“I know,” she said gently.
Kneeling in the mud beside him, Allegra clung to his hand, her eyes wide with fear. “Don’t die,” she kept whispering, over and over. “Don’t die.”
Harper rested a hand on Hunter’s good arm as Southby kept steady pressure on the wound. “Allegra shot Xavier, didn’t she? She came to you for help. You pushed him out into the ocean. To protect her.”
Hunter’s eyes almost closed, then opened again. A tear escaped and ran down his cheek, mingling with the rain. “She’s just a kid.” A whisper, lost in the storm.
A few feet away Cara sobbed brokenly, her perfect white clothes stained with mud, her hands cuffed behind her back.
At the end of the road, the flashing blue lights of the ambulance lit up the night. Relief loosened the tightness in Harper’s chest.
“Hang in there,” she told Hunter. “You’re going to be fine.”
* * *
Miles arrived just as the paramedics were loading Hunter onto a stretcher. By then, Southby had separated and handcuffed Cara and Allegra, and secured the house. He did a damn good job on his own, Harper thought, bagging the gun, taking her statement. Working methodically.
“I think I underestimated you,” she told him, as she watched him lock the mansion’s front door and seal it with crime tape.
“Everyone does,” he said. But he smiled.
A paramedic gave Harper wipes to get the blood off her hands. “Works better than soap,” she assured her, before hurrying back to the ambulance.
While Miles got busy taking pictures, she kept trying to call the newsroom, but her phone had no signal.
“It’s the storm,” Southby told her, rain dripping from the plastic cover on his hat. “Cell tower’s out.”
Harper glanced at her watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock and Baxter had no idea what had happened out here, or that the paper had an exclusive front-page story on its hands.
She ran over to where Miles was checking shots on his camera. “I’m heading back to Savannah. How much longer will you be out here?”
Clutching his Canon in one hand, he looked around, frowning. “Ten minutes? Maybe fifteen?”
“Okay. I’ll see you back there.” She hurried away, boots splashing in the water.
“Drive carefully,” he called after her. “The road’s starting to flood.”
It was a relief to get into the car and turn the heater on. Harper hadn’t realized how cold she was until she began to get warm again. She was soaked to the skin.
The winds had let up a little, but the rain was still falling hard when she crossed the bridge off the island and into the marshes. In her mind she kept going over the night’s events, hearing Cara’s terrified scream, as if she’d been shot instead of Hunter.
She could see now how she’d pieced it all together last night at the Library. When Allegra dedicated the song to the love of her life, Cara had known her well enough to know she’d meant it. From there, she’d figured out the rest. Everything she hadn’t wanted to see unfolded in front of her.
Harper wanted to believe Allegra when she’d said she hadn’t meant to kill Xavier. She didn’t know why she’d taken a gun to the beach, though. Maybe she wanted to scare him. Maybe, like so many people, she simply underestimated the power of a bullet.
But the law wouldn’t care. Not enough to keep her out of prison.
She’d gone about four miles when she first noticed the headlights in her rearview mirror. At first, she thought it was Miles, heading back to the paper earlier than he’d expected. He always drove so fast.
The next time she looked up, the lights were much closer. As she watched them she felt the first stirrings of unease.
The vehicle was too big to be Miles’s Mustang. It looked more like an SUV. Perhaps it was a police car, she told herself, or an ambulance. Nobody else was out in this weather.
Whoever it was, they were moving fast. The golden glow of the headlights soon filled the mirror.
Nervously, she sped up, but the lights continued to approach at the same relentless rate. She considered slowing down and motioning for it to pass, but couldn’t make herself do it. Every instinct told her to get away.
Swearing under her breath, she pressed the accelerator to the floor. Almost immediately, the low-slung Camaro hydroplaned, its tail swinging sickeningly left-right, left-right, until she eased up again.
Sweat beaded her forehead. There were no turnoffs out here. No side roads. No one to help. Just the flat, empty marshes, invisible in the darkness around her.
She stared at the headlights in the rectangle of glass, willing it to back off. To go around.
Instead, with an animal-like roar, it accelerated, slamming into her car.
The jolt sent the Camaro skidding wildly.
Gasping, Harper gripped the wheel so hard her arms hurt as she wrestled the car straight again. Desperately, she shoved the accelerator down, fighting the hydroplane. Her hands white-knuckled the wheel.
But the SUV had more weight than the Camaro. It could get a grip on the road as it roared up at her again, slamming into her again, harder this time.
In an instant, everything turned into a nightmare.
The steering wheel spun beneath Harper’s hands as if some invisible, powerful creature had taken control of it.
The car seemed to float in dizzying circles, and then there wasn’t asphalt beneath the tires but grass and mud, and the Camaro was juddering and whirling and she was slammed against the door.
She could hear herself sobbing, as if from far away.
With awful silence, the car tilted on its side and then flipped over. The top became the bottom. The sky became the floor. Again. And again.
And then there was nothing.
34
The first thing Harper knew was pain. She didn’t know where she was. All she was certain of was that she was cold and everything hurt.
With effort, she opened her eyes, but it made no difference. She saw only blackness.
Someone whimpered and it took her a second to realize it was her.
Her thoughts were hazy as the previous moments slowly took shape. I’ve been in an accident, she told herself. I’m alive.
Something cold dripped down the side of her face; she wondered distantly whether it was water or blood.
Gradually, the fog of shock lifted and she remembered it all.
Martin Dowell. It had to be him. He’d found her. And he was out there somewhere. Waiting for her.
The realization was like a slap. Her thinking cleared.
The airbag had deflated and she shoved the delicate fabric away from her face. All the windows had shattered, and rainwater was pouring in, drenching her.
Everything seemed to work but something was wrong with her left arm. She kept trying to move it but it wouldn’t cooperate. When she shifted it with her right hand, the stab of pain made her breath hiss between her teeth.
She reached out for her phone but it wasn’t on the central console anymore. The console, the passenger seat—everything was covered in broken glass and mud. Her bag, her phone—she had no idea where anything was.
And it was so dark.
Twisting her body, she fumbled for the door handle with her right hand. The handle gave but the door opened only an inch before jamming in the mud.