by Lisa Jackson
Or was this some elaborate hoax?
“Face it, you’re on a wild goose chase,” she told herself for the umpteenth time, but her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she remembered those whispered conversations all insisting the same thing:
“He’s alive.”
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered as the Subaru’s engine suddenly strained. She hadn’t really believed the weirdo on the other end of the line and God knew the photos could have been doctored, but she wasn’t one to live with any kind of doubt. So what if it was just a twisted joke? At least she could finally put Aaron’s memory to rest.
Right?
She’d left Seattle without telling a soul other than to ask her nineteen-year-old neighbor, Emily Hardy, to take care of Marilyn for a few days. So now she was in the middle of the Montana wilderness, a blizzard brewing. “Turn around,” she told herself, realizing she was chasing the same damned ghost she had been pursuing for years.
Hadn’t Mason, her second husband, accused her of just that? “Damn it all to hell.” The Outback’s tires slid a bit and she slipped the gearshift into a lower gear. “Come on, come on.” The mid-size car lunged forward, engine groaning in protest.
Spruce Creek wasn’t that far behind her. If she found a wide spot in the road, she could turn around and give up for the night.
The thought of a bed and a warm room in a motel made her sigh. She could hole up and spread her map out, check out the best route between here and Missoula, where she would spring her surprise on Mason.
But turning back felt too much like quitting, and she’d never been a quitter. Not since third grade, when she’d been bucked off a horse and decided to give up horseback riding all together. Until her grandfather had stared down at her with kind blue eyes and said, “Hey, Jillie, don’t you know, quitting’s for sissies? I never figured you to be one to run and hide when things got a little rough.” He’d helped her back on the wild-eyed colt, walked that painted pony for hours, until Jillian’s confidence had returned. So she wouldn’t give up now. Grandpa Jim had been dead and buried for over fifteen years, but she still felt as if he could see her every time she considered throwing in the towel.
Setting her jaw, she saw the next corner on this white, snow-flecked ridge. Maybe this was the summit. Maybe she’d finally reached a point where the road would wind down to the next town and she’d find a hotel or bed and breakfast where she could spend the night, take a long, hot shower and—
CRRRAAACCCKKK!
Jillian jumped.
The sharp report of a rifle echoed through the canyon.
BAM!
Her front tire blew.
“Oh Jesus!” Her heart flew to her throat. “No!”
The car spun crazily, wildly careening from one side of the icy road to the other.
“Oh God, oh God…oh…”
Don’t overreact!
Drive into the spin.
Grandpa Jim’s voice filled her brain and all the advice she’d heard about driving in ice and snow flashed through her mind.
Already skidding, the Subaru bouncing off the wall of ice on the mountain side of the road, shaving off snow and ice only to slide to the other side of this narrow ridge, toward the yawning canyon of the cliff face, as Jillian fought to control the Outback.
“Please, oh please…” She pressed the brakes and gripped the steering wheel.
Closer to the edge of the ridge, where the tops of trees were the only indication there was a bottom to the steep ravine, the automobile wavered and shuddered. “No, no, no!” she cried. To hell with the advice. She couldn’t turn into the spin and steer toward the abyss. Frantically, she yanked on the wheel, cranking it away from the gaping hole and trying like hell to keep the car on the road.
She stood on the brakes.
The tires jerked beneath her, anti-lock mechanism working to grab the icy pavement.
“No,” she whispered through her teeth, her heart tattooing wildly, her mind screaming. She stomped on the brake pedal, trying to slow the damned car down!
She braced herself against the steering wheel, her foot jabbing hard on the brake.
Stop! Stop the car, now!
One wheel slipped over the edge.
The car rocked crazily.
She cranked on the steering wheel again. Hard.
Too late!
Momentum propelled her Subaru over the edge.
And then the car was falling, plunging into the coming night.
Through the windshield, Jillian saw the tops of snow-covered trees, heard the scrape of branches tearing at the car’s underbelly and sides.
Glass shattered.
Metal twisted and groaned.
She screamed, arms covering her face, both feet on the brake pedal, as the mid-size car hurtled into the dark, gaping abyss of the canyon.
Perfect!
The silver vehicle with Washington plates plummeted into the canyon.
Free-falling almost in slow motion.
A thing of beauty.
The “accident” planned to meticulous perfection.
The Subaru tumbled and dropped.
Brittle tree branches snapped.
Frozen snow fell in clumps.
Metal shrieked.
A scream rang through the ravine, a scream of pure, unadulterated terror.
Which couldn’t have been more exquisite.
All of the waiting had been worth it.
Jillian Rivers, the bitch, was finally about to die.
Jillian’s eyelids snapped open.
But she couldn’t see…all around was darkness.
She groaned as a burning, grinding pain shrieked through her body. And her vision, oh God, why couldn’t she make out anything? Her legs were on fire, her head thudding, something covering her mouth and nose, cutting off her air.
Oh, sweet God in heaven, what happened?
Where am I?
And please, please make the pain stop!
She tried to draw in a breath, gasping around whatever was over her face, suffocating her.
Panic engulfed her, but she attempted to put it at bay. It was dark, but not completely, and the object over her face wasn’t pressing down, wasn’t stopping the flow of air completely. Her mind cleared as she tried to bat it away. What the hell was it? A pillow? No. A damned balloon? No…oh dear God, it was an air bag!
Teeth chattering from the cold or shock, she flailed at the damned bag and pushed it to one side. Despite the pounding in her head, she tried to focus. Slowly she realized she was trapped in the twisted wreckage that had been her Subaru.
A car wreck?
I was in an accident. Oh Holy Mother, my ankle!
She sucked in a breath, tried to think back. She was trapped inside a car, her ten-year-old Subaru Outback, now mangled and dead. It was freezing cold, wind screaming through the shattered windshield. Her head pounded and she felt blood, sticky and warm, in her hair.
Her thoughts were scattered and disjointed, as if she were drunk, blackness threatening to pull her under, pain keeping her conscious.
You’ve got a concussion, you idiot. You’ve got a stupid concussion. That’s why you feel light-headed. Wake up, Jillian, and figure this out! You’re going to freeze in here.
She moved just a bit.
Pain stopped her cold.
Every bone in her body felt as if it were broken, her muscles and skin bruised, agony throbbing through her joints.
Gritting her teeth, she tried to move again, but her left foot, pinned beneath the crumpled dash, wouldn’t budge. Pain jagged up her leg. Nausea boiled in her throat and she nearly retched. She felt the blood drain from her face and knew she was on the verge of passing out.
Don’t do it. Don’t let go. Hang on, whatever you do. Losing consciousness will kill you.
Taking deep breaths, her chest aching as if she’d cracked ribs, she struggled to stay awake.
God, it was cold. So damned cold. She tried the ignition, twisting the key, but not
hing happened, as if the starter itself were ruined. She tried again and again, but there wasn’t so much as a click indicating the engine was trying to spark.
“Damn it all to hell,” she muttered, giving up on any hope of starting the car.
She stared out the splintered glass to the coming dusk and the snow blowing in wild circles, a million swirling flakes caught in the dim beams of headlights twisted at odd angles but still, somehow, giving off cockeyed illumination.
Maybe someone would see her, find her because of the headlights splashing in macabre patterns upward through the trees.
And if they don’t, what happens? You freeze. Right here in this wreck of a car. You have to get out, Jillian, and you have to get out now!
“Help!” she cried. “Someone, help me!”
Her voice was hoarse and faint against the wind.
Where had she been going on this stormy night? Why the hell was she in these mountains?
Why was she alone?
At that thought she froze.
Maybe she hadn’t been traveling by herself. Maybe someone had been with her! She slid a glance to the side, but the passenger seat was empty. Ignoring the pain, she twisted her neck and glanced into the torn and buckled area that had been the backseat. Fabric was ripped, padding exposed, her suitcase wedged between the front seat and what was left of the backseat. But there wasn’t any evidence of anyone caught in the mangled metal and plastic and shards of glass. No bloody arm peeked out of the torn cushions; no terrified face of a dead person stared at her through glassy, sightless eyes.
Shivering, she pulled at a blanket she always kept in the car and yanked hard, as it was caught in the folds of wrenched metal and plastic. The pain in her rib cage was excruciating but she didn’t give up. “Come on, come on,” she muttered, yanking hard on the damned piece of quilt her grandmother had made fifty years earlier. She heard it rend, old stitches giving way, but she managed to tear off most of it and wrap it around her as her damned ankle continued to pound and her head ached, the cuts on her face burning.
She yelled again and pounded on the horn. It gave out a sharp blast. Again she hit the damned thing, yelling, hoping beyond hope that someone would hear her.
What had she been doing driving in what appeared to be steep mountains with sharp ridges and sheer canyons? And where the hell were these damned mountains located? The Cascade Range in Western Washington? The Canadian Rockies? The Tetons? Or some other craggy range?
Montana, she thought dimly. You were driving to Montana.
Surely someone would be missing her soon when she didn’t arrive at her destination, wherever in Montana that was. And then, of course, a search party would be sent.
Unless this trip of yours was secret. Clandestine.
She had the uneasy feeling that no one knew where she was, though she wasn’t clear about where she was going. It had something to do with Montana and her ex-husband, something secret…what was it? If she could only recall.
“For the love of God,” she muttered and shook her head, only to wince at the pain. She didn’t remember everything about herself, but she knew she wasn’t some sort of spy and she wasn’t one to keep secrets and she never really cared to keep anything on the “down low.”
And yet…
A dark fear that she was completely alone snaked around her heart.
“Don’t even think it,” she told herself. Someone somewhere was missing her, looking for her. It was only a matter of time before she’d be found. She just had to stay alive long enough for the rescue.
Head throbbing, she glanced up again, searching for the road that had to be high overhead. All she saw was a sheer wall of snow and ice. There were trees in this grim crevice, a few foreboding sentinels covered in snow, but not much else. Obviously her car had slid down the steep embankment and landed in what appeared to be a frozen creek bed. Had she swerved to avoid hitting another vehicle? A deer? Someone on foot? Or had she just taken a corner too fast and hit ice, only to go careening over the ledge?
Try as she might, she couldn’t remember. Yes, there were fleeting thoughts of packing the car, of planning a quick trip…a long trip, from Seattle, where she lived. She had a quick memory of checking a road map and heading east, out of the snarl of traffic of the U District and her row house near the campus of the University of Washington. She’d nosed her Outback across the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, which straddled a narrow point in Lake Washington, and then drove on the freeway past Bellevue and further east…and then…nothing. She had an inkling that she’d been determined. Maybe even angry. Which wasn’t a surprise if it had anything to do with her ex.
“Terrific,” she muttered under her breath, unable to call up any memory more tangible. Not that it really mattered. Why she was on her hastily planned trip and even where she was going weren’t of vital consequence. Getting out of the canyon and to safety was.
“Damn it all,” she whispered, frustrated and shivering, her breath fogging in the freezing air.
Still staring upward, she swallowed back a new surge of despair.
The sheer face of the cliff was daunting. If the road was up there, high over this frozen creek bed, how would she ever be able to climb up the steep, frigid wall of rock and ice? Even if she weren’t injured, if she were healthy, dressed for the arctic, with rock-climbing gear, she doubted she could scale the mountain.
Think, Jillian. Think! There must be another way out of here!
Holding the blanket tight, she slowly surveyed the creek bed. Was there a path or road, some other means, away from this ravine, toward civilization? Maybe she could follow the stream downhill.
Oh yeah right, Einstein. With an ankle that might be broken? A leg that moved so much as an inch causes you to howl in agony? Face it, you can’t get out of here without help.
“Hell.” She banged on the horn again. Urgently. Frantically. Desperately. Sending the sharp blasts ricocheting through the snowy gorge.
But it was useless; she knew it. To her own ears the wild honking sounded like the forlorn bleating of a frightened sheep.
Pathetic.
But it was all she could do.
Still pounding on the horn, she yelled again until her throat was raw, hoping her pathetic din and the fading headlights would draw some attention. But no sound of a car’s engine answered, no jumbled shouts of rescuers could be heard, no whop, whop, whop of a helicopter’s rotors sounded over the sigh of the wind.
No…she was alone.
In this godforsaken wilderness, with the freezing night slipping ever closer, she was totally and frighteningly alone.
Chapter Five
“You suck!” Bianca grumbled under her breath as Jeremy lay on the couch watching MTV.
“You suck!” he threw back and tossed another handful of some trail mix into his mouth.
“Right now, I think you both suck,” Regan broke in from the kitchen. “And for the record, I hate that word. Can’t you come up with some other insult? Something a little more clever.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t be such a nerd.” Bianca flopped into a side chair, red-blonde curls flouncing around her small face. A few freckles she tried desperately to hide with makeup bridged her nose and her big hazel eyes were rimmed with thick, dark lashes. Just like her damned father.
Cisco hopped into Bianca’s lap. She usually adored and indulged the dog, but she was in one of her foul moods right now and, frowning, pushed Cisco onto the floor. He sat on the worn carpet and cocked his head from one side to the other, as if trying to understand the girl who had, before falling in love, lavished all her attention upon him.
“Can’t help it, Bianca, I’m a nerd by nature. It’s genetic, and as such, you, too, have the nerd gene.” Regan plucked off a prematurely dying bloom from the Christmas cactus in the garden window.
Bianca rolled her eyes as if her mother were the most stupid woman on the planet. “I just want to go over to Chris’s for a while. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”
> “It’s a blizzard outside, if you haven’t noticed. The only reason I’m going out is because I have to.” Regan was bundling up in enough outer gear to battle the elements. She grabbed her stocking cap and gloves off the table, where the mail had been stacked and unattended for days. “I don’t want either of you driving.”
Again, Bianca rolled those huge Pescoli eyes.
Which ticked Regan off.
“And not only are you to have your homework done by the time I get home, I want the dishwasher unloaded and all the dishes in the sink washed.”
Neither of her children responded.
“Jer, I’m talkin’ to you, too,” she said a little louder. He was glued to the set, didn’t so much as look over his shoulder. “Jeremy!” She walked into the living room before realizing he was wearing earbuds buried deep in his ears so that he could blast his brain with music from his iPod while watching some reality show with what he called “hot whiny chicks.”
“Jeremy!” she yelled, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Wha—?” He looked up and, when he saw her stern expression, said again, “What?”
She yanked out one of the earbuds. “You feed the dog and unload the dishwasher, then do the dishes. It’s your week.”
“But Bianca—”
“Did them last week. You’re on, bud.”
“Yeah, right,” he groused, his gaze wandering back to the television.
“I mean it. And this mess”—she motioned to the paper plates and glasses stacked on the coffee table within easy reach of his highness—“needs to be picked up.”
“I’ll do ’em. Okay? Geez…”
“Good. I’ve got a witness.”
Bianca, too burned that she wasn’t being allowed to leave, didn’t even show any of her usual smugness or pleasure that Jeremy was being reamed. She was too busy texting what were probably notes of undying love to the man of her dreams, Chris, a lanky, dull-appearing boy who spoke in monosyllables and, unless Regan missed her guess, was a habitual marijuana smoker.
Which scared her to death.
Not that she hadn’t done her share of weed back in the day, when she’d been a little older than Bianca, but she’d had the good sense to leave it at that. Nothing stronger. Ever. And she’d left pot alone with her first pregnancy and had never looked back.