High beams flashed in her rearview mirror. She ducked, swerved, and cursed. She regained control and then the Olds jumped forward, like a frightened horse.
"No," said Quill. The high beams filled the car, drenching the inside with light. Quill slowed to a crawl. The truck behind her was pushing now, its bumper locked into position. Quill leaned on the horn, the noise whipped away on the flying wind, driven on the snow. She blasted the horn once, twice. The headlights behind her dimmed and flared in answer.
The truck backed off. Quill remembered to breathe. The headlights filled her mirror again, and she peered frantically out the windshield, looking for a place to stop, to let the bastard pass. The truck didn't hit her again, just hung there like a carrion bird, the headlights hovering.
The world was filled with snow. The dark was coming.
She looked at her watch. A quarter to five. The exit to 96 had to be coming up next. She searched the side of the road. A green sign crawled by. Two miles. If she could just make it two miles.
The lights from behind filled her vision.
She squinted. She drove on. She rubbed her right hand down her thigh, pushing hard against the muscle to calm herself. Her gloved hand brushed the flyer she'd dropped in the seat beside her. "Pizza," she said, just to hear the sound of a voice. "Oh, I wish I had a pepperoni..."
She smoothed the paper out.
FREE DELIVERY!
"Lot of good that'll do me." CALL 624-9123-ANYTIME!
"624-9123, 624-9123," Quill chanted, fighting a hopeless battle against the choking fear.
It's a local area code, 315. And it's 624-9123, Joseph Greenwald had said.
And then, from days ago, Nora Cahill's voice: No offense, but if you tell me you've got your love life socked, too, I'm going to hit you with a stick. / haven't had a date for eight months.
She got mad.
"You idiot!" she yelled. "You bonehead! You twink!"
/ could pull over to the side, wait for him to come up to the car, and hit him with... what?
The tire iron was in the trunk. And she wasn't sure she could use it on flesh and bone no matter how mad and scared and stupid she was.
HEMLOCK FALLS, 10 mi., the green sign said.
Quill thought about the exit ramp. At this juncture of 81, the exit ramps were on a gentle upward slope to 96, which ran along a drumlin left by glaciers. So the snow wouldn't be any higher at the exit than it was now - more than likely less, since the wind would blow it downward. And the highway department always started plowing 96 here first, at the boundary of Tompkins County.
Unless the blizzard was too much for even the plows.
"Nah," said Quill.
Then...
"It's just like the West End at rush hour," she said aloud, to reassure herself. "And you remember the West. End at rush hour. Oh, yes, you do. In your short - and unlamented career as a taxi driver...."
She gunned the motor. The OIds leaped forward. Thank God, she thought, I never got a lighter car. Thank God...
She signaled left and instead swerved into the center lane.
The truck behind her faltered, moved left, and spun briefly out of control. She had time. A little time.
She could barely see the signposts now, between the dark and the snow and the wind. The tiny mile reflectors flashed white-white-white as she hurtled by, the front-wheel drive giving the heavy car purchase in the drifts, her speed preventing a skid. She'd be all right until she had to make that turn.
The pickup behind her straightened out, barreled forward, and nudged her bumper with a thud.
The mile marker for the exit flashed.
Quill bit her lip, pulled a hard right, spun, drove into the skid, and gunned the accelerator. The OIds fishtailed. Quill let it ride, keeping her hands off the wheel, her foot off the brake.
She broke through the barrier of snow at the ramp's edge.
The upward incline slowed the OIds, steadied it. She waited.
Behind her, the pickup roared and tried to turn to follow. The engine whined. The pickup bounced, the height and weight of the truck throwing it into a spin from which it couldn't recover - and she heard the squeal of the transmission. He'd thrown it into reverse. His engine screamed and died.
"Fool," Quill said, and slammed her foot on the accelerator again.
The tires bit into the powdered snow and held.
She drove up the ramp, the OIds' rear end slamming against the guardrail, now to the left, now to the right. She clenched her hands to keep them from the wheel and braked, gunned, braked, gunned, the car rocking back and forth until she broke through onto 96....
"And thank you, God!" she shouted. The road was plowed.
-9-
Quill had approached the Inn at Hemlock Falls at least two thousand different times over the past seven years, in every season, at practically every time of the day and most of the night.
It had never looked more welcoming. Warm golden lights shone through the mullioned windows as she drove carefully up the driveway. There was a pine wreath at each window - as they had every year at holiday time - wound round with small white lights. Mauve taffeta bows shot through with gold were wired to the wreaths. Hundreds of the small white lights sparkled in the bare branches of the trees clustered near the Gorge, casting jewel-like twinkles over the snow.
Mike the groundskeeper had been busy; white snow was piled in neat drifts on either side of the drive. The asphalt was powdered with at least a half an inch. He'd be out again with the plow later, when the snowstorm finally quit.
The Olds was lugging worse than ever. Quill took the left-hand path to the maintenance building out back in low gear, with a vague idea that this would save the engine. She hit the button for the overhead door opener, then pulled in and stopped. The engine died with a cough.
"Good girl," she said foolishly, patting the dash.
She was surprised to discover that her legs were weak. And she had trouble opening the driver's door. She got out, then turned back and opened the rear door to take the red down coat to Myles.
It was gone.
"Damn." She punched the light switch and the garage flooded with light. The coat hadn't fallen to the floor in that hairy ride down 81 and it wasn't under the seat. The box with the contents of Nora Cahill's desk at the office was gone, too.
"Damn and damn again." She slammed the rear door shut. Joseph Greenwald. She hoped he was up to his eyeteeth in snow. The computer disks from Nora's home office were still in her purse. Quill hoped her quota of luck for the week hadn't run out; she'd made quite a dent in it with Route 96 being plowed at just the right time. If her luck held, those disks would contain Nora's investigative files.
She marched to the Inn's back door, her adrenaline charged from annoyance, stripped off her winter clothing, and hung it on the coat pegs. She ditched her boots and walked into the kitchen in her socks. It was overly warm. There were six sous-chefs busy at the Aga, the grill, and the butcher block counters. To her surprise, Meg was seated in the rocking chair by the cobblestone fireplace, smoking a forbidden cigarette.