Tempting the Devil Page 15

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.”

  Mrs. Perkins looked disconcerted by the requests but nodded.

  The doctor came in then. He looked at the cuts and wanted to take X-rays. “Air bags have been known to crack a rib,” he said. He looked at her leg. She was covered by the infamous hospital gown, the brace attached to her shoe obvious. So were the scars from the injury and surgeries.

  She tolerated the next hour of waiting, X-rays, then waiting again. A nurse came in and swabbed, treated, and bandaged the cuts, including a small one on her face.

  She was just finishing when Ben Taylor appeared.

  The nurse blinked twice as he pushed aside the curtain. Maybe it was the deep scowl on his face.

  “She had someone call me,” he said and showed his credentials. Then he turned to her and she saw a flash of real concern in his eyes before they turned cold. Furiously cold. “How is she?”

  The doctor returned then with X-rays in hand. He looked curiously at Ben Taylor. “Mr. Stuart?”

  “No. A friend.”

  The doctor—Bruns, she remembered—turned back to her. “Nothing appears to be broken, but your ribs are going to hurt for the next week or so, probably several weeks. Doesn’t seem to have injured your leg. Keep the wounds clean.” He scribbled something on a pad and handed her two prescriptions. “One’s for pain. Take it as needed. There’s also one for an antibiotic for those cuts.” He looked to Ben Taylor. “You’re taking her home?”

  He nodded.

  “She needs to stay in bed for the next few days.”

  “I don’t think …,” she started.

  Ben Taylor quelled her with a look. “I’ll wait outside until you get dressed.”

  She returned his hard stare even as she felt vulnerable in the shapeless and faded hospital gown with her scarred leg hanging down, and much of her skin covered with bandages. Her hair was probably a fright.

  His frown didn’t help.

  He stepped outside and the nurse returned, fitting the brace back on her leg and then helping her dress in the bloody clothing. As she stood, the pain in her ribs made her breath catch. She swayed and caught the edge of the table.

  Then Ben returned, and his hand steadied her.

  “They tried to run me off the road,” she said, wondering if she made any sense.

  “You can tell me about it in the car,” he said. He put an arm around her and steered her toward a wheelchair an orderly had brought.

  “I don’t need …”

  “I know you don’t,” he said, “but there are hospital rules.”

  “Thank you for coming. I couldn’t think …” She stopped again as she fell into the chair. She wasn’t making any sense. And she certainly didn’t want him to think she didn’t have one person she could call after an accident. “It was just someone tried to kill me, and they’re trying to make it my fault.”

  She was babbling. She never babbled.

  He didn’t say anything until he had helped her into the front seat of his car. Then he turned to her. “Someone tried to kill you?”

  “Yes. No. Not exactly. They wanted to know who my source was.”

  “Who?”

  “Two men—I think it was two—in an SUV. They tried to run me off the road. No. Not tried. Did. Kept hitting my car, first in the back, then on the driver’s side. Pushed my car off the road. I was trapped inside. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t reach my gun. Then a man—he wore dark glasses—appeared at the door. My leg was trapped. I couldn’t move, and I smelled gas. He threatened to light a match and explode the car if I didn’t give him the name of my source.”

  “Did you?” he said in a level voice but she saw a muscle throb in his cheek.

  “No. Then he would have killed me. I saw it in his face. The only thing keeping me alive … was he needed that name.”

  “What happened then?”

  “A cell phone rang. He cursed. Apparently … told someone was approaching. He left but not before saying he could reach me. Anytime. Anywhere.”

  “Who came along?”

  “Hunters. Bobby Joe and Ernie. They pulled me out just before the car exploded.”

  “Last names?”

  She looked at him helplessly. How to explain she hadn’t gotten the last names? “I don’t know. They just brought me in and disappeared.” She felt stupid and terrified and out of her depth.

  He swore. “Mahoney was supposed to look after you. He called me and said he’d lost you.”

  “It’s my fault. I tried to lose anyone who was following.”

  “Why?”

  “I … thought I was meeting the source. I didn’t want to lead anyone to him.”

  “Where were you going to meet?”

  “Montcrest School.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The eastern part of the county.”

  He glared at her. “Do you have any idea how completely stupid that was?”

  She met his gaze. “Yes.” She hated the trembling in her voice. “But I don’t know how they followed me. I was careful.” She paused, then added, “Or I thought I was.”

  “Your source asked to meet you there?”

  “I thought it was my source. There was a text message on my cell phone. Only a few people have that number. He just said to meet him at the school at seven p.m. We’d met there before. I assumed—”

  “Where was your car earlier today?”

  “In a parking garage near the paper.”

  “You park there every day?”

  “Yes.”

  “It would have been easy enough to plant a GPS tracking device in your car. Maybe a bug as well. Looks like they were trying to find a good place to get you alone. They could track you without your seeing them. When they found their opportunity, they took it.”

  “The hunters said there was a detour sign. They couldn’t figure why it was there, so they went around it.”

  “Which means there were several people involved. Once they had you on a lonely road, they could call for help to detour traffic on both ends.”

  “Isn’t th
at convoluted?” She didn’t want to believe anyone had that kind of power. Then she remembered the smirk on the deputies’ faces. Had they been involved in her attempted murder? She shivered. “Why not go after me more directly?”

  “An accident on a lonely road?” he asked. “They would have the name they wanted, and no one would be the wiser. An explosion. A bottle of alcohol. You were drinking. Then they could go after whoever talked to you.”

  “You believe those deputies who were at the hospital were involved?”

  “Maybe. Maybe they were just giving you a hard time because they feel you blackened their department. Did you get those names?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They had name badges. Staples and Murray.”

  “I’ll check them out.” He started the car. “Where to?”

  “Home.”

  “Not alone. You don’t have the sense God gave a billy goat.” Fury accompanied every word.

  At the moment, Robin couldn’t deny it. Her hands still trembled. She’d come close to being burned to death because she thought she was smarter than the bad guys. She swallowed hard, then said softly, “You’re right.”

  He looked startled at the admission, but didn’t amend his characterization. Instead his jaw clenched.

  She gritted her teeth, then asked, “Can I use your cell phone? Mine was in the car. I think it’s probably cinders now.”

  He detached the phone from his belt, handed it to her, then pulled out of the parking lot. Even that movement sent pain pounding against her ribs. She looked at the numbers, blinked as she tried to concentrate.

  She didn’t have Wade’s phone number with her. She dialed the night city editor.

  “Robin, where in the hell are you? Wade and I have been going through hell since a nurse called from Meredith General Hospital. I tried to call back but they wouldn’t put you through. Then they said you were being released. What the hell happened?”

  “A car accident. Planned, I think, but I’m okay.”

  “What kind of accident? Where are you?”

  “On the way home. Can you give me Wade’s home number? I’ll explain everything to you tomorrow.”

  Then Wade was on the phone. “Robin? Thank God. I’ve been worried sick.”

  “I’m sore, but whole,” she said. “Someone is taking me home. My car is a total loss. It exploded. I don’t think I’ll be in tomorrow, but I’ll phone the story in.”