“With me in the car?”
“Even if I could get your door open, I wouldn’t want to risk hurting you by getting you out of the car first. You’re at a bad angle. The Emergency Services guys will be here in about ten minutes. They’ll get you out safely. Trust me.”
Just as he yelled for her to trust him, the rear of the car shuddered, slid downward at least four feet, and skewed until it hit a tree. Eric took a step back in surprise. Marissa gasped and drew in on herself.
Eric shined the flashlight on the tree. Marissa glanced at it, realizing in numb, clearheaded horror its diameter probably measured three inches at the most and it couldn’t hold the car for long. Eric, so close yet nearly lost in a veil of snow, gaped as already the tree began to crack and the car once again shifted slightly.
“I didn’t touch the car when I went around it! It shouldn’t have moved!” Eric bellowed.
“The
thing
! It
moved
the car!” Marissa managed to yell through her shock.
“What thing? What are you talking about?”
Stunned with disbelief, Marissa shouted, “If you didn’t see anyone
beside
the car, you must have seen them escaping! Someone in a hooded coat, long white hair—”
“Nobody is beside your car, Marissa. I didn’t see anyone or signs of anyone around the car.” Eric sounded as firm as anyone could while snow and ice battered his face. “You must have jolted the car loose when you were thrashing around inside.”
In spite of her terror, the fire of anger blazed through Marissa. She suddenly wished she were wearing sturdy boots and his ankles were bare so she could kick him several times. While he had done nothing except blunder uselessly around her car she had forced herself to remain stock-still. Yet in his typically male mind, she fumed, Eric had pictured her flailing until she made the car even more unstable. And apparently he hadn’t even seen what kind of creature had caused this uproar.
A mixture of fear, dread, and pure frustration welled up within her, and sounding like a fifteen-year-old, she managed a high-pitched angry scream: “You jerk!”
“You say you’re hurt?” Eric sounded distracted. He leaned down and looked through her window; his expression was more alarmed than earlier. “Don’t panic. We’ll get you out of this. Just hold very still.”
Inside she burned to ask him what the hell he thought she’d been doing for the last fifteen minutes, but two men struggling down the riverbank to join Eric sidetracked her attention. They moved away from the car, lowering their voices, frowning, and from the tail of her eye Marissa saw Eric give something small to a tall, slender man standing beside another one built like a fifty-year-old oak.
Eric finally turned and bawled, “Marissa, you still okay in there?”
“I can
hear
you,” she called back acidly, still riled by the idea that Eric didn’t give her credit for knowing to hold still. “You don’t have to
bellow
! My God, they can hear you in Greenland! I’m stuck in here trying to hold my nerves together, trying to not think about what could happen to me at any minute, and you’re making”—she shuddered and, to her horror, began sobbing—“everything worse, dammit! I’m s-so scared that I can’t stay in c-control much longer and you just keep
shrieking
for me to hold still…and…and…” Marissa completely dissolved, terrified, wanting to scream her fear, to kick and batter her way free of this prison, but knowing movement would probably result in her death.
“I do not
shriek
!” Eric returned furiously, but after a moment he called in a lower voice, “Don’t cry. I’m sorry, Marissa. I just wanted to make sure you heard me.”
Ashamed, Marissa tried to control her hysteria. “I—I’m sorry, too. I’m so helpless and—” In spite of her sobbing, Marissa thought she heard something. Appalled, she went quiet for a moment, listening. Then she yelled, “Eric, I can feel the car moving and the tree is splitting!…”
“I want you to stay as calm as you can,” he called immediately. “We don’t have time to get chains around the car and drag it up the riverbank. I have seat belt cutters, but we
have
to get your door open. I want you to try to reach the door lock controls.”
“I
can’t.
”
“You
can.
Give it another try.”
Marissa reached with her left hand, but her fingers couldn’t reach the door lock button. “I told you I can’t reach it!”
“I was watching you, Marissa. You almost made it. The button was only about an inch away from your middle finger. If you don’t open that door—”
“I could die in here. I’ll try.” Marissa twisted a fraction and reached for the control. Pain shot up her shoulder, making her gasp, but her middle finger nearly touched the edge of the button. She reached farther, this time crying out from the screaming strain on her shoulder, but she managed to move her finger a fraction farther. She pushed and heard the blessed click—the car was unlocked!
“Thank God!” Eric said loudly as he opened her door. “I have to lean across you so I can unlock the other door. I’ll put as little of my weight on you as possible.” Marissa managed to nod. His face reddened with the task of leaning to the other door while trying not to press against her. Quickly he clicked open the other lock, then drew back. “We’re not the emergency squad, but we have to cut you loose and get you out of there. All right?”
Marissa realized they must be certain the car was going into the river. She nodded again and said, “Hurry.”
Marissa took a deep breath and felt as if the men outside the car were doing the same. She clasped her nearly numb hands but didn’t close her eyes. Eric might motion to her—she needed to see. Nevertheless, bitter wind stung her eyes shut for a few seconds when the men slowly, carefully opened her car doors, a move Marissa knew could change the car’s balance one fatal inch. Someone slipped a sturdy arm around her waist. “Don’t stiffen up, Marissa. Try to relax against me for a minute,” Eric murmured in her ear, and she felt better knowing
he
was the man holding her.
The slender man leaned in the opposite open door and gripped the belt crossing Marissa’s lap. The burly man stood in front of the car, clearly watching for signs that it was sliding out of control.
“
Now,
” Eric ordered. Instantly the men began to serrate the seat belt’s tough nylon—nylon that had saved her and now might cause her death. Wind blew and the spindly tree creaked. Marissa silently begged that the tree would hold for just a few more minutes.
The men worked frantically for less than a minute before the tree cracked sharply, the sound seeming to echo through the frozen night. Eric roared, “Get away from the car!” His arm tightened around her and he pulled with tremendous force, completely cutting off her breath. They rocketed back from the car, landing on a soft bed of snow, Eric heaving for air beneath her, Marissa—too shocked to cry—lying motionless on top of him.
Eric managed a raspy shout to the man who’d been on the opposite side of the car: “You okay over there?”
“Yeah.” The man gasped as he scrambled through the snow, escaping the area of the vehicle. “But the car—”
“There it goes!” the burly man yelled as Eric rose up on one elbow, still holding Marissa in a near-death grip as they watched the Mustang smash through small brush, rip frozen vines from the ground, fling snow from its tires and under-carriage, and finally roll almost gracefully into the icy water of the Orenda River.
2
Two hours later, Catherine, James, and Eric sat in the Grays’ large family room. The Emergency Services team and the backup police had arrived just minutes before Marissa’s car rolled into the river. Eric had ordered the deputies to take the truck driver’s statement, deliver him to a local motel, and offer to verify to the man’s company on the phone that the wreck was not the driver’s fault. The man’s hands still trembled and the semitruck cab sat askew, the cab half-buried in the earth and snow, but he’d still helped to save Marissa. Eric had wanted to help the driver all he could.
Catherine had accompanied Marissa to the hospital in the ambulance while James and Eric took separate cars. An hour later, Marissa had calmly endured X-rays and a CT scan to check for a concussion and given blood to be tested for drugs or alcohol. Catherine looked as if she was going to faint with relief when doctors determined that miraculously Marissa had suffered only a battered but unbroken nose, and strained shoulder muscles and tendons.
Upon hearing the news, Marissa had loudly demanded to go home. When the doctor told her that would be “inadvisable,” she burst into a deluge of tears. Finally, everyone had given in to her roller-coaster emotional state, she’d signed her forms to leave without medical consent, and James drove her and Catherine to the Gray house.
The other deputies had told Eric that headquarters was a zoo on this icy night with all the drivers who had collided with telephone poles and mailboxes. Along with them were two competing sets of teenagers who’d decided to try their skills at breaking and entering on a night when so many people were at parties, which left their homes empty. Police had apprehended the amateur teams and now both the young burglars and their enraged parents faced the crimes with maturity and dignity by yelling at one another and at the cops. Given the chaos at headquarters, Eric announced he would accompany a still weak, panicky Marissa to take her statement about the wreck in the peace and familiarity of her home.
Back in the safety of the lovely house where she’d lived most of her life, Marissa could hardly believe that less than two hours ago she’d been trapped in her Mustang and hanging on the bank of a river with someone jostling the car, trying to send it into the dark, frigid waters of the Orenda. Now she sat on a heavily padded couch in the warm family room of the Gray home, huddled in a floor-length heavy white velour robe. Catherine had insisted Marissa wear the pair of giant fuzzy white slippers with rabbit faces and floppy ears she knew were Marissa’s favorites. She’d also wrapped Marissa in a blinding neon red and yellow afghan made by their grandmother. Marissa could see herself in a mirror across the room, though, and in spite of all her colorful insulation, she still looked pinched and frozen.
Tonight, the big room with its calming cream, cinnamon, and soft dusky blue color scheme looked like the scene of a party. Lighted Christmas wreaths hung at every window, and tinsel and lighted candles decorated the mantle of the large cherrywood hearth in which a cheerful fire burned. In what usually was a corner now towered a huge pine tree glittering with countless miniature lights and the lovely, fragile ornaments and decorations Annemarie Gray had collected throughout the years. As Catherine bent to light two large candles on the coffee table, James said, “Catherine, the room looks beautiful, but I’m afraid we’re going to have a fire hazard if you light another candle.”
Catherine glanced around her. “Oh. Well, maybe I am overdoing it, but it was so cold and dark on that bank and it seemed we were there for hours. I can imagine how poor Marissa feels.”
“I’m still cold, but I don’t think I’ll thaw out until around daylight no matter how many candles we light.” Marissa tried to smile at everyone, embarrassed by her less-than-poised crying jag at the hospital. “I would certainly like to have a drink, though.” She looked at Eric. “It’s all right for me to have alcohol now that my blood has already been drawn for testing, isn’t it?”
“It would be if you weren’t taking pain pills,” Eric said mildly. “Alcohol and pain pills don’t mix.”
Marissa glared at him and James added loudly, “Marissa isn’t the only one who’d like a drink. I’d love to have a Scotch and soda or a bourbon and Coke or…well, anything!”
“Of course. I’m so used to Mom taking control, although I’m glad she’s not here tonight….” Tears rose in Catherine’s eyes and she nervously fluttered off toward the kitchen, yelling back, “I think we have booze of every kind. Oh! What a thing to say with the chief deputy sitting right here! I sound like we’re running a roadhouse. It’s just that we bought extra liquor for guests and people give bottles as gifts.” She paused. “I didn’t even ask what everyone wanted. Marissa, where are the cocktail glasses? I thought Mom kept them…damn!” A kitchen cabinet door slammed.
“I think our hostess needs some help.” James stood up. “Marissa, what would you like?”
“A Coke,” she said glumly.
James smiled warmly. “Fine. Eric?”
“I’m still on duty. I’m afraid it will have to be coffee,” Eric said politely. “Instant will be fine.”
Marissa and Eric were old news in the romance department. Four and a half years ago, she’d worn an engagement ring given to her by Eric. Most of Marissa’s life, her closest friend had been Eric’s younger sister, Gretchen—a sweet, quiet blonde who lived for music. Her talents had begun emerging when she was barely more than a toddler. She played the violin and the piano and sang. Gretchen had already begun her concert career when at age twenty-one she died from a fall in the church on Gray’s Island—a fall Eric and Marissa had both witnessed.
Immediately after Gretchen’s death, Eric’s lighthearted buoyancy, his irresistible charm, had vanished. He’d been on the fast track in Philadelphia law enforcement but came back to Aurora Falls to be near his shattered parents and join the Aurora city police in a much less prestigious position than he’d held in Philadelphia.
And he’d broken off his engagement to Marissa.
At first, Marissa had felt numb after what had been a crushing blow. For years, everyone had expected Marissa Gray to marry Eric Montgomery. Marissa’s mother had begged her to give him time to straighten out his emotions, to not close the door on their romance, but Marissa knew Eric too well to believe a few months or even a year would set things right. So she’d applied for a newspaper job in Chicago. The hours had been long and the pay had been bad, but she hadn’t cared. All she’d thought about was that with Eric back in Aurora Falls she must leave.
After two years, she’d told herself she’d completely recovered. She came home only at Christmas and for a week each summer. Her father had died of a heart attack during her second Christmas visit. Eric attended the funeral with his parents, but he and Marissa hadn’t spoken and had even avoided each other’s gazes. When she’d realized she couldn’t even look at him without feeling as if a fist were squeezing her heart, she knew she hadn’t gotten over him at all.