Page 57 of Survive the Night
She glanced at the dashboard clock: it was just after six. Otto would be at work. She was tempted to call him, just to hear his voice and ask him to be careful, but she didn’t want to bother him. Besides, he was a grown man and a cop; he already knew he needed to be careful in snow.
The wind whipped up, pressing on the side of the car and sending a flurry of snow pellets smacking against the windows. Sarah usually enjoyed driving the twisting, scenic road leading to Otto’s, but tonight it felt as if she was going to get swept right off the side of the cliff.
The snow wasn’t thick enough to block visibility, but the wind was brutal. It howled and groaned, pushing against the side of her car so hard it felt like a giant was trying to shove her off the road. She realized she was hunched forward, her hands clutching the wheel so hard her fingers ached, and she forced herself to sit back, taking one hand at a time off the steering wheel so she could stretch them out. The car’s too heavy to be blown sideways, she reassured herself.
The wind screamed, a gust smacking against the car, and Sarah jerked forward, her hands squeezing the wheel again. The final curve before the turnoff onto Otto’s driveway was approaching, and she blew out a breath in relief, although her hands remained clamped on the wheel. Almost home.
Boom! A crash drowned out the screaming wind, and the earth shook.
With a yelp, Sarah instinctively jerked the wheel and slammed on the brake, sending the car toward the edge of the road. She immediately corrected, turning toward the center, but the pellets of ice sent her sliding. The car plowed toward the sadly inadequate guardrail, and a long-ago driving lesson with Chester popped into her head.
Acceleration gives you control, Alice, he’d said in his gentle, patient way. Yanking her foot off the brake, she pressed the gas pedal. The tires caught, sending her back toward the center, and she straightened the car with jerky motions as she audibly gasped for breath.
Her fingers shook, and she tightened them around the wheel, as if she could stop the tremors if she just held on tightly enough. What had happened? An earthquake? An avalanche? A rockslide? She crawled through the final hairpin turn, desperate to get home safely so she could figure out what had happened and who might be hurt. As she crested the last hill, the view improved, and the side of the mountain stretched out to her left.
The road was on fire.
Her foot hit the brake pedal, so suddenly that the car went into another small slide before jerking to a stop. Sarah slammed the car into Park and fumbled for the door handle with shaking fingers. When she finally got the door open, she almost fell into the road. Her legs were trembling so much that standing was hard, but she managed to stay upright as she ran to the edge of the road.
The wind ripped at her, buffeting her first from one direction and then the next, and she gripped the top of the guardrail fence as she stared over the cliff. The fire glowed red, bright enough to illuminate a stretch of highway in front of and behind the flames. Black smoke billowed, backlit by the fire. Sarah wasn’t sure how long she watched it, mesmerized by the horror of it and the terribly beautiful flames. She craned to see it more clearly, struggling between her need to know what had happened and the fear she’d be blown over the cliff. Was it a car or a truck that had just exploded? From the earlier sound, Sarah was pretty sure it had been an explosion and not just a fire. The conversation she’d had with Otto the day before about the militia guy and his friend—Norman Rounds, the man suspected of blowing up Jules’s barn—resurfaced in her mind.
“He was cleared,” she muttered to herself, even as she fumbled for her phone. “You don’t know what that was. It was probably an accident.”
Another, fainter boom echoed through the night, bouncing off the cliff faces until it sounded like a hundred small explosions. Her body jerked back, and the guardrail slipped form her fingers. The wind caught her, and she fought to keep her balance and her grip on her phone. She peered through the darkness in the direction of the latest explosion, but it was too far away. She couldn’t see anything except the tiny, hard pellets of snow that drilled into any exposed skin.
She turned back to the original fire and saw that the red glow had shrunk. She still couldn’t see anything except the short, lit ribbon of highway and the flames. Tearing her gaze off the burning spot on the road, Sarah stared at her phone. She stumbled back toward the car, wanting to call Otto, needing to know if he was okay. There had been two explosions, some distance apart. That was not an accident.
Her thumbs shook as she found Otto’s cell number, but she finally managed to call. Immediately, there was a double beep, and the screen read “No Service.” It took all of Sarah’s willpower not to throw the phone across the road. She would need it later.
After a final glance at the still-burning explosion site, she climbed back in the car and put it into Drive. She slammed down on the accelerator. The car juddered sideways, and Sarah realized that quite a bit of snow had piled up on the road. The car drifted closer to the far side of the road, but then the tires finally caught.
Her gasp of relief was more of a sob. She almost missed Otto’s driveway, since the snow already blanketed the area, hiding the gravel path. Wrenching the wheel, she made the turn, the car sliding diagonally toward a large aspen tree. She corrected the skid, straightening the car and concentrating on the faint dent that showed where the sides of the driveway were. She pulled into the garage automatically, feeling a huge sense of relief when the overhead door closed, shutting her safely inside.
Quickly, though, she remembered that it was just an illusion. Sarah didn’t know who was safe—was Otto? Or Theo? Or Jules and her family, or Grace, or Hugh? She didn’t know what the explosions had been or why they’d been set off, but she knew, deep in her gut, that Aaron Blanchett was behind it. He always got what he wanted, and, right now, he wanted his sister back, even if he had to destroy a town to get her.
At the thought, her stomach tried to turn itself inside out. Hurrying to climb out of the car, she swallowed down bile as she ran for the door. This was no time to be fussing over how she felt. She needed information. To get information, she needed a way to communicate.
Mort and Xena came to greet her as Sarah rushed inside the house, smacking the hall light on as she entered. With a quick apology to the dogs, she dodged around them, running for the house phone. It was a satellite phone, rather than a landline, but it would have to do. She grabbed it, and, with her cell phone in one hand and the satellite phone in the other, she entered Otto’s mobile number into the home phone.
Nothing happened. Sarah looked at the screen, hitting the Call button again and again, but the satellite phone stayed silent. With a frustrated shriek, she pressed her hands—still holding the phones—against her head and tried to think. How could she reach Otto? Phones were out, so what was next? To reach someone, she could call, text, email… Email!
Pivoting around, she dropped the satellite phone, shoved her cell phone in her pocket, and ran for Otto’s office. The dogs and Bob followed close behind.
Otto’s computer was on the desk of his study. He’d given her the satellite internet password on the first day she’d moved in. Sitting in front of the computer, she pushed the power button and waited impatiently for it to boot up. Unable to just wait there, she got up and paced.
As she’d entered the office, Sarah had flicked on the overhead light. Her reflection looked back at her from the large window, and she had a sudden, paranoid feeling that someone was out there…watching her. She hurried over to the light switch and turned it off, standing still until her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Moving over to the window, she peered through the thick sheet of snow. The flakes were coming down so hard that she could barely make out the dark shape of the barn. Sarah tried to take heart in the fact that anyone trying to watch her would have visibility as bad as she had, but that thought didn’t really help. It still felt like they could see her, and she couldn’t see anything except snow.
Xena whined, breaking the thick silence.
“It’s okay, sweet pea,” Sarah said. Even though she spoke quietly, it still sounded much too loud. She stroked Xena’s blocky, silky-soft head as the dog pressed her muzzle against the side of her thigh. Mort was silent, but he was alert, standing in the middle of the room, dividing his attention between the doorway and the window. With the dimness hiding his gray hairs, he looked like a poster for an on-duty K9, readiness vibrating through every muscle. It was slightly reassuring knowing that she had a trained cop on her side. Bob hid under the desk.
There was another sound, faint and mostly lost under the howls of the wind. Tipping her head closer to the window, Sarah listened, trying to decide if she was just imagining it. The wind quieted for a moment, and the sound became clear—a faint, rapid whump-whump-whump. Mort started to bark.
Sarah wasn’t about to ignore the trained law enforcement officer in the room. Leaving the computer still booting up, she ran for the door. Mort bounded out first, and Xena followed right behind Sarah. In the doorway, Sarah paused and started to turn around, intending to grab Bob. He beat her to the punch, though, streaking by her and flying down the hall after Mort.
Taking off after the animals, she ran for the closet in the living room, frantically turning off lights as she went. The whump-whump was getting loud, obvious now, even over the screaming wind. Mort and Bob waited for her in front of the closet, and Xena stayed glued to the back of her legs. She was grateful that the animals seemed to have a strong sense of self-preservation.
