She Can Hide (She Can Series)
Read She Can Hide (She Can Series) Online
Authors: Melinda Leigh
ALSO BY MELINDA LEIGH
She Can Run
Midnight Exposure
She Can Tell
Midnight Sacrifice
She Can Scream
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2014 Melinda Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
ISBN-13: 9781477849828
ISBN-10: 1477849823
Cover design by Inkd
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913289
For Linda
We miss you
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
A whoosh and soft impact jolted Abby’s body. She slid forward. The seat belt caught her and snapped her back. Pain ripped through her temple. What happened? Her vision blurred, and she rubbed her eyes to clear it.
The steering wheel and dashboard came into focus. She was sitting in the front seat of her Subaru sedan. Ice pellets bounced off her windshield. When had it started to sleet? Blinking hard, she stared through the glass. Water splashed over the hood.
Oh my God
.
She swiveled her head to get her bearings. A thin sheet of ice edged the opposite bank twenty feet ahead. Water bubbled over rocks down the center of the flow. Behind the car, fifteen feet of water stretched to an inclined embankment. Her car was door-deep in a river.
The Subaru bobbed for a couple of seconds. The front end tilted down, and water swished over the floor mat. This had to be a nightmare. But her personal horror didn’t usually involve water. Abby’s bad dreams were all dark all the time. But a minute ago she’d been in the parking lot of the high school where she taught math. How did she get here?
Water swirled around her feet and seeped through her running shoes. Cold. No, beyond cold. Liquid ice. Shocking pain washed over her ankle and jolted her from her dreamlike state.
This was real.
Terror swept through her confusion and jerked her from numb disbelief into panic. Fear, bitter and acidic, bubbled into her throat. Her lungs pumped like pistons, forcing air in and out at dizzying speed. Tiny dots flashed in her vision. Out the window, water rushed past the car, the surface level with the hood and rising.
The interior closed in on her, claustrophobia overwhelming her senses.
The water was going to rise. She was going to be trapped, and then she was going to drown. She was going to die.
A chunk of ice scraped across the windshield. The noise jolted her.
She had to get out of the car. She fumbled for the seat belt release, the frigid temperature and horror destroying her dexterity. Frantic fingers yanked at the nylon. Her thumb found and depressed the button. The strap loosened and recoiled with a snap. Abby reached for the door handle and pulled, but she couldn’t budge it. Water pressure held the door closed. Until the pressure was equalized…
No! She couldn’t sit here and wait for water to fill the car. She’d drown. She had to get out now. Water inched up the glass. The sense of confinement suffocated her. Her heart catapulted blood through her veins.
The window.
She pressed the lever. Nothing happened.
Oh no.
It had to open!
Did electric windows work underwater? The car shifted again, the hood dropping thirty degrees. Sliding forward, Abby braced her upper body on the steering wheel.
Water advanced beyond her calves to her thighs. Two layers of winter running pants were designed to facilitate moisture evaporation, not keep water out. The cold bit into her skin like the teeth of a saw. Pain and numbness spread up her legs and reached for her body with a greedy splash.
Tears leaked down her cheeks, and terror sprinted through her heart as she pressed the window button harder. The glass lowered. Yes! Her flash of relief was cut off by the flow of water. It poured through the opening and washed over her torso in an icy fall. She had an exit, but now the car was flooding even faster.
With a groan, the car tipped as water displaced air and the weight of the engine pulled the vehicle deeper into the eddying river. Abby fell forward as the car went vertical. She lost her grip on the wheel. Her world tilted. Her forehead slammed into the dashboard. Blood spattered, but she felt nothing.
The water rose, swallowing her pelvis and chest in the span of two panting breaths. She twisted her body sideways to fit through the opening, but the force of the water pouring through the window pushed her back into the vehicle.
Frigid liquid enveloped her neck and face. The shock seized her muscles. Her breathing sped up in a reflex to the agonizing cold. She pressed her face to the ceiling to suck in a last lungful of air. But the car dropped again, turning as it sank. Her body tumbled like clothes in a washing machine.
Where was the window?
Disoriented by the car’s shift, she searched with frantic desperation. Freezing water stabbed her eyeballs. In the murky underwater scene, she saw the opening.
There!
Her arms tangled in her heavy wool coat. She shrugged out of it and pushed her shoulders through the opening. Once her hips cleared the window, the current pulled her free. The surface was a bright layer just above the car roof. Lungs burning, she stroked upward, toward the light, away from the darkness below. Her head burst free of the water and she gasped. Oxygen flooded her brain. With the infusion of air into her body, her limbs went from cold to numb to dead weight in an instant.
She could barely move to keep her head above the surface. Dirty water flooded her throat, choking her. She looked for the bank, but the water carried her farther from the vehicle, toward the center of the rapids that bubbled white down the center of the waterway. With one final desperate lunge, she grabbed the bumper of her Subaru protruding from the surface. She’d never make it to shore. She’d escaped the car only to drown anyway.
Acceptance washed over her, as numbing as the temperature, then sadness. Her poor high school students would grieve. Her only friend and fellow teacher, Brooke, and the young neighbor Abby tutored would be devastated. Zeus would be too, for as long as his dog memory would allow. That was it. She hadn’t let many people get close. Her mother was dead, and she hadn’t seen her father in three years, since the last time she’d come close to dying, when he’d made his lack of interest clear.
Loneliness rivaled fear in her heart as the current tugged harder. For the second time, she was facing death alone. But if she could do it over again, would she change?
Could she change?
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to get another chance. Her frozen fingers faltered, then slipped. The wet metal slid out of her grip. Frigid water closed over her head.
Two hours earlier
Sleet pinged off the police cruiser’s windshield as Ethan slowed to read the number on a rusted mailbox. The painted numerals were too faded to read, but his GPS told him he had the right address. Besides, there wasn’t another farm in sight. Snow-crusted fields stretched out on both sides of the road. On the other side of the flat plateau, the Endless Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania jutted into the sky.
He turned into the driveway. The vehicle bounced down the rutted lane. Weather-beaten to a dull gray, a used-to-be-white farmhouse squatted on the right. Porch boards sagged. The roof dipped. To the left, a cluster of ramshackle sheds leaned at precarious angles. Around the supposed barnyard, six inches of frozen snowpack covered three barbwire enclosures. Combined, the corral areas totaled roughly a quarter acre.
Did animals live in those? Ethan knew the answer. This wasn’t his first call to provide backup on an animal cruelty call.
He checked in with dispatch and parked behind the Pennsylvania SPCA truck. Three more official vehicles, including a long stock trailer, crowded the yard. A caravan wasn’t a good sign. The humane officers had come prepared for seizure.
He grabbed his hat from the passenger seat. Shoving it firmly on his head, he got out of the vehicle and flipped up the collar of his Westbury PD jacket. Under the brim, an icy wind pelted his face with sleet. He opened his trunk and changed into heavy waterproof boots. Then he followed a group of footprints to the center of the compound. Bracing himself, he peered inside the first shed.
His gaze locked on a group of wretched animals huddling in the miserable weather. Sleet and wind cut through the huge gaps in the roof and walls in their pathetic excuse for a shelter. The horses bent heads and closed eyes against the precipitation. Bones protruded through ragged wet fur.
Son of a bitch
. Anger seared through the cold.
“Ethan.” His cousin, humane society police officer Veronica Hale, trudged toward him, partially frozen mud sucking at her boots. A navy blue watch cap pulled low over her forehead covered hair that was as jet-black as his. The ends poked out and lay wet against the shoulders of her bulky parka. She held a compact camera in one gloved hand and a clipboard in the other.
“What’s the story, Ronnie?”
Ronnie tucked her clipboard under her arm and shoved both hands in the pockets of her coat. She hunched her shoulders against the wind. At thirty-one, she was two years Ethan’s senior. Both were the oldest in their respective families and shared a lifetime bond created by decades of harassment at the hands of their younger siblings.
Her cheeks were blistered red from the cold. She’d been out here awhile. “We got a call from a utility worker concerned about the condition of a few horses. We did a ride-by, saw three animals in bad condition in the front paddock, and got a search warrant for the premises. When we got here, we found nine more horses. The whole dozen of them are emaciated. The living conditions are beyond unsanitary.” Ronnie swiped a knuckle under a watery blue eye. “We’re seizing all of these animals today.”
“Have you told the owner yet?”
Ronnie gave him a tired smile. “I was waiting for backup. Mr. Smith is agitated and confrontational. The vet is finishing his assessment of the animals. Smith keeps getting in his way.”
“Where is he?”
Ronnie squinted against the precipitation. “Inside the third lean-to.”
“Let’s get it done.” Ethan followed her, taking stock of the conditions. Water buckets frozen over. Despite the cold, ammonia burned his nostrils, a sure sign of urine overload from animals confined too long in untended close quarters. As they stepped inside, angry voices dimmed the patter of sleet hitting corrugated metal. A nervous bay horse huddled in the corner. The hips of the roan pony closest to Ethan were sharp as ax blades. The pony turned and gave him a friendly nose bump. Ethan rubbed the bony neck.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with these animals.” In the center of the space, a skinny man dressed in jeans, heavy boots, and an olive green canvas coat crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the vet. Ethan categorized him automatically. Five-foot-eight. A hungry one-thirty. Gray hair. Gray eyes. Belligerent attitude. “None of them is starving. They get fed twice a day.”
Scraggly whiskers and an arthritic posture suggested he was at least seventy and not in the physical condition to care for this many animals even if he cared, which Ethan doubted.
He scrutinized the space. No feed buckets in sight. The only wisps of hay in the frozen muck were mingled with manure. Twice a day his ass. These horses hadn’t seen a decent meal in a long time, so long that their bodies had run out of fat for fuel and moved on to burning muscle. The extreme cold weather of the last couple of weeks had sped up the process.
“Where do you keep your feed?” Ronnie clicked a pen over her clipboard.
The old man’s eyes drifted left. “I’m due for a delivery tomorrow.”
Ronnie paused. “So you have no feed for these animals?”
“I got some. Price of feed is steep. Sometimes I gotta ration.” The old man zeroed in on Ethan. “Who’s he?”
Ronnie gestured with her pen. “Officer Ethan Hale, Dennis Smith.”
“How long is this going to take?” Smith puffed his chest out rooster-style. “I have things to do.”
Six and a half feet of no-nonsense large animal veterinarian in insulated brown coveralls and steel-toed boots, Doc White ignored the conversation and focused on the three emaciated horses crowded in the corner of the fifteen-by-fifteen space. He leaned over to get a look at the horses’ feet. But inside the shed, the top few inches of frozen muck was trampled soft. Mud and manure buried the animals’ feet to the ankles.
Doc approached a filthy chestnut gelding. The horse didn’t protest as the vet took hold of its halter and opened its mouth. The poor beast probably didn’t have the energy.
“When was the farrier out last?” Ronnie asked.
“I see to my horses’ hooves myself.” The lie flickered in Smith’s beady eyes. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket. He put a filter in his mouth and lit up with a Zippo. Snapping the lighter closed, he took a long drag. The tip flared angry red.
Ethan opened his mouth to reprimand him for smoking in a barn. But what the hell was going to catch fire? Mud? Besides, it wouldn’t matter much. These animals weren’t going to be here much longer. Ronnie had already started the process. Smith should be prohibited from owning any more large animals. His cousin was known for brick-house-solid cases.
Doc patted the thin neck, slid a hand down the animal’s shoulder, and lifted a hoof for inspection. He gently set the foot back on the ground. He gave Ethan a nod of recognition and caught Ronnie’s eye. “Same as the others.”
Doc gave the red horse a final pat and moved back out into the sleet. Smith intercepted him. “Where are you going?”
Ronnie stepped between the men. The gigantic vet’s mouth twitched. He probably had a hundred pounds on Ronnie. But Ethan knew his cousin. She was the cop. She’d called the vet, and it was her job to protect him, regardless of their respective sizes.
