Revenge at Bella Terra (29 page)

On the left, the mountain climbed. On her right, a precipice dropped into darkness. She had no idea how far or how fast it descended. She knew only that she was near the top of the mountain leading out of Bella Valley, and if the truck behind shoved her over the edge, she would roll and roll. And die.

She held the steering wheel too tightly, her palms sweaty. She accelerated, prayed for a clear road, and drove the white line, blocking him, keeping him back.

But her puny engine was no match for his. He caught her on an outside curve, moved into place beside her. She caught the flash of looming steel; then metal crunched as he slammed his pickup into the side of her car, driving her toward the edge. Her tires dropped off the pavement onto the shoulder. She shrieked. She was going over—

Headlights flashed toward them.
Oncoming car.

Beside her, brakes screamed. The truck disappeared from the edge of her vision, moved back behind her, and the car drove past them, flashing its headlights.

This was her chance. She put her foot to the accelerator, shot ahead of the pickup, used her car’s smaller size and her own skill to drive the curves, pulling in tight, then racing ahead.

On a straight stretch, he caught her again. She braced for him to race up beside her. Instead he tailgated her, so close and tall his headlights shone through chrome bars and over the top of her car. If he didn’t back off, he was going to hit—

He slammed into her from behind, his souped-up vehicle pushing her Focus ahead of him like the high school bully shoving the class shrimp.

Chloë tried to outrun him.

But he had the bigger engine. He had control.

She was locked with him, sobbing, terrified, as they took corners too fast, as he wove from side to side, pushing her, tormenting her. Laughing at her. Here and there a metal barrier flashed past, a mockery of safety. The pickup backed off for a moment; then his engine roared again, and he came up for the kill.

In the dark, she saw the flash of a country road, maybe a driveway.

She didn’t hesitate.

This was her only chance.

She turned the wheel fast and hard. Skidded sideways. Saw the truck’s lights headed right for her door panel. Her tires caught; she hit the gas—and was airborne.

The road was nothing but a turnout that dropped straight off into nothingness.

She screamed, “Eli!”

The car flew through the air, branches smacking the windshield. It hit the ground, the impact knocking the breath out of her. She slid frontward, then sideways, then backward. Trees battered the fenders, the bumpers. One headlight shattered. The seat belt bruised her. The air bag inflated in her face. The car flipped, then flipped again and hit a tree—and stopped. Stopped hard. Stopped fast.

No motion around her.

But she was still alive. Still alive.

She was right side up on a slope so steep only the seat belt held her in place.

The motor was racing.

Her head hurt.

Her heart was pounding.

The killer was still up there.

She shoved the deflating air bag aside, killed the motor and the lights.

The silence was immediate, black, oppressive . . . dangerous.

High above, she heard the distinctive roar of that massive truck.

In a panic, she fought her way out of her car. Her shoulder ached. Beneath her, pine needles slipped and slid on the precipitous incline. She got the door shut—if he could see the car, she didn’t want him to know she had escaped—and headed downhill, feeling her way through a forest so dark and deep she thought she had fallen into another century. She moved as fast as she dared on the steep incline, groping through underbrush, running into trees, panic moving her.

Far above, a searchlight flashed on.

She froze, ducked, crept behind the trunk of a tree. And watched.

The wide searchlight scoured the folds of the earth, looking for her. It touched on her car, lingered there, splashed into a stream, and headed for the tree where she hid. She crouched, pulled her feet in tight, pressing her back against the trunk, praying that he couldn’t see her.

He couldn’t. Could he?

Not unless he came down here. Or unless she panicked and ran.

She wouldn’t do that. He’d tried to murder her. If he saw her now . . . Did he have a gun? Would he shoot her, leave her body for the animals to consume? If she died here, would Eli ever find her? Would he search? Would he even care?

She muffled a hysterical laugh.

Of course he would search. He was searching now. No matter what, he would find her, save her, and if that wasn’t possible, if she died tonight, he would get his vengeance on the man who had killed her.

Knowing that made her feel better. Not a lot better. But better.

The light clicked off.

She lifted her head and listened.

The pickup door slammed. The engine started, rumbling low and deep. He made a three-point turn. She heard it: backward, forward, backward, onto the road.

And he was gone.

She leaned back against the trunk, exhausted, trembling, still afraid to move for fear he’d left someone at the top of the turnout to wait her out.

She was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. He had seen nothing when he flashed her car except a crumpled mass of metal.

Against all odds, she had survived.

But the night was so thick it pressed on her eyeballs. Sounds rustled in the brush. And she was still so frightened her teeth were chattering.

Her heroines would never be so cowardly. But she was cold, scared, hurt in ways she’d never imagined she could be hurt, broken in body and soul.

Eli. She had been going to stay in the cottage. She really meant to. Yet she couldn’t stand being so close to him, knowing he was waiting until morning to talk to her again. Knowing her love for him made her weak. She wanted to forgive him. She wanted to forget he’d used her. But her mother taught her to think logically, and Chloë knew that when a man based a whole relationship on one gigantic lie, she could never trust him again.

So she’d run from him, wanting to get away from his betrayal.

And someone had tried to kill her.

Why? Was it some guy on a drug-fueled rampage, out to kill any person he saw?

Or was he after her?

Why would anyone be after
her
?

Because he hated her father? Because he’d found out about the pink diamond?

Because he didn’t like her book?

The idea wasn’t as stupid as it sounded. Some of the e-mails she’d received were nothing short of crazy.

She could stay here, try to sleep, wait until morning . . . but what if that guy
was
after her? He would come back in his pickup and come down to make sure he’d finished the job.

Oh, God. Oh, God.
What had she done to deserve this? She was a writer, someone who imagined adventures, not someone who lived them.

She had to get up. She had to get away, go downhill, hope she found shelter or . . . No, wait.

She could call Eli. Or 911. Or . . .

Where was her phone?

It was in the car.

But she had to get her phone. The phone was her only chance to live through this night . . . because on her own, she would never be able to escape alive.

She stood. She stepped around the tree. She looked up.

She couldn’t see anything. Not
anything
. There was no moon. The meek starlight could not pierce the branches to reach the floor of the forest.

But this was stupid. The car was somewhere in the inky dark, close enough for her to find. She climbed, using branches and brush to pull herself up, and found the fast downhill trip meant a tough uphill grind. She thought she was close to her car. Then she found herself at the bottom of a rock cliff that extended as high as she could reach, that she couldn’t find a way around . . . and she still couldn’t see anything.

The trees creaked in the breeze. The scents of pine and cool dirt swirled in the air.

She stood there, her hand resting on the cold, hard stone, and realized—she was absolutely, totally alone.

Her car had disappeared. Her cell phone was gone. She couldn’t go up. She couldn’t stay here. She had to go down.

She sniffled, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and sniffled again.

She started limping downhill.

She wasn’t as afraid of the killer now.

She was afraid of the wilderness.

She was a city girl who had flunked out of Girl Scouts.

She didn’t know how to tie a knot or start a fire.

There were probably wolves out here.

The night was so dark. The stars wheeled across the sky. Every time something brushed her face, she softly screamed and flapped her arms hard enough to take wing. Once she flapped so hard she slipped and fell.

Bats. Or bugs. Or both.

Every inch of this mountain was steep.

Her sneakers were not made for this kind of descent. They were boat shoes. They had little nautical flags on the heels. They were
cute
. They weren’t made to walk for hours and hours. And hours and hours. And hours.

Stupid California. No civilized place would have mountains so steep she had to sit on her butt and slide. And slide. And slide faster and faster until she slid right off an embankment and landed in the soft dirt that wasn’t soft enough.

The impact knocked the breath out of her and made her feel her bruises—her side and her shoulder—and her right cheek felt as if she’d punched herself with her fist. Which, during the car’s tumble, she very possibly had.

She rested there because . . . because she was tired. She wanted to give up. She wanted to curl up and die.

This was Eli’s fault. Why wasn’t he here instead of her? He was the big primitive mountain man. He’d survived in the mighty Andes in the middle of winter. He’d probably laugh at her fears, pick her up, and carry her to safety.

And to hell with her pride, she’d let him.

Damn him. Where was he? She was not moving from this spot until he found her.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She’d been walking for so long. She needed to sleep, but it was too chilly and—

A charley horse brought her to her feet. “No. No! Not now!” She hopped down the slope, trying to ease the cramping. “Owie, owie!”

Her heroines never got charley horses, especially not on a mountainside in a pitch-black night, and they never said, “Owie!” which was stupid and juvenile and didn’t help one bit.

But somehow it did make her feel better, even when she stepped into the stream she could hear but not locate.

The cold water cured her charley horse
right now
. She cursed, stepped out, knelt, put her face right in the water, and got a drink. She splashed her face and felt sweat, grime, and fear wash away. She took off her shoe, poured out the water, wrung out her sock, put them back on, stood, and kept walking.

And realized with a shock that she could see shapes. The dark wasn’t so dark. The sky wasn’t so black.

Night was ending.

She rested and waited as the sky turned gray, then faintly blue. It must have been five or six in the morning. She looked up the slope, and couldn’t believe she’d come down that perilous incline. She looked ahead and couldn’t believe the mountain could still fall away at her feet.

Was there no level ground left in the world?

But light made the descent easier. She went around the precipices instead of falling off them, around trees instead of bumping into them. As the sun rose and cast glorious light across the land, she stepped out of the forest and into a valley . . . and there she found herself in a vineyard, overgrown and untended.

She was back in Bella Valley.

All she had to do now was find her way home without getting killed.

And she could really use some breakfast.

Chapter 41

F
or two hours, Eli drove Browena Road in the dark, searching for a sign of Chloë, and found it near the summit in a trail of broken plastic and glass from taillights. He followed the red shards into a turnout that ended in nothingness. Getting out of his truck, he shone his spotlight along the trail of wreckage to the shattered Ford Focus.

Had she survived?

He made the descent too fast, skidding and sliding on the slick pine needles, and discovered . . . Chloë was gone.

He found her cell phone in the back window, smashed and unusable.

Using his flashlight, he looked around, found her trail, and then, at last, he could breathe again.

She wasn’t safe. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that. She might have broken bones. She was probably in shock. But no one had forced her out of the car; she had left on her own. She hadn’t been kidnapped, and there wasn’t a blood trail. She had a determined spirit, and she would survive.

For two hundred yards, he tracked her descent. He found the place where she had crouched behind a tree. He saw where she tried to climb up and realized she was lost. There, he hesitated. He wanted to go down after her. When he thought of the drop-offs and the dangers of navigating that mountain in the dark, he remembered his own ordeals in the Andes. Because of those months he spent alone, barely surviving, hunting his food and dodging his pursuers, he knew how to track Chloë . . . in the light. For the first time, he was glad of that ordeal, for it had trained him well. He knew that in this bleak darkness, he might miss her. That would be disastrous. And if she was hurt, he’d be unable to bring her up to his truck across such steep, rugged terrain.

No. He knew every inch of Bella Valley. He knew her likely path of descent: In the dark, without any idea where she should go, he knew where this part of the mountain would take her. He would drive down, and if she hadn’t made it to the bottom, he would hike up to find her.