Heartbreaker Read online

  One Monday afternoon she’d been on an errand for John, and on the return trip she detoured by her house to check things again. She walked through the huge rooms, making certain no pipes had sprung a leak or anything else needed repair. It was odd; she hadn’t been away that long, but the house felt less and less like her home. It was hard to remember how it had been before John Rafferty had come storming into her life again; his presence was so intense it blocked out lesser details. Her troubled dreams had almost disappeared, and even when she had one, she would wake to find him beside her in the night, strong and warm. It was becoming easier to trust, to accept that she wasn’t alone to face whatever happened.

  It was growing late, and the shadows lengthened in the house; she carefully locked the door behind her and walked out to the car. Abruptly she shivered, as if something cold had touched her. She looked around, but everything was normal. Birds sang in the trees; insects hummed. But for a moment she’d felt it again, that sense of menace. It was odd.

  Logic told her there was nothing to it, but when she was in the car she locked the doors. She laughed a little at herself. First a couple of phone calls had seemed spooky, and now she was “feeling” things in the air.

  Because there was so little traffic on the secondary roads between her ranch and John’s, she didn’t use the rearview mirrors very much. The car was on her rear bumper before she noticed it, and even then she got only a glimpse before it swung to the left to pass. The road was narrow, and she edged to the right to give the other car more room. It pulled even with her, and she gave it a cursory glance just as it suddenly swerved toward her.

  “Watch it!” she yelled, jerking the steering wheel to the right, but there was a loud grinding sound as metal rubbed against metal. The Mercedes, smaller than the other car, was pushed violently to the right. Michelle slammed on the brakes as she felt the two right wheels catch in the sandy soil of the shoulder, pulling the car even harder to that side.

  She wrestled with the steering wheel, too scared even to swear at the other driver. The other car shot past, and somehow she managed to jerk the Mercedes back onto the road. Shaking, she braked to a stop and leaned her head on the steering wheel, then sat upright as she heard tires squealing. The other car had gone down the road, but now had made a violent U-turn and was coming back. She only hoped whoever it was had insurance.

  The car was a big, blue full-size Chevrolet. She could tell that a man was driving, because the silhouette was so large. It was only a silhouette, because he had something black pulled over his head, like a ski mask.

  The coldness was back. She acted instinctively, jamming her foot onto the gas pedal, and the sporty little Mercedes leaped forward. The Chevrolet swerved toward her again, and she swung wildly to the side. She almost missed it…almost. The Chevrolet clipped her rear bumper, and the smaller, lighter car spun in a nauseating circle before sliding off the road, across the wide sandy shoulder, and scraping against an enormous pine before it bogged down in the soft dirt and weeds.

  She heard herself screaming, but the hard jolt that stopped the car stopped her screams, too. Dazed, her head lolled against the broken side window for a moment before terror drove the fogginess away. She groped for the handle, but couldn’t budge the door. The pine tree blocked it. She tried to scramble across the seat to the other door, and only then realized she was still buckled into her seat. Fumbling, looking around wildly for the Chevrolet, she released the buckle and threw herself to the other side of the car. She pushed the door open and tumbled out in the same motion, her breath wheezing in and out of her lungs.

  Numbly she crouched by the fender and tried to listen, but she could hear nothing over her tortuous breathing and the thunder of her heart. Old habits took over, and she used a trick she’d often used before to calm herself after one of Roger’s insane rages, taking a deep breath and holding it. The maneuver slowed her heartbeat almost immediately, and the roar faded out of her ears.

  She couldn’t hear anything. Oh, God, had he stopped? Cautiously she peered over the car, but she couldn’t see the blue Chevrolet.

  Slowly she realized it had gone. He hadn’t stopped. She stumbled to the road and looked in both directions, but the road was empty.

  She couldn’t believe it had happened. He had deliberately run her off the road, not once, but twice. If the small Mercedes had hit one of the huge pines that thickly lined the road head-on, she could easily have been killed. Whoever the man was, he must have figured the heavier Chevrolet could muscle her off the road without any great risk to himself.

  He’d tried to kill her.

  It was five minutes before another car came down the road; it was blue, and for a horrible moment she panicked, thinking the Chevrolet was returning, but as it came closer she could tell this car was much older and wasn’t even a Chevrolet. She stumbled to the middle of the road, waving her arms to flag it down.

  All she could think of was John. She wanted John. She wanted him to hold her close and shut the terror away with his strength and possessiveness. Her voice shook as she leaned in the window and told the young boy, “Please—call John Rafferty. Tell him I’ve been…I’ve had an accident. Tell him I’m all right.”

  “Sure, lady,” the boy said. “What’s your name?”

  “Michelle,” she said. “My name’s Michelle.”

  The boy looked at the car lodged against the pine. “You need a wrecker, too. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I’m not hurt. Just hurry, please.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Either John called the sheriff’s department or the boy had, because John and a county sheriff’s car arrived from opposite directions almost simultaneously. It hadn’t been much more than ten minutes since the boy had stopped, but in that short length of time it had grown considerably darker. John threw his door open as the truck ground to a stop and was out of the vehicle before it had settled back on its wheels, striding toward her. She couldn’t move toward him; she was shaking too violently. Beneath his mustache his lips were a thin, grim line.

  He walked all the way around her, checking her from head to foot. Only when he didn’t see any blood on her did he haul her against his chest, his arms so tight they almost crushed her. He buried his hand in her hair and bent his head down until his jaw rested on her temple. “Are you really all right?” he muttered hoarsely.

  Her arms locked around his waist in a death grip. “I was wearing my seat belt,” she whispered. A single tear slid unnoticed down her cheek.

  “God, when I got that phone call—” He broke off, because there was no way he could describe the stark terror he’d felt despite the kid’s assurance that she was okay. He’d had to see her for himself, hold her, before he could really let himself believe she wasn’t harmed. If he’d seen blood on her, he would have gone berserk. Only now was his heartbeat settling down, and he looked over her head at the car.

  The deputy approached them, clipboard in hand. “Can you answer a few questions, ma’am?”

  John’s arms dropped from around her, but he remained right beside her as she answered the usual questions about name, age and driver’s license number. When the deputy asked her how it had happened, she began shaking again.

  “A…a car ran me off the road,” she stammered. “A blue Chevrolet.”

  The deputy looked up, his eyes abruptly interested as a routine accident investigation became something more. “Ran you off the road? How?”

  “He sideswiped me.” Fiercely she clenched her fingers together in an effort to still their trembling. “He pushed me off the road.”

  “He didn’t just come too close, and you panicked and ran off the road?” John asked, his brows drawing together.

  “No! He pushed me off the road. I slammed on my brakes and he went on past, then turned around and came back.”

  “He came back? Did you get his name?” The deputy made a notatio