Page 11 of Corey
Loki crawled onto her lap, and she carefully checked him over. When he lifted his face and bumped his nose against hers, she let out a relieved sigh and hugged him close.Thank God.
A layer of white covered the windshield and, all around her, a blizzard raged outside. She could barely see anything, though, because it was so dark. How long had she been out? Luckily, the car hadn’t flipped over, but it did manage to plow through a split rail fence.
Searching for her purse, she found it on the floor and dug her phone out. Maybe she should call Mel and tell her what happened, but what if they were somehow tracking her through her phone? She wasn’t very tech savvy and had no idea how that worked. But when she pulled it out, none of that mattered because the phone was dead. And she didn’t have her charger, she realized. In her haste to leave, she’d forgotten to grab it.
Shit. Now what?She was freezing and needed to find a way to warm up fast. The sweatshirt she wore wasn’t going to cut it in that winter wonderland. Teeth chattering, she figured thesmartest thing would be to turn on the heat and hunker down until daylight. Because getting lost in a snowstorm in the dark didn’t appeal to her. Nope, not at all. Darkness wasn’t her friend and she’d seenThe Shining.
She just had to get her car started. Otherwise, things weren’t looking good and she might turn into a block of ice by morning.
Silently berating herself for putting off buying a new car when she desperately needed one, she sent up a silent prayer and turned the key. It made a strange rattling sound as the engine struggled to turn over, then blessedly rumbled to life.
“Thank God.” She turned the heat up, pointing a vent in Loki’s direction. “I know, Bubba. We’re not in sunny San Diego anymore.”
As the car slowly warmed up, Sera opened a can of food for Loki and rearranged their temporary quarters. She climbed into the back and lowered the seats, placing the makeshift litter box up there so Loki could reach it better. Then she dug through her duffel bag and pulled on a thicker sweatshirt and another pair of socks.
Back in the front, she shoved her seat as far back as it would go. It wasn’t very comfortable, but at least it was warm now. As she drank some water and munched on a granola bar, she wondered what she was going to do. Maybe once it was light outside, she could find a gas station and use a public phone to call her sister.
But what if she ran into those men again? She glanced at the pepper spray sitting on the dashboard within reach. After living through her worst nightmare, she’d bought the self-defense product. Not that it would do any good against a gun,but having it made her feel better. Made her feel like she had a fighting chance. And the showdown in the bathroom at the rest stop proved that point.
Hopefully, the snowstorm would slow down the men following her and help conceal her. The car had slid down the embankment and spun sideways. It sat a pretty good distance from the road and was now covered in a blanket of snow. Fingers crossed, she’d blend right in. It probably wasn’t drivable, but it could’ve been far worse. The tree line provided some cover, too, and she didn’t think the car was visible from the road. At least, not unless someone really looked.
God, what had she stumbled into? Why had Joel shot Jeremy?
Sera shook her head and snuggled down with Loki purring on her lap. Sometimes, she truly believed if it weren’t for bad luck, she wouldn’t have any luck at all. Although, if that were the case, she would’ve died last year. Or maybe she would’ve been killed by Joel or the men chasing after her.
“I’m like a cat,” she concluded, petting Loki. “I must have nine lives just like you.”
At this rate, she had a feeling she might be down to five or six. Sighing heavily, she thought over the last few years and her throat tightened with emotion. The last thing she wanted was to sit here and feel sorry for herself when some people had it so much worse. But things had been stacking up lately, and it was getting harder and harder to bear.
When her mom had gotten sick with an aggressive form of cancer, Sera returned home, wanting to be close during her final months. Her dad didn’t live long after her mom passed, and Sera believed he died of a broken heart. Then Mel married Liam andmoved away. It had hurt, but Sera got it. Mel’s husband was from Canada and he’d wanted to go back where all his family lived. Even though she and Mel still talked all the time, it wasn’t the same. Sera missed being able to stop by her sister’s place and just hang out.
Then the shooting happened last year, transforming her from a confident, wanderlust woman to a fragile person who hated going out, preferring to hide away. The nightmare at the mall still left her bolting awake and drenched in sweat at least once a week.
Therapy hadn’t worked. Not really. Talking about it just made her relive the horror all over again when what she really wanted to do was forget and move on. Without her parents and Mel, moving on proved impossible. She’d figured out how to function again in the most basic ways and lost herself in work. Although the shipping company was a dead-end job without many prospects—okay, no prospects—she found a strange sort of comfort in the monotony of routine. Get up, get ready, go to work, return home, go to bed. Rinse and repeat.
It also helped her avoid life and everything that came with it.
Like looking for a man to share her life with, a partner to weather the storms. But Sera just turned forty-five, and the harsh truth was that ship most likely had sailed. She was hardly in high demand. Every day, she felt herself get a little older, a little more wrinkly and far less attractive. At one point, she’d exuded a youthful vibrance with her beachy blonde hair, a smattering of freckles and ocean-blue eyes. People had told her she looked like Claudia Schiffer.
And now? Now, the mirror reflected a very sad woman who tried to cover her gray hairs and hide her puffy eyes. Who lockedherself away from the rest of the world, too scared to face it. And when it came to men, she was lucky if the bald barista at the corner coffee shop bothered to flirt with her.
Once upon a time, she’d been a happy-go-lucky and carefree woman, not afraid of anything, who’d traveled around the world solo and shared her experiences online. Now she was afraid of the dark.
The truth was, she’d let fear suck her joy away, leaving her vulnerable and scared. Scared to take a chance, scared to go out in crowds, scared to put herself in a possibly exposed or dangerous position. Hell, she was a forty-five-year-old woman who couldn’t sleep without the bathroom light on.
She still couldn’t go to the mall—any mall—so she bought her clothes online. Because the idea of going back to the place where she almost died—where she knew other people had—made her heart pound so hard, it felt like it was going to burst out of her chest.
Sera felt like a once-vibrant rose now wilting. Dying a little more every single day. The best years of her life had slipped away, and that was a hard pill to swallow. What man would want her? Other than a slew of hangups and PTSD that hit her like a truck sometimes, she had nothing to offer. She’d never be a wife, a mother or a grandmother, and she’d pretty much come to terms with it. But that didn’t make it any easier.
For the past year, she’d felt invisible. Like a ghost wandering aimlessly, merely going through the motions of a pointless life. Stuck in some kind of limbo.
Why had she survived when so many others had perished? It didn’t make sense. She was a nobody and she’d lived, whilemothers, fathers and children had died. Tears burned her eyes and guilt pummeled her.
Why did I live?It was a question that kept her up at night. Sometimes, she thought if she could go back and exchange her life for someone else’s, she would.
Loki’s loud purrs vibrated against her as she stroked his fur. He’d become her emotional support kitty since her life had fallen apart. “You better live to be twenty-five,” she told him for the hundredth time. As if in answer, he started curling his toes, always mindful of his claws, against her thighs.
Eventually, her eyes drifted shut as the snow continued to fall.
