Chapter 9

Strapped into my seat, all I could do was clutch the steering wheel as the Jeep rolled over again, and again, and crashed its way down the steep slope. The airbags exploded almost instantly, followed by the smell of burning fabric. I clipped a baby lodgepole pine, and the impact shook the Jeep and whipped my head to the side. It slowed us for a moment, and then with a vast, splintering sound, the lodgepole snapped, and the Jeep kept going. My field of view spun: trees, sky, water, trees, sky, water—

And then the Jeep hit a rock hard enough to shake my teeth in their sockets. I wasn’t sure how much time passed before I processed the fact that we were no longer moving. Adrenaline buzzed through me, making me feel like I was floating, but I forced myself to take stock of the situation. That floating feeling, it turned out, was because the Jeep lay on its side, and I was dangling from my seat by the seatbelt. I’d lost my glasses, but even so, I still had a pretty good view of the ocean on the other side of the windshield—it was almost at eye level, which gave me an idea of how close I’d come to my, uh, final destination. Twisting around—and fighting gravity in the process—I managed to get a look out my side window. Pine needles blocked my line of sight, poking in where I’d had the window down, and it took me a moment to understand that the lodgepole pine I’d taken out in my slide to the bottom had somehow ended up on top of the Jeep.

Which was pretty much perfect.

Until, of course, the sound system crackled, and Jimmy Buffett came on, singing about Margaritaville.

It lost the Bluetooth signal, the rational part of me thought. That’s why it switched over to the radio.

That was when the adrenaline ran out. I started to shake. The aches of bruised flesh and wrenched joints crowded forward. The seatbelt bit into me where it supported my weight. I fumbled with the buckle, braced one foot against the passenger seat, and got myself free. I was shaking harder now, so I eased myself down until my feet rested on the passenger window and I could sit on the center console. A moment later, my stomach lurched, and I had to fight down the need to do some Exorcist -style ralphing.

When the worst of the nausea faded, I wiped the cold sweat from my face and tried to pull myself together. I found my glasses in the footwell, miraculously unbroken, and put them on. Without the rush of adrenaline, my body hurt worse than ever, and I had the fragmented thought that I might be in shock. Get out. That seemed like a clear thought too. You need to get out of here.

The passenger door wasn’t an option, since it was pressed flat against the ground, so I climbed up toward the driver door. The airbags had already deflated, so I pushed them out of my way. When I got to the door, it opened, which meant it hadn’t gotten warped during the crash, but after about a quarter inch, it hit the tree that had fallen on top of us. The lodgepole couldn’t have been that big—since it had snapped rather then, well, snapping me —but it was still too heavy for me to lift. I rolled the window down further (amazingly, that worked too) but all I got for my efforts were more pine needles in the face. Even pushing the smaller branches out of the way, I couldn’t clear an opening big enough for me to crawl through. A quick glance toward the back of the Jeep didn’t offer any help either. The tailgate didn’t have an interior latch, and the window had shattered and showed only a blank face of rock now. I turned back to the front of the Jeep and gave the windshield a few kicks—it worked in books and movies sometimes—but didn’t have any luck. If it was possible to kick out a windshield, I certainly wasn’t going to be able to do it. I decided to blame it on the lack of leverage.

I was trapped.

A few minutes of searching told me that my phone was lost. (Jimmy Buffett had been replaced by Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’,” and I didn’t appreciate the universe’s sense of humor.) So, I couldn’t call for help. I had enough presence of mind now to turn off the engine, and the music cut out. I checked myself in the visor mirror, which felt weirdly vain, but aside from a red patch of skin, which I guessed was the airbag equivalent of rug burn, I was okay. I’d even escaped without the airbag breaking my nose, which seemed like a staple of the car accident genre. My body, on the other hand, was a different story. I felt like a doll that had been pulled apart and put back together again by an overenthusiastic toddler—everything done with unnecessary force, and nothing going back in the way it should have. My neck and head worried me the most; what had started as a low-grade headache in the accident’s immediate aftermath was turning into something much uglier, and if I had the choice, I didn’t want to be here when it arrived.

I wasn’t a Boy Scout, but having dated Hugo for years had its advantages—I found the first aid kit, which had miraculously stayed under the seat where I’d stored it. I found some Tylenol, dry-swallowed it, and made myself as comfortable as I could to wait. The problem was that it might be a while; the Oregon Coast wasn’t densely populated, and while it was our busy season, true, with tourists jammed into every available motel and Airbnb, this wasn’t exactly a highly trafficked stretch of road. Sooner or later, though, someone would see the torn-up shoulder, the damaged trees, and the overturned Jeep, and they’d call emergency services.

But would they see me in the dark?

I didn’t want to risk starting the Jeep—I had no idea what kind of damage it had taken, and for all I knew, I was sitting in the middle of a lake of gasoline. I hit the hazard lights. Maybe later, once full dark had fallen, I could run the headlights off the battery. For a while, anyway.

Caught up in these thoughts, I was surprised by another realization: whoever had hit me had done so on purpose. There wasn’t any other explanation. That truck hadn’t veered into me by accident; it had rammed me, forcing me toward the shoulder and the precipitous drop. It took a little longer for the thought to work its way to completion: someone had tried to kill me.

Who?

Why?

Even after having my head banged around, I thought I had an idea about the second question. Whoever it was, they’d been coming from the same direction as me, which meant Astoria. I’d upset a number of people back there—Arlen and Neil came first to mind, but Jane and Candy hadn’t been too happy either. None of them had liked me poking around, investigating Richard’s death.

Which meant someone had tried to stop me.

Which meant someone didn’t want me to learn what had really happened all those years ago.

It was one thing to know, logically, that the killer was still out there. It wasn’t all that scary when it was nothing more than a logical conclusion—a theory, not a reality. It was quite another to have the, uh, rubber meet the road, so to speak.

But if the killer had run me off the road, why hadn’t they stuck around to make sure the job was finished? Without my phone, and without the clock on the dash, I had no idea how much time had passed since the crash. Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? It didn’t seem like it could have been any longer. Plenty of time for the killer to park and come to investigate, to make sure I was dead. But maybe the killer wasn’t brave enough for a possible face-to-face confrontation. Or maybe they had seen the accident and thought there was no way I could have survived. (I was looking forward to surprising them on that particular point.) Or maybe they were waiting for some reason.

That was when I heard the first rock skitter down the slope. The sound was unmistakable. Another came a moment later—this one pinged off the side of the Jeep. And then a third. Ragged breathing and the unmistakable crunch of footsteps on scree told me this wasn’t an animal. This was a person. And they were hurrying toward me as fast as they could.

I crouched down in the Jeep. Then I straightened again, trying to see out the window. No luck, of course, because the branches were in the way.

The sounds of frantic movement came closer.

Should I call out? If it were a passerby, or someone from emergency services, maybe I needed to let them know someone was still in here. But wouldn’t they identify themselves? And if it was the killer—

I looked around for something to defend myself. The tire iron was in a storage compartment in the back, and it would take too long to retrieve. The first aid kit wasn’t any use unless my attacker wanted a soothing facial with a disinfectant wipe. Maybe if I had a can of tire slime or something, I could blast him in the face, but, of course, I didn’t. And then my eyes landed on the umbrella that had become an essential part of my gear since moving to the Pacific Northwest. It was compact, and it was cheap (because obviously I lost my umbrella almost constantly), but it was the spring-powered kind. So, when I pressed the little button on the side, the umbrella telescoped out and opened in a sudden burst.

It was better than nothing.

I retrieved the umbrella from where it had fallen in the accident, and then I perched on the center console, where I could launch myself up at the right moment. (God, please help me know when the right moment came.) The breathing sounded more labored now, and the rustle of weeds and the clumping, uneven steps sounded just outside. I still couldn’t see anything. And then I could: the branches of pine on the driver’s side window shifted, and the needles whispered. Whoever was coming, they still hadn’t said anything, and that, more than anything else, told me I was in trouble. Any normal person—anyone who wasn’t up to no good—would have called out, said something. Adrenaline boiled up from my gut. My face felt hot and slick. My headache seemed worse, in a way, but also far off, and I wondered again if I was going to be sick.

Above me, a gloved hand appeared. It was clutching a pistol, and it groped awkwardly, trying to get a grip on the window without losing hold of the gun. I didn’t wait for an invitation; I leaped up from my perch, jabbed the umbrella between the branches in what I hoped was the right direction, and pressed the button. The umbrella shot out and connected with something that definitely wasn’t a tree. The person outside the Jeep let go of the frame. The lodgepole shivered and skidded. The Jeep rocked slightly. And then there was a distinct thump as whoever had been trying to climb up to the window hit the ground.

The second surge of adrenaline caught me by surprise. I’d gotten them—whoever they were—good. I’d knocked them flat on their, uh, derrière. I had the upper hand. I needed to get out there, finish this while I still had a chance. I caught hold of the window frame and tried to pull myself up.

A gunshot cracked the air.

I let go of the window and dropped back into the Jeep.

The reality of my situation made its way through the fog of hormones. I wasn’t winning. I didn’t have the upper hand. I’d scored a tiny surprise. And the killer, on the other hand, had a gun—and I was trapped in a steel-and-fiberglass box. This was about as close as it got to literally shooting fish in a barrel.

I scooted toward the back of the Jeep, hoping I might be able to take cover behind the rock I’d hit, when a distant—and blessedly, belovedly familiar—voice rang out: “What’s going on down there?”

Bobby was giving his deputy voice full steam.

From outside the Jeep came hurried movements, and then the snapping, crackling sounds of someone crashing through brush.

“HE’S GETTING AWAY!”

(Millie, of course.)

And then Indira said, “I think I can wing him.”

“Put that down,” Bobby ordered. “Keme, don’t you dare run after him.”

Even at the bottom of a hill, trapped in an overturned Jeep, I could hear Keme’s sullen silence.

“If Dash is dead,” Fox said, “do you think I can have those jeans he can’t fit into anymore?”

“I’m not dead,” I shouted. And somehow, I managed to climb up and poke my head out the window—the lodgepole had shifted just enough to give me clearance. They were all there, lined up on the side of the road. My family. And Bobby was practically running down the hill. “And what are you all doing here?”