Tempting the Devil (19 page)

She pressed down on the accelerator. A whisper of terror shot through her. She'd seen enough movies to guess at what was happening. She also knew how much damage metal could do to a body.

Her left hand clamped around the steering wheel. She picked up her cell phone and pressed the button to ring the paper. Another jarring bump. Harder than the last. The cell phone flew from her right hand as she grabbed the steering wheel with both fists.

The next crash almost sent her into a ditch. The phone bounced to the floor.

She managed to straighten the car and accelerate. The vehicle behind was more dangerous than the winding road ahead.

Then the SUV passed. She saw a man on the passenger side. Despite the fact that he wore dark glasses, she knew she'd never seen him before.

She pressed down on the brake, hoping that the SUV would go ahead as they reached a blind turn. Instead it also slowed, then turned in to her car, striking it on the driver's side. She was jerked against the seat belt by the impact and frantically tried to keep on the road. Her car veered off the pavement, but she managed to turn it in a half circle and get back on the road going in the opposite direction.

Where was other traffic?

Her gun
! The gun was in her glove compartment, but she needed two hands on the steering wheel to keep the car on the road.

She looked in the rearview mirror. The SUV had also turned and was bearing back down on her again.

Her heart pumped and she fought to keep a scream down. Too many memories. Car going off a cliff. Her leg barely hanging together by muscles. The bone protruding and blood spreading in a pool. Months of operations and pain.

She accelerated again, but the SUV overtook her. She glanced to the right and saw the ground falling away on her right side. She pressed the pedal as far as it would go, but her car was no match for the SUV. The roar of its engine grew louder, and dread whirled inside her. Dread, but not acceptance.

She steered her car to the middle of the road to block her opponent, but the SUV rammed her again and this time the force of the impact sent her car careening off the side of the road.

Another accident. Another car going off the road. A scream clawed in her throat. Two years ago she'd flown off the road. Now someone else was re-creating the horror.

Did they know?
!

She stomped on the brake as the car tumbled down a ditch and sped toward a clump of trees.

A hammer slammed into her chest. A cloud of powder nearly suffocated her. Glass flew over the seat and she felt pinpricks of pain on her left arm. Dozens of small slices leaked blood over her clothes.

Struggling to keep conscious, she was vaguely aware that someone had approached the broken window. A face under a baseball cap, eyes shaded by dark glasses, peered at her.

God, she hurt. She could barely breathe. She tried to move but the brace was caught by the crushed dashboard. Ignoring the stabbing pain in her chest she tried to lunge for the glove compartment—and the gun—but the seat belt and trapped leg put it a few inches too far away.

To her horror, she smelled gas.

“Miss Stuart?” The words were innocent enough, but the voice reeked of malice.

“Who are you?” Stupid question but she couldn't come up with anything better.

“Who was it?” the man asked. “Who talked to you?”

The words sank in. She shook her head.

He looked down at her.

“A match. That's all it would take to send this car into a fireball.”

She heard the sound of a cell phone ringing. It was close. Very close. The man's face disappeared and she struggled against the seat belt still holding her firm. She smelled smoke.

Then she heard another voice. “Gotta get out of here. Someone's coming.”

Cursing. Words she'd never heard spoken before. The meaning, though, was clear. “Fire,” the man whispered. “It's so easy. A name? Just a name.”

But she knew if she gave him the name there was no reason to keep her alive.

She dropped her head as if unconscious.

The smoke became more dense. “I'll see you again, sweetheart,” the voice said.

Silence.

She opened her eyes. No one was there.

She struggled to release the seat belt again. Finally. She tried to get out of the open door, but her brace was still caught under the dashboard. Every movement felt like someone was pounding against her chest, and she could barely breathe.

She was going to die.

Because of a name.

Ignoring the pain, she scrambled to get out of the car. She pulled her leg but a piece of dashboard had caught the metal. She felt blood on the leg and prayed there was no more damage.

But it wouldn't matter, if she couldn't get out. She screamed even though she knew it was probably hopeless, then the smoke filled her throat and she heard the crackle of flames.

Hands grabbed her and started to pull.

“Her leg is caught,” a voice said.

Someone leaned over and pulled on her leg. New pain streaked through her. But she felt herself moving. Then she was dragged outside.

“Come on, lady. We got to get the hell out of here.”

She tried to stand, but she couldn't. Her chest hurt too badly. She couldn't catch her breath. The men pulled her away from her car and up the embankment.

The flames flared and she felt intense heat.

An explosion rocked her, and flaming pieces of her car flew in a hundred directions.

chapter fourteen

Camouflage print pressed against her body. The odor of gas and burning and stale sweat filled her nostrils as a wave of heat blew over them.

The man covering her body was big, and his weight didn't help the stabbing pain in her chest as they waited for the last of the debris to rain down.

Then the man rolled off her and she realized from their heavy camouflage clothing that they were hunters. She noticed the man next to her had several burns and cuts, and several places on his trouser legs were smoldering. He quickly doused them with dirt.

“You're hurt,” she said, overwhelmed by what he'd done.

“Ain't nothing. We'd better get you to the hospital, little lady,” he said. “Good thing we came by.”

“Did you see anyone leaving here?”

“Sure didn't. Just smoke from the car.” He stared at her. “You mean someone just left you like that?”

“Two men. Forced me off the road.”

“Hell you say. Pretty thing like you. Like to get my hands on them.”

Pretty thing. She'd never felt less like a pretty thing. She looked down at herself. Everything in her ached, stung, or burned. Her voice was hoarse with smoke, she had cuts over her body, and her chest hurt like all the devils in hell were pounding on it. She touched her left leg, but it seemed to be the one limb that survived without much trauma.
Thank God
.

Thank God and these two men that I'm still alive
.

“I don't know how to thank …”

“Hell, weren't nothin'. Thank the fact that Ernie decided to ignore that detour sign,” said one of the men. “Figured someone left it there by mistake.”

“Detour?”

“Down the road some.”

“It wasn't … there when I passed.”

He looked puzzled, then scowled. “You saying someone put it there so they could run you off the road?”

“I just know it wasn't there. Someone rammed me off the road. Two men came down, threatened to blow up the car …” She stopped. It was hard to believe, even for her.

“Now stop those questions, Bobby Joe. Ain't none of our business. She needs to go to the hospital,” the man called Ernie said.

The other one nodded. “I'm Bobby Joe, this here's Ernie.” He looked at her, waiting for a name.

“I'm Robin Stuart. And I'm very grateful.”

“Ain't no need for that.” Bobby Joe looked down at her left leg and the brace, and frowned, then turned to his larger companion. “Can you carry her up the hill?”

“I can …” She started to get up, but slid back.

Before she could say another word, Ernie gingerly picked her up and carried her to an old pickup truck and put her in the front seat. “I'll ride in the back,” he said. “Bobby is driving.”

Sitting upright hurt. But then so had lying down. To divert her mind from the pain, she looked around the cab of the truck and saw a rack of rifles. She'd been right. They were hunters. Illegal probably, since the season hadn't started. At least they didn't seem to be hunting humans. She was pathetically grateful for that.

The blessed numbness of shock was wearing off. Waves of emotion flooded her. Gratitude. Anger. No, fury.
And fear
. The man who'd threatened to light the match had made it clear he was not finished.

Twenty minutes later, Robin sat on a table in a cubicle of the county hospital. She wore only a hospital gown while her bloodied clothes lay in a pile on the floor alongside her brace.

Ernie and Bobby Joe had let her out at the emergency room door. She'd asked for their last names, but they took off without giving them to her.

Once inside she was besieged by questions, mostly about insurance. She tried to tell them her insurance card was burned to a crisp. As were, she added to herself, her car, cell phone, her purse with her credit cards and identification, and her gun. She assured them she had very good insurance, gave them the name of the insurance company, and told them if they had questions they could call the
Atlanta Observer
.

Then she waited. And waited. No phone. No money. Scenes kept flashing in her mind. The voice. The dark glasses that hid eyes. The menace that exuded from her attacker. The panic of being trapped in a car filling with smoke.

The terror at leaving the road again.

She couldn't quite control her trembling. She'd come close to dying two years ago. Now a second time. Like Daisy, she might be running out of lives.

She wanted someone. But who? No boyfriend. No sister within five hundred miles. She had some friends at the paper, but none she felt she could impose upon. Bob Greene. No. He wanted her story.

Her story
. Was it really that important now?

A grandmotherly-looking woman popped in. “I'm Jane Perkins. Patients' advocate. Fancy name for volunteer. Can I call someone for you?”

She thought, but not rapidly. Her mind seemed to have gone into slow motion.

Wade. She had to call Wade. It was after seven thirty—he would be frantic. But after that. There was no family close by. No one to rush to her side. She certainly didn't want to alarm her sisters and disrupt their lives over a few scratches.

Before she could answer, two Meredith County deputies came through the door. One took a notebook from his pocket.

“Miss Stuart?” he asked with no little insolence as he examined her, his gaze going through the cotton gown and lingering on her scarred leg. “Heard you had an accident.”

“It wasn't an accident. Someone forced me off the road.”

The deputy raised an eyebrow. “You got any witnesses to that?”

She realized she hadn't. Ernie and Bobby Joe hadn't seen the SUV or the two men. They had seen a detour sign. Even if they had seen something, she didn't have their last names. She realized they hadn't wanted to wait for the police. She didn't care why.

She told the deputy what had happened, and he shook his head. “No names for these so-called heroes?”

“Bobby Joe and Ernie. That's all I know.”

“For a reporter?” the deputy said. “I would have thought better of you. But then after reading your story yesterday …”

“Sure you weren't speeding?” asked his partner. “Maybe drinking a little? Imagining little green men?”

She was being baited and she was determined not to let them see her sweat. “No, I wasn't speeding,” she said calmly. “Not in this county. As for drinking, you're welcome to take a blood sample.”

“You can be sure we'll do just that.”

“What about the men who tried to run me down?”

“We just have your say on that, Miss Stuart.”

“The men who helped me said there were detour signs.”

The deputy shrugged. “I'll check but I don't know of any detour.”

“An SUV rammed my car several times. When I went off the road, I was trapped inside. One of the occupants of the SUV threatened to light a match and blow up the car.”

“Now why would he do that?”

“He wanted the name of my source for a story.”

“Oh, that piece of fiction you wrote. This sounds like another to me. Another big story at our expense.”

She moved, swallowed a gasp of pain. She'd become used to pain after the accident two years earlier and the succeeding surgeries. She prided herself on having a high pain threshold. But this took her breath away.

“I'm not saying anything else,” she told the deputies, one of whom had a malicious smile on his face. “Not without an attorney present.”

“We'll investigate your charges, but it looks to me like you just made up a story to cover your own negligence. Or wanted another story.”

“I don't care what it looks like to you,” she said, not even bothering to defend herself further.

“There might be charges. Reckless driving. Speeding.”

“Try it,” she challenged them, too angry now to hold her tongue.

“The facts will speak for themselves.”

They turned and left. The patients' advocate's gaze followed them out the door before turning back to her. “Can't say I like their attitude.”

“You asked if you can contact someone for me?”

Mrs. Perkins nodded.

“Two people?”

“I can do that.”

“Wade Carlton.” She wrote out the
Observer
's number. “If he isn't there, ask to speak to the night city editor. He'll contact Wade. Also Ben Taylor.” She realized she'd lost his private number in the fire. “You'll have to call the FBI and ask them to contact him. Please tell him where I am.”