Then, like a mistuned radio that finally found the right station, her mind cleared and the confusion was replaced by a heavy aching pain in her head and a nauseating dizziness that forced her to her knees. For a few moments, she thought she was going to throw up, but after a couple of deep steadying breaths, her vision cleared. A loud continuous whirring sound filled the inside of her skull where her brain had once been. The noise finally resolved into the dull drone of the Durango’s engine. Somehow she had managed to get out of the driving seat and walk a few feet away from the vehicle.
How the hell had that happened?
The children! She pushed herself to her feet, almost collapsing again as the world swam in front of her eyes. She staggered toward the lights of the SUV, her hand in front of her eyes to stop the screaming bolts of pain bouncing around her head.
The driver’s side door was wide open. She saw the congealed bloodstain on the glass of the window, and her hand moved involuntarily to her head. She felt a sting of pain as her hand found a raised egg-size lump on the left side of her head, a couple of inches back from her hairline. She pulled her fingers away and looked at the clean tips. Well at least she wasn’t bleeding anymore, but good grief, did it hurt like a mother.
The inside of the SUV was empty. Emily made her way around to the passenger side, leaning hard against the body of the Durango in case her vision betrayed her again.
There was no sign of the children outside the SUV, and she let out a small sigh of relief when she saw that there was no blood on the seats the kids had occupied. That could only mean that they had survived the crash and had left her for whatever reason. There was also no sign of Thor. She knew there was no way her dog would have abandoned her unless he had had to, so he must be with Ben and Rhiannon.
Standing in the dim glow of the SUV’s light, Emily realized with a growing unease that she knew exactly where the children were: they were on their way back to the last place they had seen Simon.
The pain in Emily’s head pulsed harder and lightning lanced through her brain as she tried to jog back to the driver’s seat of the big SUV, forcing her to stop and lean against its rear door while her swimming vision and whirling stomach returned to normal. Was she concussed? Maybe, but she had to get to the kids before they reached the Jefferson house. She had no idea how much of a head start the two children had, so she was going to have to get the Dodge out of the ditch and drive it if she was to have any chance of finding the children before they got to Simon…or he found them.
She edged around the SUV, leaning hard against its body for support. The front-left wheel of the Dodge was lodged in a ditch, canting the vehicle to the left, and the front-right wheel was halfway up the embankment; just a few more feet and the SUV would have rolled over, she realized.
Emily pulled herself through the open door into the driver’s seat, slamming it shut behind her, and instantly regretting it as the thud reverberated through her head. She gave a startled cry when the cabin lights went out, plunging her into darkness.
The engine was still rumbling, reverberating through the leather seats and steering wheel as she gripped it. She was going to have to reverse this thing out of the ditch if she wanted to go anywhere.
The headlights illuminated the opposite side of the ditch the SUV had landed in. It was a couple of feet higher than the hood, and she had no doubt the SUV could make it over it if it wasn’t for the fact that it was lined with trees.
She slipped the gear stick to the reverse position and lifted her foot off the brake. The engine revs increased slightly, but the SUV barely moved an inch. She glanced in the rearview mirror; everything beyond the back of the Dodge was bathed in the red glow of the vehicle’s taillights. The white of the reverse lights stretched barely beyond that but were next to useless for seeing anything.
Sliding her foot onto the accelerator, Emily eased it toward the floor, slowly increasing the revs. The vehicle edged up the side of the embankment, then slid back down when it was almost halfway. Frustrated, Emily pushed harder on the accelerator pedal; the big SUV’s rear wheels spun as they fought for traction on the grass, finally found it, and catapulted backward out of the ditch and onto the field.
Emily’s head flew forward then back again as her seat belt lock engaged. Blackness began to creep into the edge of her vision, but she willed herself to stay conscious, pushing it back until she realized her foot was still on the accelerator. She slipped it off the pedal and slammed on the brake. This time her head flew backward into the head support of the seat, and she saw motes of blackness float across her eyes, blocking the console gauges.
“Jesus,” she hissed when her vision finally cleared again. “I’ve about had enough of this shit.”
Taking a deep breath, she slipped the gear stick back into drive and slowly pushed on the accelerator, pointing the grill of the Dodge in the direction she thought the road should be. If she could find the embankment she had crashed over, she would follow it and hope she could find a way onto the gravel road that led back to the Jeffersons’ place.
The SUV’s headlights cut through the darkness in front of her, illuminating the ground ahead. Everything else beyond that was pitch-black. Wasn’t there something brighter? Emily glanced down at the stick with the light controls; the twisty-knob thing had one more selection to it. She turned it, and instantly the field of light in front of her widened and heightened.
“That’s more like it.”
With the high beams on, she quickly spotted the curve of the embankment rising up in front of her. There were no tire tracks coming down the slope, but she could see a chunk of earth and clots of muddy grass near the base of the embankment, a weaving track of crushed grass and broken earth leading away from where she had landed. What she also saw, as she slowed to a stop at the base of the embankment, was a line of divots, presumably leading up to the road above. She could be wrong, but to her it looked almost like the kind of marks she thought Rhiannon’s sneakers would make if the little girl was trying to climb it.
It was hardly conclusive proof, but it would have to do because it was the only clue she had right now to what direction the children had taken.
Emily accelerated slowly until the Dodge was parallel with the base of the embankment and began slowly following the base around as it curved to match the road above. About two hundred yards farther on, she saw the dusty-gray reflection of the gravel road as it dipped down and leveled out.
Turning hard right, she directed the SUV up onto the road. She heard the ping of gravel bouncing off the frame of the SUV as the front tires scrambled for grip. Then, with a final stab of the accelerator, she felt the rear tires dig deep into the soft earth and push her up and back onto the road.
Stealing herself against the coming confrontation, Emily carefully accelerated the SUV and headed back along the road toward the Jeffersons’ house.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Rhi-annnnn-on!”
Her brother’s frightened voice drifted through the trees like a ghost toward her and Thor. The dog’s ears pricked up at the boy’s voice; then he dropped his nose to the ground again and bounded forward between two sprawling sycamore trees.
“I’m coming, Ben,” Rhiannon yelled back. She tumbled after Thor. The laces of her left sneaker had come undone and would occasionally catch under her opposite foot, almost tripping her. She knew she should stop and tie them again, but her brother’s voice had grown more scared sounding with each passing minute. So, she chose to keep on instead, unwilling to stop until she was with her little pain of a brother again.