Stone Cold Heart

by Laura Griffin

  The road ahead of her was empty.

  “He turned off somewhere, Nolan. Damn it, he ditched me! How’s that for suspicious? He has to be hiding something.”

  Sara pressed the accelerator, but the nearest car was a blue sedan several hundred yards ahead.

  “Give me your exact location,” Nolan said.

  “About half a mile west of Stony Creek Park, maybe more. You know, his license plate was all smeared with dirt. I couldn’t even get a digit.”

  “Was it a Texas plate?”

  “I think so, yeah. But I can’t be sure. I really couldn’t see.”

  “Okay, Crowley’s on his way.”

  Sara glanced in the rearview mirror. Her heart jumped into her throat at the sight of a white Tahoe.

  “He can get your statement and—”

  “He’s back.”

  “What?”

  Her chest squeezed. “He’s behind me, Nolan. Right now. He’s speeding up.”

  “You’re sure it’s the same vehicle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, slow down. See if he passes. Maybe you ticked him off, and he’s messing with you.”

  Sara moved the camera to the seat beside her. She took her foot off the gas, trying to keep an eye on him and on the road at the same time. Her heart hammered as the big silver grille moved right behind her.

  “He’s not passing me.”

  “Shit. Okay, listen. He’s probably just trying to intimidate you.”

  “It’s working.” Sara gripped the wheel, watching the reflection in her mirror. He had a cap pulled low over his face, casting a shadow, but she could see his hands on the steering wheel.

  “He’s Caucasian, and he’s wearing a blue ball cap,” she said. “That’s about all I can tell.”

  “The sheriff’s office is about six miles away. When you reach Tillman Road, you’re going to take a right turn.”

  A sign ahead indicated an S-curve coming soon. She looked around, panicked. She was going too fast, but she didn’t want to brake and get rear-ended.

  “Sara?”

  He was right on her bumper now. She nudged up her speed, but then the road curved, and she gripped the wheel.

  “I have to slow down,” she said, taking her foot off the gas. The road made another bend, and she struggled to keep control.

  Boom!

  Sara’s head snapped forward. She careened onto the shoulder. Her stomach clenched as the tires hit gravel, and then she was spinning, spinning, spinning—a blur of trees and sky and rock. She gripped the wheel, and her stomach did a free fall. She glanced at the rearview mirror as she sailed backward into a wall of trees.

  CHAPTER 17

  Sara’s neck hurt. Her chest hurt. She blinked her eyes open, and everything was gray and blurry.

  She struggled to breathe and reached for the door handle. Pain zinged up her side.

  Seat belt.

  She jabbed the button with her thumb, again and again, until finally it released. She reached for the handle again, less surprised by the jolt of pain this time as she struggled to push open the door.

  Sky.

  But it was dimmer than she remembered. How long had she been out? Had she been out?

  Grabbing onto the door, she leaned forward and managed to lever herself out, yelping when her shin met with something sharp. A splintered tree branch jutted up from the ground. The entire limb had been shorn off.

  Had she done that? She glanced around. Her Explorer had plowed through some small trees, it looked like, before landing backward in a ditch at the base of a rock wall. She was probably lucky the trees had cushioned her fall, or the impact would have been worse.

  Sara’s foot snagged on something, and she stumbled, catching herself on the trunk of a tree. The light was gray and hazy. Or maybe her brain was hazy. She felt nauseated. Disoriented.

  The rumble of an engine snapped her to attention, and she whirled around. A truck. The roar got louder and louder, until it was right on top of her. She flattened herself against her Explorer as the truck barreled past in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

  Sara bent over, coughing and gasping, trying to catch her breath. Her gaze fell on a tear in her black yoga pants. Blood oozed out, trickling down her leg.

  Another engine approaching—this time from the other direction. Why hadn’t anyone stopped? Glancing around, she saw that the front of her Explorer was mostly concealed by foliage. She ducked around limbs to check out the back. The bumper and side panel were crumpled, and one of her taillights was broken.

  Images flashed through her brain. The curve in the road, the spin, the trees coming at her.

  The big silver grille in her rearview mirror.

  Sara’s heart skittered, and she looked around. Where the hell was he? Had he taken off?

  Leaves rustled behind her. Sara jerked her head around, sending pain shooting down her spine.

  She scanned the area, gripped by the sudden certainty that she wasn’t alone.

  Go.

  Go go go.

  She rushed back to her Explorer and grabbed the phone from the cupholder, then stumbled away from the wreck. Swiping at the leaves and branches, she climbed from the ditch. Her foot slipped, and she ended up palms-down on the gravel, her phone in the dirt as she stared at the pavement just inches from her nose.

  Scrambling to her feet, she stepped clear of the highway and looked around. The lanes were empty, and relief washed over her. If there had been a car coming, she could have been killed.

  Her relief evaporated as she did a slow turn and realized there wasn’t anyone in sight who might help her.

  Where was the man who’d rammed into her? She saw no sign of him, but fear took hold as she pictured him lurking nearby.

  Sara scooped up her phone. Her fingers trembled as she tapped the emergency call button.

  No service.

  Frustration burned her throat as she stared down at the screen. She cursed and looked around. No cars. No people. Dusk was falling, and she felt an urgent need to get away from the accident scene.

  Accident. Yeah, right. She’d been run off the road.

  Noise in the distance. A car, or maybe a truck, by the sound of it. She stepped up to the highway and prepared to flag it down.

  Then she thought better of it. Maybe it was him. The engine grew louder. Panic took hold of her as she glanced around. She was out here unarmed. Defenseless. She was a sitting duck. She should hide, and then at least she could see who it was before they saw her.

  Sara plunged into the woods.

  • • •

  Nolan swerved onto the shoulder and jammed to a halt beside Crowley’s patrol car. Sara’s Explorer was about ten yards up, ass-first in a ditch.

  Nolan jumped out. “Where is she?”

  Crowley held up a finger, telling him to wait as he finished a radio transmission.

  Nolan jogged to the Explorer. No one inside. He whipped his phone from his pocket as he looked around. For the fourth time, he called her, and for the fourth time, he got kicked straight to voice mail.

  “God damn it!” Nolan rounded the SUV, checking out the dented back panel.

  His gaze swept over the ground, but he saw no footprints, no blood trails.

  “Maybe she flagged a ride.”

  He glanced up at Crowley. “No way.”

  “Well, I just talked to dispatch,” Crowley said. “They took a call eight minutes ago about the accident.”

  “Was it her?”

  “No. Some passing car.” Crowley looked up and down the road. “No sign of a driver at the scene, so they didn’t stop.”

  Nolan was back at the door, leaning into the front seat. Sara’s phone was nowhere. A camera sat on the floor alongside her purse. Her wallet and a lipstick had spilled out.

  “Fuck!”

  “You think she caught a ride?” Crowley asked from behind him.

  “Not without her purse.”

  Nolan went around to the other side, slipping on the ditch and ca
tching himself on a tree limb. He glanced down and spotted a gouge in the dirt where someone else had recently pulled the same move. Looking around, he still didn’t see any footprints, but something on a leaf caught his eye.

  Blood.

  Nolan’s heart lurched. He knelt for a closer look and saw more dark droplets on some weeds.

  “Damn, is that a blood trail?” Crowley asked.

  Nolan pushed past him, plowing through the brush. The trees and shrubs hugged the hillside, but then the road curved up ahead, and the wall of rock gave way to a tangle of bushes and trees.

  “Sara!” Nolan jogged along the shoulder, darting his gaze everywhere at once.

  She hadn’t taken her purse. Why the hell had she left her vehicle without her purse?

  Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe she was injured. Obviously, she was injured. There was blood leading away from the wreck.

  Nolan’s chest tightened. He couldn’t breathe. Ever since her call had dropped, he’d felt like his lungs wouldn’t work. He scanned the highway now, desperate for any sign of her.

  “Sara!”

  Nolan reached the curve. No more blood trail that he could see. He headed down into the ravine, fighting his way through the thorny brush.

  Someone had been behind her, trying to run her off the road. Or maybe she’d skidded off the road. Either way, she was scared. Maybe she’d decided to hide.

  Kaylin Baird’s faced flashed into his mind, and Nolan’s heart squeezed.

  Always too late. Always too late, and he had no idea what the fuck was happening.

  “Sara!”

  He skidded down a slope, grabbing a branch as he almost fell.

  “Nolan.”

  He whipped around.

  “Nolan.”

  He caught a flash of white through the trees. He ran toward it, batting the branches out of his way.

  Sara sat on a rotten tree trunk holding her hand to her forehead. Blood streamed down her face.

  Nolan’s heart missed a beat, and he rushed over.

  “Are you okay?”

  She looked up, her eyes wide with fear. “Is he gone?”

  CHAPTER 18

  Sara leaned against the back of the police cruiser and watched the tow truck back up to her Explorer. The piercing beep beep beep made her head feel like it was about to explode. She closed her eyes. Her ribs ached. Her mouth tasted sour. She still felt queasy, and a layer of dust coated the back of her throat.

  She stuffed the bloody wet wipe into her pocket and looked up the road at Nolan and Brad Crowley talking in low voices. Crowley kept glancing back at her, looking more and more nervous by the minute as he and Nolan swapped info.

  Sara turned her attention to the tow-truck driver. Nolan knew him—big surprise. Nolan knew everyone. After attaching a winch to the front of her SUV, the man had slowly pulled it from the ditch. The back end was crumpled, but the rest looked okay.

  Sara closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She ached everywhere, even her teeth. She needed an aspirin. Or better yet, a stiff drink.

  The tow-truck driver slid behind the wheel of her Explorer. It started right up. Sara walked over as he revved the engine a few times.

  “Thanks for getting me out of there,” she said.

  “No problem. Your tires are okay, and your engine sounds fine.”

  Nolan walked over. “You sure about that, Al?”

  Al looked at Sara. “We can take it in and run some diagnostics if you’re worried about it.”

  “That won’t be necessary, but thanks,” she told him. Then she walked around to the passenger side and retrieved her wallet from the floor. She dug out a credit card and handed it to the driver. He walked back to his rig.

  Nolan gazed down at her. “How’s the head?”

  “Better.”

  “You dizzy?”

  “A little.”

  “I can take you to the ER to get checked out.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She touched the tender spot above her temple and bent down to check it in the side mirror. She didn’t remember hitting her head, but there was definitely a bump there. Most likely, she’d conked it when she slipped in the ditch before fleeing into the woods.

  She straightened, and Nolan was watching her with a furrowed brow.

  The tow-truck driver returned with her card and a receipt. “Come by the shop if you’d like a free estimate on the body work, ma’am.”

  “I will, thank you.”

  Nolan shook his hand. “Thanks, man.”

  Sara watched him walk away.

  “You shouldn’t be behind the wheel right now,” Nolan told her. “Let me drive you.”

  She sighed because she knew he was right. “Fine.”

  She opened the passenger door and gingerly slid into the seat. Nolan eased her door shut, then walked around and climbed in on the driver’s side. He adjusted the seat back and gave her a worried look as she carefully fastened her seat belt. Her ribs were bruised but not broken, and her main concern was the two-inch gash on her left shin.

  “Sure you don’t want to hit the ER?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about the firehouse? I know the paramedics there, and they could see if you need stitches.”

  “It’s just a few scrapes. All I need is a first-aid kit.”

  He said something under his breath as he pulled onto the highway.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry you missed your task force meeting,” she said. “You really didn’t need to come all the way here.”

  He shot her a look.

  “Any chance you can still make it?”

  “Talia can fill me in.”

  Sara gazed out the window as the dusky landscape whisked by. She’d spent almost an hour out here on the highway dealing with this mess.

  “What were you doing at Stony Creek Park?”

  She glanced at him. “I wanted to have a look.”

  “What did you think you’d find?” His voice had an edge now, and her defenses went up.

  “We all seem to agree this area is the killer’s comfort zone,” she said. “We know he needs a new place to dispose of bodies now that his favorite park’s crawling with cops. And according to your APD contact, there’s a chance he has a victim with him as we speak.”

  Nolan kept his gaze on the road, but the muscles on the side of his jaw tensed.

  “What’s the problem with taking a look around?” she asked.

  “You should leave that to the investigators.”

  “I’m an investigator, thank you very much.”

  “The police investigators. You work in a lab.”

  “I work in a lot of places.” She folded her arms over her chest, annoyed with him for things that definitely weren’t his fault. He’d come out here to help her. Logically, she knew that, but she couldn’t help feeling shaken. And bitchy. And out of sorts.

  She glanced at him, and the sight of his hand on her steering wheel made her feel better for some reason.

  She had to be losing it.

  Sara looked out the window. “What do you think the odds are it was him back there?”

  Nolan kept his gaze on the road and didn’t answer.

  “Nolan?”

  “I don’t know. We have ninety-seven white Tahoes from that date range in this county and the surrounding three counties alone. So it could have been a lot of people.”

  “Yes, but this particular white Tahoe ran me off the highway.”

  “You were tailgating him, so he could have been responding to that.”

  “If that’s all it was, he could have flipped me off. Instead, he tried to end my life. Clearly, he didn’t like someone following him. Maybe he didn’t want someone to see where he was going. Or maybe he didn’t want me getting his license plate—which was conveniently unreadable, by the way. I snapped a few photos, but they all turned out blurry.”

  Nolan didn’t comment.


  “He stopped to watch me after the crash. Doesn’t that sound strange to you?”

  He looked at her. “You said you didn’t see him.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “How do you know he stopped to watch?”

  “I don’t, for sure. I just . . .”

  “What?”

  “I had a feeling about it. When I stumbled away from the wreck. It felt like someone was watching me.”

  Felt like. Listen to her. She sounded paranoid.

  Sara stared out the window at the dark landscape punctuated by the occasional glow of houses. They were still on the outskirts of Springville.

  Nolan didn’t talk. Neither did she. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the faint murmur of the radio.

  Nolan reached Main Street but kept going. The shops were closed, and most still had all their red-white-and-blue decorations on proud display. They passed the Baptist church and turned left into a neighborhood. Sara’s pulse picked up as she looked around. It was a tree-lined street of clapboard houses with wide front porches.

  Nolan swung into a driveway and parked.

  “What are we doing?” she asked.

  “You said you wanted a first-aid kit. You can use mine.”

  She stared at him in the dimness. Then she looked at the porch. A yellow light glowed beside the door. Curiosity sparked inside her. And something else she didn’t want to put a label on.

  Before she could change her mind, she grabbed her purse off the floor and slid from the SUV. Nolan locked it with a chirp, and Sara joined him on the stone path leading to his front door.

  She looked around, taking in the oak trees, the porch swings, the neatly kept lawns. Everything had a sort of storybook feel to it, and the street could have been a movie set in Anytown, USA.

  Sara followed him up the front steps. A red-lidded Tupperware container sat on the doormat. Nolan picked it up, then opened the screen door with a squeak.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Not sure.” He unlocked the door. “M&M cookies, if I had to guess.”

  “Nice. Your mother drop by?”

  With a small smile, he ushered her inside and flipped on a light. “My elderly neighbor across the street. I changed some light bulbs for her the other day.”

  Nolan’s house smelled like him—something subtle and masculine that made Sara picture him stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel around his lean hips. She ignored the cascade of nerves as she glanced around. Two big brown sofas dominated the living room. He had an old-looking area rug and a coffee table, as well as the obligatory wall-mounted TV, but that was about it for the furnishings.