Northwest: Deep Freeze Part 26

Don't panic!

Jenna's jaw tightened.

She thought of the note she'd received, of the feeling she couldn't shake that she was being watched, of the horrible fact that one woman's body had been found in the mountains and another local woman had gone missing.

Stop it. This is just some idiot kid-probably Josh and those jerks he calls friends.

She licked her lips and glanced again in the mirror. Fear pounded through her bloodstream. Hang in there. Be smart.

But the guy just kept coming.

She accelerated.

He kept up with her.

Trees and mile signs flashed by.

She slowed down.

Felt a b.u.mp.

Her bones jarred.

"No!" She gripped the wheel but the Jeep's tires slid.

Oh, Christ!

Another car, driving the opposite direction. Jenna flashed her lights madly, but it flew by. Where could she go? Anywhere she pulled in, he might follow. No, she couldn't stop.

Bam!

He hit her again. Harder this time.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," she growled as the Jeep started to spin. She started to put on the brakes, then eased into the turn, feeling the wheels grip as her heart beat crazily.

Think, Jenna, think. Are you going to lead whoever it is back to your house?

The sheriff's department was in the opposite direction and she didn't have enough gas to make it into Troutdale...oh, G.o.d...She wasn't far from the turnoff to her home, and the cell phone was in the car, though out of reach on the floor of the pa.s.senger seat beneath the pizza box. She couldn't risk reaching down for it.

But the moron behind you doesn't know you dropped it.

She could fake him out. Maybe.

Thinking she was out of her mind but praying her ruse would work, she took her right hand off the wheel and fished through her purse. With one eye on the road, she retrieved her small black garage door opener and held it in front of her, pretended to punch out b.u.t.tons on her "phone," then held the palm-sized gadget to her ear. Hopefully the guy with his intense headlights would see what she was doing, yet not realize she was faking it. As she drove, she nodded, moving her mouth, making up a fake conversation, and sweating bullets.

Maybe the driver of the vehicle behind her was just a bad driver.

And maybe pigs really do fly.

She glanced in her rearview mirror again.

Was it her imagination or had the truck slowed down?

Dear G.o.d, please.

She swallowed hard. The turnoff to the county road that wandered past her house was less than a mile away. She was still pretending to talk on the phone as the road wound down a hillside. Still the vehicle behind her lagged. "Good, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Back off," she said into her garage door opener. Around a final curve in the road, and the Jeep slid only slightly before straightening.

She glanced in the mirror.

Nothing.

No headlights.

Yet.

She punched the accelerator, expected to see the glare of the vehicle at any second.

But the darkness of the night surrounded her.

She reached the turnoff to the county road alone.

No headlights followed, and though she turned off the radio, she heard no sound of another vehicle's engine over the rumble of her Jeep.

Had whoever was following her turned off?

Or was he following her without headlights?

That's ridiculous.

Yet her skin crawled at the thought, and she squinted hard into the rearview mirror.

Hadn't she thought someone had been watching her from the belltower of the theater? Could that hidden someone have left the building, watched her drive to the pizza parlor, and followed her? But why?

To terrorize you. Just like he did with the note.

"But he's gone," she said, then realized she was talking to herself. Not a good sign. One more quick glance in all the mirrors told her she was alone on the road.

Whoever had been following her had turned off.

And there was a chance that he'd just been a bad driver, one who tailgated, one who inadvertently hit his bright lights...

And your b.u.mper? Yeah, right!

Her attention split between the road ahead and the dark night behind her, she turned on the county road leading to her home, taking the corner faster than she would have if her nerves hadn't been stretched tight, and fishtailed around the corner. Once the Jeep had straightened and the tires grabbed the road again, she punched the accelerator up a final rise and over a hill until she spied the open gates at the end of her driveway.

Gates that should have been closed, now that they were working again, Hans having melted the ice and reconnected the faulty wires.

Again her heart clutched. What if someone had gotten inside? Someone with bad intentions? Don't be nuts. They've been open for eighteen months without incident. You're just borrowing trouble!

She drove past the rock pillars and on the far side, hit the b.u.t.ton on her electronic remote. With a whir, the gates started to close behind her. Another poke of the garage door opener and the heavy door lifted. As she pulled in, she caught a glimpse of Allie standing in the kitchen, backlit by the overhead lights. She was waving frantically, and before Jenna could get out of the car, she was racing outside, across the breezeway, wearing only her pajamas and slippers. Critter was bounding beside her, his entire body wiggling at the sight of Jenna.

"Are you crazy?" Jenna demanded of her daughter as Allie opened the side door to the garage. "Go into the house and get your jacket and boots!" She was hauling her purse and the pizza out of the car while sidestepping the exuberant dog.

"But I'm hungry," Allie protested, launching herself at the pizza carton and nearly flattening Jenna in the process.

"I'm getting it to you as quickly as I can. Come on, back into the house. Both of you!" She shepherded her daughter and dog into the kitchen, where warm air hit her in a welcome blast. "What're you thinking, Allie?"

Ca.s.sie, seated in a chair with her feet propped up on the hearth in the den, was flipping through a magazine. "Sometimes she doesn't think, Mom," she said.

"At least I don't sneak out." Allie was already pulling the pizza box from Jenna's arms.

"You're too dorky to even think about it."

"Enough!" Jenna said, in no mood for the girls' petty bickering. "What went on tonight?"

"Nothing," Ca.s.sie said. "As usual."

"That's a lie." Allie lifted the lid to the pizza box and flipped it open to display a gooey mess. All the cheese and pepperoni had run off the crust to pool along one side of the box, and the pizza itself was a bare crust with streaks of red marinara sauce running off it. "Yuk, what happened?"

"I had to brake hard and the box slid off the seat."

Allie wrinkled her nose. "It looks gross."

"Yeah, it does, but it tastes the same." Jenna didn't need this argument. Not tonight.

Ca.s.sie dropped her magazine and walked to the table where the pizza was congealing. "Mom's right," she said, and Jenna nearly fell through the floor. She couldn't remember the last time her older daughter agreed with her on anything. Ca.s.sie pulled a gooey slice from the box, plopped the cheese and a couple of slices of meat onto it, and took a bite. "It's great."

Allie was still guarded, but emulated her older sister and grabbed a naked slice.

"Okay, so tell me what's happened since I left. Hans is gone?"

"Yeah, he fed and watered the horses, then took off. He let me help." Allie was winding strings of mozzarella around the bare crust of her piece of the pizza.

"Good. Anything else? Anyone phone?"

"Travis Settler called and he said he'd call back," Ca.s.sie said. "And there were a couple of hangups. No caller ID-private calls. I tried dialing star sixty-nine, but that didn't help. I figure it was probably a bad cell phone connection."

"Probably," Jenna said, though it worried her. She was still jittery from the drive home. "Let me answer the phone if we get any more calls."

Ca.s.sie sighed loudly and, carrying her slice of pizza on a napkin, returned to her chair and magazine.

Allie had already zoned out of the conversation and between bites was decorating the remaining pizza with bits of pepperoni.

"What about your dad?"

"What about him?" Ca.s.sie asked.

"He didn't call?"

She shook her head, took her seat in the chair, and began thumbing through the magazine again. "Wait a minute. There was one call that Allie took."

"Allie?" Jenna said.

"What?" Her daughter looked up from her masterpiece of food art.

"Did Dad call?"

"Tonight? No."

"Another night?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't say anything."

"I guess I forgot."

"When was it?"

A lift of a small shoulder. "I don't know...yesterday, I think. Maybe the other day."

"Did he want to talk to me?"

Allie bit her lip and winced. "Yeah."

So Robert wasn't the flake she'd thought. She felt slightly better about her ex. "You need to tell me about all calls you take for me, okay? Or write them down."

"Okay," Allie mumbled.

"But another call came through tonight. Who was it?"

"Some guy."

The hairs on the back of Jenna's neck raised. "What guy?"

"I don't know. He said he'd call back."

"Did he say what he wanted?" Jenna asked, trying to keep the fear from her voice.

"No. Just wanted to talk to you and asked where you were and I said I didn't know."

Full-blown panic erupted. "Wait a minute, you gave a stranger information that you were here alone?"

"Uh-uh." Allie shook her head. "I wasn't alone. Hans and Ellie and Ca.s.sie were here, too. So when he asked if I was here by myself I told him 'no.'" She stuck out her chin, but her lower lip wobbled a bit. "I'm not an idiot, Mom."

"Of course not."

Ca.s.sie snorted. "Don't ever give out any information. Didn't you learn that before when that Paladin creep in L.A. was stalking Mom?"