She started to turn away, but Todd grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her toward him.
“Hey!” Brad protested.
Todd ignored him. She could smell the booze on Todd’s breath, and tried to squirm away from him. Painfully tightening his grip on her shoulder, he said in a loud voice, “Don’t know me, Amanda? What a liar. I was your first and you know it! You begged me for it-”
“Take your hands off her,” a commanding voice interrupted. “Apologize, and then shut the hell up.”
Tyler Hawthorne. Could her humiliation be any more complete?
“Mind your own fucking business, asshole!” Todd said. He let go of her, then took a swing at Tyler.
It missed.
“Oh, thank you for that,” Tyler said. His fist flew into Todd’s face.
Women screamed as Todd toppled backward into the bar, then hit the floor.
“Apologize to her,” Tyler said.
“It’s not necessary,” Amanda muttered, mortified. She ducked her head and stumbled away through the crowd surrounding them.
She heard Todd say, “Apologize to that-”
But before he could finish his sentence, there was the sound of blows, the crash of furniture, and more shouts and screams.
She hurried out the door and all but ran to her car.
Driving through the desert night helped to calm her. A motorcycle had passed her old Honda several miles ago, pulling far ahead of her on the narrow road, then settling at a steady speed that kept her car about half a mile behind it. Whoever it was had to have come from the party-although she had since passed some small side roads, there weren’t any between the mansion and the point where she had first noticed the motorcycle.
Since everyone at the party had been three sheets to the wind, she was happy to let the biker pass her. Having her car rear-ended by a drunk on a bike in the middle of the desert would, she thought, be enough to send her right over the edge. When he pulled ahead, it seemed to her he was holding steadily to a straight line. Great. She had missed meeting the one other sober person there.
The motorcycle slowed a bit, and the gap between them narrowed. She was no sooner aware of this than she realized they were approaching an intersection of some kind. She saw something moving in the darkness off to the right. A truck. With its lights off.
The truck was moving, raising a plume of dust as it sped along the intersecting dirt road.
The motorcycle’s brake light flared-too late.
She screamed a futile warning as she stomped on her brake pedal. The screech of tires skidding on pavement added to her wail.
She heard the bang of impact just ahead.
She caught the briefest glimpse of the rider, parted from the motorcycle like a horseman thrown from a metallic bronco, before all her attention was focused on dodging the sparking pinwheel of the bike on the asphalt of this narrow road, its gleaming mass spinning toward her car.
It struck the front end of the Honda with a second bang, coming up over the hood and shattering her windshield. Her airbag went off as the car fishtailed, then spun off the road, coming to a lopsided halt in a shallow ditch and soft sand.
Shaken by the accident, Amanda sat dazed in her car. The airbag had stung, and had given her a small nosebleed. She found a tissue and held it to her face, watching as two hulking figures dressed in white-hooded coveralls and heavy work boots emerged from the pickup truck, hurried to the still figure on the ground, and pulled the motorcycle helmet from his head.
She thought they were about to offer their victim aid, and was wondering if it had been wise of them to move him even so much, when, to her horror, they began to viciously kick his ribs, his back, his head. It was only then she saw that, in addition to the hoods, their faces were masked. She unfastened her seat belt and unlocked her car doors-then hesitated. She was no match for the brawny attackers. She locked the doors again. Lot of good it would do with the windshield smashed out, she thought.
She cowered behind the steering wheel.
They turned to stare toward her car.
She quickly dropped her head down onto the wheel, closed her eyes, and slumped, trying to assume the posture of someone who was passed out cold. She heard the approach of their footsteps and felt a sickening certainty that they would see she no longer wore her seat belt, that they had heard the door locks, that they would see the tension she could feel in every muscle of her body. I’m unconscious. I don’t hear anything. I am as lifeless as that man on the road.
They were very near now. She kept her eyes closed. One of them rapped on the window next to her. She did not respond, nor did she open her eyes when one of them reached in through the broken windshield and touched her shoulder, undoubtedly intending to shake her-until he cut himself on a piece of broken glass.
“Son of a bitch!”
The hand withdrew. She heard the other one try the passenger-side door.
“You hear something?” the one who had cut himself said.
They stood still, listening.
“Shit,” the other one said softly. She strained her own ears but heard no approaching vehicles or other signs of rescue.
“See anything?”
“See anything!” the other mocked. “By then it will be too late.”
“Shhh! Listen!”
After what seemed to her to be several hours, but was really only a few seconds, she heard them move away, a few steps at a walk, then at a run.
She kept her head down. They had not spoken more than those few words, so she did not know their plans. Would they return from the truck with a crowbar or a tire jack or something else to use to ensure her silence? A gun? She hadn’t seen their faces. She whimpered a prayer that they had not seen hers. She heard the doors of the pickup truck slamming shut. She heard the truck drive off, but some time passed before she could make herself sit up and peer over the dash again.
They were gone.
Hands trembling, she pulled her cell phone from her purse.
No signal.
She took a flashlight and a small first-aid kit from the glove compartment and stepped out of the car, feeling wobbly but mentally pushing herself to set her own troubles aside.
The force of the impact had thrown the man a short distance down the dirt road. She played the flashlight over the ground between the intersection and where the man lay, and was surprised to see a third path, a trail of some kind, which led away from the intersection. Could there be help within reach? A small house? The flashlight didn’t illuminate much, though, and within the range of its beam she could see only a low, broken-down picket fence that bore all the signs of long abandonment. She began to run down the dirt road toward the man, glad she had decided in favor of comfortable sandals rather than high heels tonight, but wishing she was dressed in her usual jeans and T-shirt rather than the dressier pants and top she’d worn to the party. Nothing to be done about that now.
“Are you all right?” she shouted.
A stupid question, she thought angrily as she reached his unmoving form. She was half afraid of what she might see, that the damage done to him might be horrific. But although he did not stir or respond in any way, at first sight he seemed to have simply fallen asleep on the road. In a rather red-stained condition.
She knelt beside him and aimed the beam of the flashlight on his bloodied face. She received a shock. Tyler Hawthorne. Although she had known the person on the bike would be someone who had been at the large party, most of the attendees were strangers to her. She hadn’t expected to recognize the rider.
“Mr. Hawthorne? Tyler?”
No response.
Beneath the already drying blood, his face was gray. She touched his cheek. It was cold. She drew her hand back quickly, then told herself not to be a fool. She moved her hand to his neck. No pulse.