to himself, driving back out of the parking lot of the hospital. He got back on the highway that would lead him to Bent and the sheriff’s department.
He was so intent on getting there, he almost missed it. A glint of something on the side of the road. He didn’t even fully mean to look into his rearview mirror to see what it was. But when he did, he slammed on the brakes. With his breath caught in his throat, he pulled an immediate and very illegal U-turn, going down the highway on the wrong side so he could pull up on the shoulder that allowed him the perfect view of a truck crashed into the ditch.
With a buzzing in his ears and his entire body feeling completely numb, he shoved the truck into Park, jumped out, and ran over to the crashed truck.
Rosalie’s crashed truck.
The driver’s-side door and back-seat door were open and when Duncan ran around the full length of it, he realized it was empty. Empty was good.
Right?
He let out a pained breath, then started a closer inspection of the car on the driver’s side. He noted her phone was in the console, which wasn’t…right. It couldn’t be right. He didn’t seeanything else out of place or strange, except when he stepped away and realized the little smudge on the driver’s-side door’s window looked a lot like…blood.
He didn’t let himself think about that, because there was no onehere. Which meant if she’d had an accident, she’d gotten out. No one was dead here, and that was what mattered.
But why wouldn’t she be here? Why wouldn’t she have used her phone to call for help? It didn’t add up and Duncan didn’t know what todo. Where to even begin. She had to be around here somewhere. Bleeding. Maybe she’d tried to walk along the side of the road?
But why would she leave her phone?
Since he didn’t have the first clue, and his gaze kept getting pulled back to thebloodon the window, Duncan knew he needed help. He thought about what Rosalie had done when his place had been trashed—she’d called Detective Beckett directly on his cell.
A number Beckett had handed out to his parents that first night, and Duncan had the good sense to have added to his contacts. He dialed it now.
“Beckett,” the man greeted tersely.
